Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plathwas one of the most renowned and influential poets, novelists, and short story writers of the 20th century. Born in Boston, Massachusetts, she studied at Smith College and Newnham College at the University of Cambridge before receiving acclaim as a poet and writer. She was married to fellow poet Ted Hughes from 1956 until they separated in September of 1962. They lived together in the United States and then the United Kingdom and had two children, Frieda and Nicholas...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth27 October 1932
CountryUnited States of America
It is a terrible thing to be so open: it is as if my heart put on a face and walked into the world.
The thought that I might kill myself formed in my mind coolly as a tree or a flower.
I suppose I'll always be over-vulnerable, slightly paranoid.
Yes, there is joy, fulfillment and companionship but the loneliness of the soul in its appalling self-consciousness is horrible and overpowering.
How many different deaths I can die?
And so I rehabilitate myself - staying up late this Friday night in spite of vowing to go to bed early, because it is more important to capture moments like this, keen shifts in mood, sudden veering of direction - than to lose it in slumber.
Spiderlike, I spin mirrors, Loyal to my image.
God, it was good to let go, let the tight mask fall off, and the bewildered, chaotic fragments pour out. It was the purge, the catharsis.
I felt the mask crumple, the great poisonous store of corrosive ashes begin to spew out of my mouth.
Masks are the order of the day - and the least I can do is cultivate the illusion that I am gay, serene, not hollow and afraid.
A skeptic, I would ask for consistency first of all.
I wanted to be where nobody I knew could ever come.
The moon is no door. It is a face in its own right, White as a knuckle and terribly upset. It drags the sea after it like a dark crime; it is quiet With the O-gape of complete despair. I live here.
I am but one more drop in the great sea of matter, defined, with the ability to realize my existence.