A review by leahreadsstuff
The Collected Poems by Sylvia Plath

challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? N/A
• Strong character development? N/A
• Loveable characters? N/A
• Diverse cast of characters? N/A
• Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

5.0

Reminds me of a summer storm: wild and loud and terrifying in its beauty. Fraught and  at times violent in its imagery. 

It’s a slow build of a read, with her work laid out chronologically. The earlier poems are disjointed and chaotic, as if she wrote entirely by inspiration of the moment. The deeper themes are there, but veiled behind conventional ideas. It’s a slow, queasy, inexorable slide into emotional honesty. The subjects are not for the faint hearted: death, isolation, identity, and the strange heavy leaden weight of depression.

1961 is a marked turning point. From then on the pretension disappears, and there is a raw and intensely vivid openness that starts to take shape. 1962 is incredible. “Daddy” in particular is a disturbing, horrifying, wrenching piece of work. And “The Jailer” continues the imagery of rage and pain.  “Lady Lazarus” stuck with me. Her uncomfortable emotional honesty and macabre humor bring the truths she is laying open home. 

It’s impossible to separate Plath’s work from her mythology, at least for me, and knowing her life story makes the work all the more poignant.