Sylvia Plath was a wonderful poet that is used in college level courses around the world as a base of study not only in Psychology, but Creative Writing, and Literature as well. She was on anti-depressants that sadly counteracted with the serotonin levels in her brain. She was a victim to depression. Even today medications can do the same thing;however, we are just more aware. She had a lot on her shoulders. Her husband left her with her children at the early age of 30. Her sporadic social change could be the cause of her estrangement, detachment, and overall depression. She sought medication to help as a lot of people do. It's a desperate plea, and reviewing her life events and her work, even before the medications she had decided suicide was the only way out from the constant darkness, and pain she felt within. To say she is not a great poet is ridiculous. If she wasn't great she would not be discussed 47 years after her death. Her writing is timeless, and about real life decisions and situations. If you say she is not great, it is only because you simply don't understand nor appreciate the process of "Reading in between the lines."

@Cass - Exactly, well said!

A little, no, a lot of compassion is due all three principals in the case (Ted, Sylvia and Assia), three very gifted (Sylvia ,the genius in my humble view)people in the net of Eros, who paid a very high price. The case is (now) very well documented and the more you read, the less any intelligent person would rush to simple-minded judgments

Why do fans have to feel that they need to be in one "camp" or the other?

Personally, I think Ms Plath's death represents a tragic loss to the literary world, and often wonder what more she would have contributed had mental illness not overshadowed her life and if she had lived to the age of 70 or beyond. I have no doubt her best writing still lay ahead of her.

I'm also a great admirer of Mr Hughes' poetry, and find it easy to appreciate both poets without reference to the soap opera built up around their lives, the reporting of which is usually misinformed, emotional, and riddled with politics, and obscures their actual times and influences rather than illuminating their work.

Ms Plath's illness was often the subject of her poems, but these were carefully and finely crafted, which, as far as I'm concerned, is the real story of interest. It's a shame that an overzealous feminist political literature, and the anti-feminist response, distorted the voice Ms Plath gave her life to crafting and gave Mr Hughes a bad reputation for posterity.

I would like to see the poetry of both revisited some twenty years after the death of Mr Hughes when the interest in the scandalous soap opera details has died down and their work studied by researchers who are removed by time from the details of their lives and who perhaps will be capable of greater objectivity in relating these poets to their context.

I had some correspondence with Ted Hughes, now in the British Library, after I wrote an essay "ECT and the Life and Work of Sylvia Plath" which was published in Thumbscrew, Oxford, and on my website
www.rosemarierowley.ie
The essay sets out the reasons as to why I think ECT was causative in her death.

To ask people for a close tolerenced reply when placed where it is is like asking Jesus to referee a rugby match. Come on people.

How about Stevie Smith, doing her usual on youtube?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-q7RcFJzDNk

after reading the article my views of ted has changed

There is Lynette Roberts as well, from Argentina, believe it or not,
http://www.dylanthomasboathouse.com/download/LynetteRoberts.pdf

DEVO was also quite a pleasing expression of art in its form, way back, even, in the mid-1970s,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCpxSzacbyc

It should be poets, not poet's !

try this:
http://lovingsylvia.tumblr.com/

and a bloke called Carwyn, once,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEYsHm0KoMA

I gave up reading some of these comments because they were so off-topic. I understand that admirers of art and artists themselves are always drawn to the motive and the reasons as to why the art was created in the first place. But poetry, just like drama, painting, sculpture is about the essence of humanity. Don't analyse what Hughes and Plath experienced together, just read what they had to say, and appreciate it. Or don't. Your choice.

I'm so sick of seeing people like WWP and philip muldoon attacking and criticising Sylvia for something she had no control over - her severe bouts of depression. You have the audacity to say that she "offed herself because the world revolved around her"; I can't even begin to say how ignorant and rude your comments are. Something we learn in our first years of school are manners and the ability to empathize - clearly you two lack these abilities. Why don't you just keep your mouth shut for future reference, you might get another "crazy feminist" like me on your case. May Sylvia rest in peace... she was a genius whose life was cut much too short...

@Kat D Susan Alliston died of Hodgkins disease in 1968, I think. The della robbia thing is very obscure... I think its just a way of saying my 'charming distraction'... plus its a nice word having that slight sense of a moment stolen to it. Cant help more than that!

Im a bit disappointed by this blog - loads of comments on a soapbox with personal agendas, and little actual reading. The danger of writing poetry it seems, is bad readers. No comment on that stupid misprint which has been faithfully reproduced all round the web I see.

+++ sigh +++

Too bad for artists and poets, but most people are motivated to become interested in actual human experience, not art (unless it's film and has enough drama and lowest-common-denominator stuff). That's why I've put "Sylvia" on my Netflix queue! I do like the poems, too, and often cover one of Plath's in my literature class that I teach. And the biographies are teaching me a lot of history I would otherwise not have become familiar with. The "art" itself is too pure for me without the sweet-sour mix of journals, biographies, gossip, letters, and fellow fanatics. Simply by being HUMAN, you bring to any poem your own experiences that come to semi-consciousness as you are reading the poem. All we are doing is gathering others' experiences as well as our own, and many of us are doing it prior to reading the actual poetry (especially Hughes' which I haven't read much of). Guilty as charged, but only in your court, Guest.

Thank you! Thank you, kcwatcher! I had been googling it, Jack, with nothing coming up...

Thank you keencloudwatcher!

More closed London artistica going on here NS.

Lord - is that a sware word alright for you?

pleasure! I hope Im not about to be walloped by the NS! Its very long... and takes a bit of digesting... Rosemarie Rowley's essay is persuasive if only half the story... I agree with backflipper above - none one more than hughes knew that Plath was a genius, and he spent the rest of his life proving it to the world - but still... I think Last Letter is another admission that he cant forgive himself, or be forgiven. Bleak stuff.

Yes. But... it doesnt really hit the nail on the head does it? To me, the whole thing is a kind of potlach and some people grasp their death like that, as a gift that cannot be returned. That's the way I see it, really. And you can't deny that her suicide has been an enormous potlach, a big gift to readers, poets, bloggers, academics, publishers, ... to everybody. So - to hell with melancholy and sadness! - it's a gift.

Susan Alliston
Poems and Journals 1960–1969
Introduction by Ted Hughes
ISBN: 978-1905512768, 128 pages

Susan Alliston was born and educated in England. In 1960 she moved with her husband to Tunisia, returning to London in 1962. At first a secretary and later a reader for Faber & Faber and Penguin Books, she was friendly with a number of writers who met at the Lamb pub in Holborn. Among them was Ted Hughes. He encouraged her writing, and the journals cast light on aspects of his life and work. Susan Alliston died in 1969.

Yes. But... it doesnt really hit the nail on the head does it? To me, the whole thing is a kind of potlach and some people can grasp their death like that, as a gift that cannot be returned. That's the way I see it, really. And you can't deny that her suicide has been an enormous potlach, a big gift to readers, poets, bloggers, academics, publishers, ... to everybody.

So - to hell with melancholy and sadness! To hell with haters and onesided partisans! To hell with liberal cowards! - it's a gift.

Marriages break up all the time. There is culpability in both spouses, whether they are women or men (and whatever combination thereof). Mental illness, depression, etc., adds another dimension whenever a relationship is in trouble due to financial, emotional, work and other issues. Not everyone understands the complexities, particularly when intimately involved, in living with someone who fights mental demons all the time. Plath and Hughes had outlets in the writing and both produced some remarkable stuff. But for Hughes to be continually vilified even in death for leaving doesn't seem fair. Perhaps it was the only way he knew how to cope; Plath's way of coping was to end her life. Looking at it as someone not involved, neither one did the right thing.
Suicide following separation or divorce is hardly unheard of. The ony reason this gets attention is who they were. The whole thing is very sad, particularly for their daughter, who has now lost a mother, a stepmother, half sister and brother to mental illness and suicide. As a society we need to do a better job helping those who need to be reached out to.

I am disturbed by persons with large nostrils. Also, ants eat plants.