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 27th, 1932 in Boston, MA Published her first poem when she was eight-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 11th, 1963

Poetic Style Confessional Lyrical Symbolic

Common Themes Depression Relationships Anger

Video Clips Sylvia Plath Interviewed 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 vacationDwindles in the hour-glass.

Thoughts that found a maze of mermaid hairTangling in the tide's green fallNow fold their wings like bats and disappearInto the attic of the skull.

We are not what we might be; what we areOutlaws all extrapolationBeyond the interval of now and here:White whales are gone with the white ocean.

A lone beachcomber squats among the wrackOf kaleidoscope shellsProbing fractured Venus with a stickUnder a tent of taunting gulls.

No sea-change decks the sunken shank of boneThat 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 sunWill scrupulously rise and set;No little man lives in the exacting moonAnd that is that, is that, is that.

Poems 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 bedAnd 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 fanOf silver as the rondo slows; now reelsBegin on tilted violins to span

The whole revolving tall glass palace hallWhere guests slide gliding into light like wine;Rose candles flicker on the lilac wallReflecting in a million flagons' shine,

And glided couples all in whirling tranceFollow holiday revel begun long since,Until near twelve the strange girl all at onceGuilt-stricken halts, pales, clings to the prince

As amid the hectic music and cocktail talkShe 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 markCrawls 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?