Sylvia Plath (October 27, 1932 – February 11, 1963) is one of the most popular poets in recent history and her life burned at a white-hot heat. Plath’s father, Otto Plath, was a German who emigrated to America and taught Entomology and German. He died while Plath was eight years old due to gangrene (stemming from diabetes) and his refusal to have treatment. Plath purportedly also nearly drowned around this time (in “Daddy” she says she tried to die at 10).

Plath went on to attend Smith College and she graduated with the highest honors. When she was rejected from the Harvard Writing Program, she attempted suicide, crawling under the floorboards and overdosing on sleeping pills. She was found about three days later and underwent psychiatric treatment, which included electroshock therapy, which essentially erases all memory for a few moments.

Sylvia Plath was given a Fullbright scholarship by a Senator who had also suffered a mental breakdown and saw Plath’s potential (Plath was already a published author at this time). She attended the Newnham College, University of Cambridge in the U.K. where she met and later married Ted Hughes.

Plath’s poetic work during her life time was often overshadowed by Ted Hughes’s and, eventually, in a burst of creativity, she composed most of her Ariel poems after her marriage with Ted Hughes had broken down. Plath had been mentally unstable all her life, had attempted suicide several times; a trajectory that led to her final suicide and death at the age of 30.

Ariel was edited and published by Ted Hughes, which caused considerable controversy because of his near-association, but the collection was extremely well received.

Plath attained a level of fame after her death that she never saw in life, but her genius is widely acknowledged and she is one of the most influential poets in recent history. Poems that have attracted most attention are : “Daddy”; “Cut”; “Tulips”; “Lady Lazurus”; “Fever 103°”; and “Nick and the Candlestick”.

It has been said that in the 1970s feminists “appropriated” Sylvia Plath’s death, attributing her suicide to mistreatment by her husband. Frieda Hughes, their daughter, has been appalled by this, as this interview explains. In terms of literary interpretation, we should beware of too many sweeping biographical assumptions. While Plath’s poetry draws on her inner emotional life, her work can stand alone and be interpreted without judgment of her personal relationship with Ted Hughes, about which, as Frieda Hughes asserts, we can know very little. It is a truism that no one can ever understand what happens in a marriage but the two people who experience it.

Plath and some of her contemporary poets wrote a style of poetry called “Confessional”, that emerged in the United States during the 1950s. It has been described as poetry “of the personal,” focusing on extreme moments of individual experience, the psyche, and personal trauma, including previously taboo matter such as mental illness, sexuality, and suicide, often set in relation to broader social themes. It is sometimes also classified as Postmodernism. Other poets of this style of poetry include John Berryman, Robert Lowell, Anne Sexton and Allen Ginsberg.