Author: sylviaplathforum

Daddy You do not do, you do not do Any more, black shoe In which I have lived like a foot For thirty years, poor and white, Barely daring to breathe or Achoo. Daddy, I have had to kill you. You died before I had time— Marble-heavy, a bag full of God, Ghastly statue with…

I have done it again. One year in every ten I manage it—– A sort of walking miracle, my skin Bright as a Nazi lampshade, My right foot A paperweight, My featureless, fine Jew linen. Peel off the napkin O my enemy. Do I terrify?——- The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?…

Stasis in darkness. Then the substanceless blue Pour of tor and distances. God’s lioness, How one we grow, Pivot of heels and knees! – The furrow Splits and passes, sister to The brown arc Of the neck I cannot catch, Nigger-eye Berries cast dark Hooks – Black sweet blood mouthfuls, Shadows. Something else Hauls me…

Little poppies, little hell flames, Do you do no harm? You flicker. I cannot touch you. I put my hands among the flames. Nothing burns And it exhausts me to watch you Flickering like that, wrinkly and clear red, like the skin of a mouth. A mouth just bloodied. Little bloody skirts! There are fumes…

The woman is perfected. Her dead Body wears the smile of accomplishment, The illusion of a Greek necessity Flows in the scrolls of her toga, Her bare Feet seem to be saying: We have come so far, it is over. Each dead child coiled, a white serpent, One at each little Pitcher of milk, now…

Viciousness in the kitchen! The potatoes hiss. It is all Hollywood, windowless, The fluorescent light wincing on and off like a terrible migraine, Coy paper strips for doors Stage curtains, a widow’s frizz. And I, love, am a pathological liar, And my child look at her, face down on the floor, Little unstrung puppet, kicking…

WEBSITES Sylvia Plath Forum Sylvia Plath Home Page Peter Steinberg’s Sylvia Plath pages Sylvia Plath 70th Year Commemoration and Literary Symposium at Indiana University in fall 2002: Sylvia Plath: Ego, Blood and Spriti – Kenneth Dibenedette’s “Western occult approach to her poetry” Sylvia Plath pages of the Book Case, Hebden Bridge Plath and Hughes material from the archives of…

With my partner’s help, I maintain this site as a hobby. I never imagined when we started this in 1998 it would become so popular. We do have overheads and time working on the site is time not working to pay our bills. We know many people have found the site useful so we would…

Send us your thoughts/ideas/comments This forum is intended as one where discussion and exchange of points of view/information about SP’s work can take place. It is not a site which promises to do students’ thinking/essays for them. Before posting to the Forum students seeking help on theses, essays, presentations and analyses of particular poems are…

Introduction to the forum The Sylvia Plath Forum was started in January 1998 by Elaine Connell author of Sylvia Plath: Killing the Angel in the House (Pennine Pens). Intrigued by the unexpected publication of Ted Hughes’ collection of poems about his first wife, “Birthday Letters” Elaine, who lives in Hebden Bridge near where Plath is buried and…