Throwback Thursday: Sylvia Plath

Morning, Prosers. 

This week's TBT is a Throwback to the time where @LillyZ and @DaveK wrote this beauty. Feast your eyes on this and check the bottom of the piece for the link to the beautiful infographic only on The Prose Blog. 

Sylvia Plath was born in Massachusetts in 1932 and died by suicide at the age of 30 in 1963 while living in London. While literature will always honor her as a beacon of brilliance, let us strive to be who she should have been, not who she was. The legacy of Sylvia Plath reminds us that no matter how talented we are, we are still human and prone to frailty.

Sylvia Plath was first published at the age of eight in the Boston Herald and would be published on several occasions during this time in her life. Her father also died when she was eight from complications with diabetes. His death effected her deeply, causing her to lose faith in her Christian upbringing and most likely contributed to her lifelong battle with depression. Sylvia’s first national publication was printed in the Christian Science Monitor when she was 18 years old. She attended Smith College and graduated with honors despite a brief stay in a psychiatric care facility where she received electroconvulsive shock therapy for depression. Her first suicide attempt was by taking sleeping pills and crawling under her mother’s house to die. She stayed in the crawl space for three days before being discovered. She also drove her car into a river and would eventually die from carbon monoxide poisoning with her head in the oven and wet towels at the base of the doors to keep the fumes from her children. While there is a debate on whether or not she really planned to die, an officer at the scene is quoted as saying she “had really meant to die.”

Sylvia married poet Ted Hughes only a few months after they met when she was 24. She said that he had a writing voice like “the thunder of God.” The two would separate after she learned he had been sleeping with another woman. She died six months later. After hearing the news, Hughes said in a letter that “That’s the end of my life. The rest is posthumous.” He chose the inscription on her gravestone that reads, “Even amidst fierce flames the golden lotus can be planted.” Her headstone has been vandalized numerous times by admirers angered by Hughes name on the stone, attempting to scratch it out so Sylvia’s would be the only name left. When Hughes’ mistress, Assia Wevill, killed herself and their four-year old daughter, the vandalism became more frequent. Hughes has repeatedly had the stone removed for repair. Sylvia’s son, Nicholas Hughes, killed himself in 2009 after a history with depression.

Sylvia Plath advanced the genre of confessional poetry, publishing poetry collections and novels before being awarded the Pulitzer Prize after her death in 1982 for The Collected Poems. A critic said of Plath that, “The horrifying tone of her poetry underscores a depth of feeling that can be attributed to few other poets…Plath writes of the human dread of dying. Her primitive honesty and emotionalism are her strength.” In 2000, it was reported that there were more than 104 books in print about her. Though her life was brief, Sylvia Plath left a legacy that will outlive historical events 1,000 years in the making. We can only celebrate what was while we mourn untold numbers of moving words that will never be, hoping that her legacy is one that inspires future writers to see how far their words can climb while their hearts still beat.

If you want to visit this piece in all its luscious image heavy glory, visit here, now: http://blog.theprose.com/2016/06/throwback-thursday-looks-sylvia-plath/ 

Thanks once again to @DaveK and @LillyZ, both of whom you should follow on Prose if you don't already! 

Until next time, Prosers,

Prose.