SYLVIA PLATH AS A CONFESSIONAL POET

Sylvia Plath being a confessional poet has put her life in her art. It is impossible
to disentangle her biography from her writing. Her work mirrors the sadness she felt in
her life and it has made her poetry as a whole thoroughly courageous and honest.
However, Plath confessionalism exist within a context, her experience is all inclusive.
Her poems express frustration at the difficulty of self fulfilment, the choking restrictions
of domestic life, hatred of men, murderous rage, the death wish, horror at the memory
of Nazi Holocaust and at the prospect of nuclear war, disgusted, sickness and torment.
Plath’s poms are blunt and brutal, and her vision is nihilistic. She often writes
about loneliness, pain and death. In fact, Plath’s concern is with death or to put it more
precisely the vulnerability of life. She is rightly called a deeply unhappy and greatly
gifted poet.
A confessional poet however is not different from common poets. Both uses
artistic techniques and poetic qualities to demonstrate their experiences. In simple
words, the only difference between them is of “I”. Confessional poets are more
personal, whereas other poets are more universal.
For Sylvia Plath poetry is less objective but more autobiographical and
confessional. She mentions each and every incident of her life. She does not spare her
father nor does her husband even not her children. Furthermore, she does not spare the
evils in men, therefore, unhappily writes about male dominated society. Indeed, she was
victim of circumstances, but she considers men along with fate equally responsible for
her disrespect.
Plath’s husband was not different from other men of the society nor did she
consider her daddy a good father. She directly talks about them and punishes them by
using brutal emotional words. She also talks about her children, but she has no hope for
their future. Her thinking is that they will also suffer as she suffered throughout her life.
Detail study of poetry of Sylvia Plath reveals that she focuses on “I” instead of “we” thus
makes her a confessional poet and different from common poets.
Her poems are mostly psychological in nature. While maintaining a high level of
craftsmanship she talks about those problems which she has experienced in her life.
Both inner life problems and social life problems. She does not feel any shame to talk
about them. Further, social problems are also psychological for her because she does
not talk about their grounds but their effect on the person who is being affected. She
was a mentally tortured soul and considered society equally responsible for her
sufferings. She was oversensitive and full of anger. Hence, she could not bear
unfaithfulness of her husband. Any small accident could strike her mind and make her
insane. Her psyche and mental illness forced her to commit suicide. Thus, in a straight
line, Sylvia Plath reveals her mentality through her poems which makes her poetry
confessional.
 No other poem than “Daddy” can be best exemplified in this regard. It is a poem
in which she addresses her father and complains his attitude towards her. He left her
alone in this cruel world to suffer. His early death is painful for the poet. In start of the
poem, it seems that she hates her father but soon she realizes that she loves him. In
the following words, she expresses her hatred against her father: -

“Daddy, I have had to kill you.

You died before I had time–

Marble-heavy, a bag full of God

Ghastly statue with one gray

toe

Big as a Frisco seal”

Thus, the poems, written by Sylvia Plath, are more about her private and personal life.
Indeed, social issues have been discussed but they are very rare. She has not
highlighted the social issues which people were facing. She has mentioned those which
she herself experienced. Moreover, she talks about evil attitude of male sex because it
offended her. She talks about psychological problems because her “over-thinking”
haunts her. Thus, Plath does not do poetry for the sake of poetry nor does she bring to
light the social issues. Furthermore, there is no satire in her poetry. She does not talk
about the absurdities and follies of the people but their effects on her personal life.
Hence, the fact cannot be denied that poetry of Sylvia Plath is purely confessional.

Susan Gubar also thinks the same and says that poetry of Sylvia Plath is confessional.
Relevant portion of her comments is reproduced as under: -

“‘Daddy’ is a confessional piece written by Plath three

months before her death….”
Keeping in view the remarks of a number of critics and poetry of Sylvia Plath, it is
concluded that Plath’s poetry is undoubtedly “confessional ” but it also cannot be
ignored that she has perfectly managed the interest of the readers.
"Plath’s great achievement was her ability to transform the experience into art without
losing its nightmarish immediacy" (Critical Survey of Poetry).

This quotation sums up Plath's style of poetry which was to use her own experiences to
create her art without coating the bad parts with any kind of sugary gloss. Such is
Confessional Poetry, a subgenre of poetry that draws upon the autobiographical
experiences of the poet. Plath's poetry and her novel Bell Jar are excellent examples of
this style of poetry.

Even though Plath's father died when she was eight, her fear of and revulsion for his
deeds are vivid and jarring in the poem "Daddy." In this poem, Plath makes references
to her father as a "devil," a "black man" and "bastard." This pain comes from his
association with the Nazi party and the conflict she feels because of the Jewish heritage
she has from her mother's family.

Her pain after her divorce from Ted Hughes is evident in the poem's
intense imagery. These poems and many others use the first-person pronouns to make
it clearer that Plath herself is the speaker. This makes the confession aspect of the
poetry easier to see.

LADY LAZARUS, by Sylvia Plath. Review. 2012. Suicide in every culture is considered
to be very taboo, seen as overtly morbid and disturbing. However, it has also made many
people famous. Sylvia Plath, a twentieth-century poet, was one of them. She was a
‘straight A’ student throughout her whole life, writing her first poem at eight years old. Just
days after writing this poem, her father died. This event, specialists believe was the
catalyst that caused a lot of her anguish and depression. Plath uses these highly-strung
emotions in her poem “Lady Lazarus. After her first near successful suicide at twenty
years old, she met her husband to be. Another poet Ted Hughes, though after adultery
on both sides occurred, the marriage finally ended. After the end of the marriage, her
suicidal tendencies began once again. Lady Lazarus is a confessional poem, as it was
written during that feverish time in her life, also with the use of self-parody. It is a complex
analysis of her love hate relationship with death and suicide. After reading the title a first
impression is made, of a biblical allusion. In the book Johns Lazarus of Bethany, Lazarus
is resurrected from the dead by Jesus.

And I a smiling woman.

I am only thirty.
And like the cat I have nine times to die.
Lady Lazarus has to be a different voice or character for each one, though none
of these personalities are bearable to her. “The nose, the eye pits the full set of teeth?
The sour breath Will vanish in a day:” The fifth stanza is the beginning of Lady Lazarus
recovering from her third suicide attempt. Letting the reader know from experience she
will recover quickly. ‘The sour breath will vanish in a day’ The next stanzas are
continuing her restoration back to her original self ’and I a smiling woman’. A subtle
feminist tone, that’s suggesting people in society judge women externally.
Plath also bitterly referred to her father as a Nazi and herself a Jew. Lady
Lazarus introduces the reader to suicide and death instantly, ‘I have done it again’, tells
the reader that it isn’t the first time she’s attempted suicide. Then with little emotion
declares, she ‘manages’ to do it once every decade. She continues with the use of a
metaphor and simile. ‘Skin as bright as a Nazi lampshade’, here she uses a historical
allusion to the Nazis making their lampshades out of Jewish skin. There is also striking
alliteration that personifies her face. My face featureless, fine Jew linen’. The ‘miracle in
this stanza biblically alludes to Lazarus rising from the dead. “Peel off the napkin O my
enemy Do I terrify?” The last stanza at the start of the poem, include the first use of
sarcasm which is used again throughout Lady Lazarus. Plath is daring her enemy to
‘Peel off the napkin’. Then in a more threatening tone asks, ’Do I terrify? ’ in the
introduction she is addressing a singular person/enemy. As the poem progresses, the
reader become numerous, as her identities are discovered.
By seeing her true self, she becomes aware of the distinction between her
exterior and interior lives. In other words, she might be meditating on the distinction
between a "false" outer self of appearance, and a "true" inner self. After Plath's 1963
suicide, many critics examined the writer's different facets, contrasting her put-together,
polite, and decorous outer self with her raging, explosively-creative inner self. Perhaps
Plath is exploring this dichotomy in "Mirror." The slippery and unnerving "fish" in the
poem may represent that unavoidable, darker self that cannot help but challenge the
socially acceptable self.

I think it is part of my heart. But it flickers.

Faces and darkness separate us over and over.
Overall, "Mirror" is a melancholy and even bitter poem that exemplifies the
tensions between inner and outer selves, as well as indicates the preternaturally
feminine "problem" of aging and losing one's beauty.
Plath on confessional poetry said that, “I think my poems immediately come out
of the sensuous and emotional experiences I have, but I must say I cannot sympathize
with these cries from the heart that are informed by nothing except a needle or a knife,
or whatever it is. I believe that one should be able to control and manipulate
experiences, even the most terrifying, like madness, being tortured, this sort of
experience, and one should be able to manipulate these experiences with an informed
and intelligent mind.”
Plath shows confessionalism in morning songs;
 “I’m no more your mother,
Than the cloud that distils a
mirror…”
The poem ‘Morning song’ expresses a mother’s love in all its depths. But the irony lies
perhaps her revenge on her daughter was just two years old and her son just eight
months. Her suicide was perhaps her revenge on her brother or male sex which had
always failed to give her all love she needed.
In her poem ‘Ariel’ she compares herself to Lady Godiva, who rode naked upon her
horse. In the midst of the ride, she can slough off things of no consequence –"dead
hands, dead stringencies." She views herself as the foam on wheat, as a sparkling of
light on the ocean. She discerns a child's cry through a wall but ignores it.

The rider is now a potent arrow, as well as dew that "flies suicidal." She has been
subsumed into both the horse and the ride as she propels herself forward into the rising
sun, which is depicted as a powerful red Eye.

“The Bee Meeting” is one of the “Bee Poems” of Sylvia Plath. Like them, it also deals
with the theme of power, uncertainty and insecurity. There are a lot of questions in the
mind of poet, which require answers. These questions create confusion in her mind. Her
attitude, in this poem is too puzzling. She knows nothing about herself nor about the
people, who are with her. Thus, this poem is also about finding true identity in society.
However, it mainly focuses on sense of weakness and physical nakedness. These two
are critical insecurities and the poet’s mind make analysis of them in the poem “The Bee
Meeting”. This analysis makes the upcoming self-created psychological threats
vulnerable.
The Last Poem Sylvia Plath Wrote
Six days before she died, Sylvia Plath wrote two very different poems: “Balloons,”
which evokes two children at play with inflated “oval soul-animals,” and “Edge,” which
paints the image of a woman and two children in death. ... “Her dead/ Body wears the
smile of accomplishment.”