Sylvia Plath is one of the most famous poets of the 20th century and certainly one of the most tragic. Her poems are equally parts thoughtful and heartbreaking.
Being born in 1932 and living only 30 years before taking her own life, Plath is a poet who battled with the struggles of mental health from a very young age. Her first suicide attempt in 1953, when she was only 19 years old, became the inspiration for ‘The Bell Jar.’ She spent the next six months in psychiatric care before returning to finish college.
Her poetry spans themes of her own mental health, motherhood, and family and touches on her own relationships, especially that of her marriage to fellow writer Ted Hughes.
Plath’s poetry is beautiful to read, heavy in theme yet incredibly skilled; it is obvious why she has become one of the most acclaimed poets of the 20th century; her work touched and moved people long after her passing.
‘Daddy’ by Sylvia Plath uses emotional, and sometimes, painful metaphors to depict the poet’s own opinion of her father.
You do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot
For thirty years, poor and white,
‘Lady Lazarus’ is one of the best poems of Sylvia Plath and an ideal example of Plath’s diction. This poem contains Plath’s poetic expression of her suicidal thoughts.
I have done it again.
One year in every ten
I manage it——
‘Ariel’ by Sylvia Plath is a deeply metaphorical poem. It focuses on the speaker’s experiences during a terrifying horseback ride.
Stasis in darkness.
Then the substanceless blue
Pour of tor and distances.
‘Mad Girl’s Love Song’ by Sylvia Plath explores the truth of a relationship. The speaker wonders how deep and meaningful it really was.
"I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
‘The Moon and the Yew Tree’ by Sylvia Plath defines the poet’s relationship with her parents. It’s a poem that’s just as beautiful as it is complicated.
This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary. The trees of the mind are black. The light is blue. The grasses unload their griefs at my feet as if I were God, Prickling my ankles and murmuring of their humility.
‘Two Lovers and a Beachcomber by the Real Sea’ by Sylvia Plath explores imagination. Reality, the speaker realizes, doesn’t always live up to what one imagined.
Cold and final, the imagination Shuts down its fabled summer house; Blue views are boarded up; our sweet vacation Dwindles in the hour-glass.
‘November Graveyard’ by Sylvia Plath describes a cemetery in November. She discusses her views on the afterlife and what the graveyard truly symbolizes.
The scene stands stubborn: skinflint trees
Hoard last year's leaves, won't mourn, wear sackcloth, or turn
To elegiac dryads, and dour grass
Guards the hard-hearted emerald of its grassiness
‘Winter Landscape, with Rooks’ by Sylvia Plath depicts a dark landscape. It’s used to symbolize how the speaker, and perhaps the poet, was feeling.
Water in the millrace, through a sluice of stone,
plunges headlong into that black pond
where, absurd and out-of-season, a single swan
floats chaste as snow, taunting the clouded mind
‘Poppies in October’ by Sylvia Plath depicts an interesting contrast between life and death. It takes a melancholy tone and can be interpreted in different ways.
Even the sun-clouds this morning cannot manage such skirts.
Nor the woman in the ambulance
Whose red heart blooms through her coat so astoundingly —
‘Waking in Winter’ by Sylvia Plath tells the story of hotel residents. They’re living different lives but are unified through their hopelessness.
I can taste the tin of the sky —- the real tin thing.
Winter dawn is the color of metal,
The trees stiffen into place like burnt nerves.
All night I have dreamed of destruction, annihilations —-
‘Tulips’ by Sylvia Plath is a personal and confessional poem. It explores the poet’s innermost emotions and mental state.
The tulips are too excitable, it is winter here.
Look how white everything is, how quiet, how snowed-in.
I am learning peacefulness, lying by myself quietly
As the light lies on these white walls, this bed, these hands.
‘Morning Song’ by Sylvia Plath is a powerful poem about motherhood. The speaker explores the emotions related to it as well as its implications.
Love set you going like a fat gold watch.
The midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bald cry
Took its place among the elements.
‘Edge’ by Sylvia Plath tells the haunting story of a woman’s depression and the terrible actions she took on account of it. She murders her children and then takes her own life.
The woman is perfected.
Her dead
Body wears the smile of accomplishment,
The illusion of a Greek necessity
‘Cut’ by Sylvia Plath is one of the poet’s most famous poems. It details an incident in which she almost cut off her own thumb.
What a thrill ---
My thumb instead of an onion.
The top quite gone
Except for a sort of a hinge
‘Stings’ by Sylvia Plath is a complex poem that uses bees as a metaphor. It describes the changes a speaker goes through as she considers the role of a queen bee in a hive.
Bare-handed, I hand the combs.
The man in white smiles, bare-handed,
Our cheesecloth gauntlets neat and sweet,
The throats of our wrists brave lilies.
He and I
‘Crossing the Water’ by Sylvia Plath is a four stanza poem that is divided into sets of three lines, known as tercets. Theses lines do not follow a specific rhyme scheme or metrical pattern.
Black lake, black boat, two black, cut-paper people.
Where do the black trees go that drink here?
Their shadows must cover Canada.
‘The Snowman on the Moor’ explores the turbulent and abusive relationship between the speaker (presumably Plath herself) and her male spouse.
Stalemated their armies stood, with tottering banners:
She flung from a room
Still ringing with bruit of insults and dishonors
Sylvia Plath’s ‘Balloons’ narrates her experience and perspectives of having the balloons around like a pet at home. She contrasts childhood with adulthood through the colorful balloons. The balloon when pops, takes the observer from the dream-like state of childhood to the harsh reality of adulthood.
‘Black Rook in Rainy Weather’ by Sylvia Plath uses a black rook as a metaphor. It elevates the simple things in life to a higher, more important level.
‘Blackberrying’ by Sylvia Plath explores decaying and flourishing life and human mortality. It was published in 1971 in Crossing the Water, after the poet’s death.
‘Child’ by Sylvia Plath depicts the speaker’s concerns about motherhood. She hopes her child will have a better future than her own.
‘Contusion’ by Sylvia Plath is a memorable, short poem about death and a loss of passion or meaning in one’s life. It is a dramatic monologue written 12 days before the poet’s death.
‘Elm’ by Sylvia Plath is a complex poem. It details a woman’s emotional transformation throughout various seasons and through the image o an elm tree.
‘Fever 103°’ by Sylvia Plath speaks on complex themes common to her work. The speaker contemplates her guilt and innocence and where she belongs after death.
‘Finisterre’ by Sylvia Plath focuses on ocean imagery. It uses the sea as a way of considering the human experience and complex topics of life and death.
‘I am Vertical’ by Sylvia Plath discusses the purpose of life and the value of beauty. The speaker is desperate for a worthwhile role in the world.
‘Metaphors’ by Sylvia Plath is an autobiographical piece. It was written during Plath’s pregnancy and discusses the meaning of motherhood.
‘The Mirror’ by Sylvia Plath is an unforgettable poem told from the perspective of a mirror. The mirror gives an autobiographical account of itself.
‘Mushrooms’ by Sylvia Plath is about the struggle for women’s rights. It uses mushrooms as a symbol for women and their determination.
‘Nick and the Candlestick’ by Sylvia Plath is a poem about new motherhood. The speaker talks about the child she’s caring for and what the experience means to her.