Customer Reviews

Sylvia Plath - Selected Poems (Faber poetry)

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This is not a review in it's proper sense. Sylvia Plath is canonized, and her poems surely have a power beyond what any arbitrary readers review might say about them.

On the other hand, nobody has left any recommendation on this work yet, which is a shame. That does not mean I would recommend this book unconditionally.

I have read her work on many stages in my life, mostly because it has been on my curriculum in one way or the other, and have never been able to connect with it, not until now. Sylvia Plath is surrounded by a lot of myths and maybe a rather unhealthy iconization due to her tragic exit from life. And maybe it doesn't help that she writes about waking up disappointed from suicide attempts in some of the poems, and her work most definitely has this dark side too. But she is not all about being suicidal, having death wishes and being committed to the psych ward.

The eye opener for me was therefore reading Metaphors. I read the poem by chance, not knowing it was a Plath poem and I found it full of playfulness - just like a "riddle in nine syllables", and I saw something in her style that had gone unnoticed before. Although it can be hard sometimes to understand her use of metaphors, they are referring to something very concrete, something very basic in her world, and more often than not, this is something that I, and I guess most other people, can relate to - for instant wakening up in the middle of the night to tend to a crying baby. As a proud father I find Morning Song one of the most beautiful texts dealing with the feelings parents have for their offspring. Because you know this is a writer who is not afraid to put her darkest thoughts to paper, the positive tone to these poems has an even greater credibility.

She is extremely observant, original and deploys the details, the descriptions in a way that, with her stern point of view, maybe is more precise to identify as a simulacrum of playfulness. But once you break the code, you're hooked.

This is The Selected Poems which does not contain Metaphors. I would have preferred to download The Collected Poems if it was available in a kindle edition.