Sylvia Plath's Poetry

Sylvia Plath sounds like a woman who spent her life in turmoil, possibly trying to attain something she just couldn’t get, relentlessly hoping for something outside her reach. She sounds to be a very educated and intelligent person but not able to keep her psychological person in check. It’s sad to know she spent her life viewing the world as “bad dream”. One would wonder if there were ever any happy days and how much influence her parents actually had on her or if there was something simply neurologically wrong with her.

The feeling I get from reading “The Bee Meeting” is of a death, visitation, and funeral. It sounds as if the subject has died, not realizing it though, and see the people coming, possibly a vision of those from the village that have gone on before her. I think possibly the bees represent the people and their day to day business; how they simply go about their business as bees do: busy as bees. Even though this person has died, the people come to take care of the body and prepare it for burial. In the end she feels the coldness of death after everyone has visited and the burial has taken place and now she is alone in the “white box in the grove”.

“Lazy Lazarus” is an interesting account of her attempts at suicide. The reference to Lazarus I believe to be Lazarus in the Bible, the only man to be resurrected from the dead. He had died, been wrapped, and placed in the tomb. Upon Jesus’ arrival four days after his death, Jesus called him forth from the cave. Lazarus came out still wrapped in his burial clothes, alive as everyone else. Plath makes reference to this account in her poem. This is a sad account as it states she tries continuously to take her life, once every ten years, but as Lazarus did, arises from what others belief is death to her. It sounds as if she has become a spectacle of others and they come to witness yet another unsuccessful effort at suicide. This account implies she has burned herself possibly beyond some recognition, mentioning the scars and ash. Also, the wedding ring or gold filling may have been the only identifying items of who she is.

Plath’s poetry is intensely morbid in most of its content. It would not be something I would enjoy reading at any length. Her poem “Daddy” is a sad account of the relationship with her father. It sounds as if whatever relationship they had before he died was dreadful and she carried that with her throughout the rest of her life, encouraging the attempts of suicide until she was finally successful at the young age of thirty-one.