Sylvia Plath A Sullivan and Costa Production “Two Lovers And A Beachcomber By The Real Sea” “Mad Girl’s Love Song” “Cinderella” “Contusion”
Who is Sylvia Plath? Born on October 27 th, 1932 in Boston, MA Published her first poem when she was eight-years-oldeight-years-old Attended Smith College and graduated summa cum laude Moved to Cambridge, England on a scholarship and met her husband Tom Hughes Had 2 children Frieda and Nicholas Wrote The Bell Jar Two suicide attempts Depressed for most of adult life Family history of depression and suicide Death by Suicide February 11 th, 1963
Poetic Style Confessional Lyrical Symbolic
Common Themes Depression Relationships Anger
Video Clips Sylvia Plath Interviewed Sylvia Plath Interviewed Documentary Documentary
Poems Two Lovers and a Beachcomber by the Real Sea Cold and final, the imagination Shuts down its fabled summer house; Blue views are boarded up; our sweet vacation Dwindles in the hour-glass. Thoughts that found a maze of mermaid hair Tangling in the tide's green fall Now fold their wings like bats and disappear Into the attic of the skull. We are not what we might be; what we are Outlaws all extrapolation Beyond the interval of now and here: White whales are gone with the white ocean. A lone beachcomber squats among the wrack Of kaleidoscope shells Probing fractured Venus with a stick Under a tent of taunting gulls. No sea-change decks the sunken shank of bone That chucks in backtrack of the wave; Though the mind like an oyster labors on and on, A grain of sand is all we have. Water will run by; the actual sun Will scrupulously rise and set; No little man lives in the exacting moon And that is that, is that, is that.
Poems Mad Girl’s Love Song Mad Girl’s Love Song "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 stars go waltzing out in blue and red, And arbitrary blackness gallops in: I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead. I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane. (I think I made you up inside my head.) God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade: Exit seraphim and Satan's men: I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead. I fancied you'd return the way you said, But I grow old and I forget your name. (I think I made you up inside my head.) I should have loved a thunderbird instead; At least when spring comes they roar back again. I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead. (I think I made you up inside my head.)"
Poems Cinderella The prince leans to the girl in scarlet heels, Her green eyes slant, hair flaring in a fan Of silver as the rondo slows; now reels Begin on tilted violins to span The whole revolving tall glass palace hall Where guests slide gliding into light like wine; Rose candles flicker on the lilac wall Reflecting in a million flagons' shine, And glided couples all in whirling trance Follow holiday revel begun long since, Until near twelve the strange girl all at once Guilt-stricken halts, pales, clings to the prince As amid the hectic music and cocktail talk She hears the caustic ticking of the clock.
Poems Contusion The rest of the body is all washed out, The color of pearl. In a pit of rock The sea sucks obsessively, One hollow the whole sea’s pivot. The size of a fly, The doom mark Crawls down the wall. The heart shuts, The sea slides back, The mirrors are sheeted.
Discussion Questions 1. By the way Sylvia comes across in the interview, is it surprising that she suffers from depression? 2. After reading her poems and learning about her life, how does this affect you? 3. If Sylvia hadn’t had so much sadness in her life, do you think she would have become as successful as she was? As popular as she was?