2. Sylvia Plath - Bibliography
Sylvia Plath was born on October 27, 1932 in Boston,
Massachusetts. Plath an American poet, novelist and short
story writer. While living in Winthrop, eight-year-old Plath
published her first poem in the Boston Herald's children's
section. In addition to writing, she showed early promise as
an artist, winning an award for her paintings from The
Scholastic Art & Writing Awards in 1947.
Plath attended Bradford Senior High School in Wellesley,
graduating in 1950. In 1950, Plath attended Smith College
and excelled academically. She edited The Smith Review and
during the summer after her third year of college Plath was
awarded a coveted position as guest editor
at Mademoiselle magazine.
Signature
In January 1955, she submitted her thesis The Magic Mirror: A Study of the
Double in Two of Dostoyevsky's novels. Plath married poet Ted Hughes on June
16, 1956. Beginning in October 1962, Plath experienced a great burst of
creativity and wrote most of the poems on which her reputation now rests,
writing at least 26 of the poems of her posthumous collection Ariel during the
final months of her life. Path left earth on February 11, 1963.
3. Popular works
Poetry collections
• The Colossus and Other Poems, 1960
• Ariel, 1965
• Three Women: A Monologue for
Three Voices, 1968
• Crossing the Water, 1971
• Winter Trees, 1971
• The Collected Poems, 1981
• Selected Poems 1985
• Plath: Poems 1998
• Sylvia Plath Reads, 2000 (Audio)
4. Children's books
• The Bed Book, 1976
• The It-Doesn't-Matter-Suit, 1996
• Collected Children's Stories, 2001
• Mrs Cherry's Kitchen, 2001
Collected prose and novels
• The Bell Jar, 1963 under the pseudonym
"Victoria Lucas"
• Letters Home: Correspondence 1950–
1963, 1975
• Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams: Short
Stories, Prose, and Diary Excerpts, 1977
• The Journals of Sylvia Plath, 1982
• The Magic Mirror, 1989
• The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath, 2000
5. I am silver and exact. I have no
preconceptions.
What ever you see I swallow
immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
I am not cruel, only truthful---
Mirror -Sylvia Plath
The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the
opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it
so long
I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers.
6. Faces and darkness separate us over
and over.
Now I am a lake. A woman bends
over me,
Searching my reaches for what she
really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the
candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it
faithfully.
She rewards me with tears and
an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes
and goes.
7. Each morning it is her face that replaces the
darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an
old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.
8. M.C.Qs
c) This particular poem was written by:
1) Victoria Plath 2) Sylvia Plath
3) Sylvester Plath
a) When the poet says that the mirror has no preconceptions it means:
1) it gives a biased view of the person 2) it reflects your image objectively
3) it is emotionally involved with the person
whose image it reflects
b) The mirror has been called a four cornered God because:
1) it is square shaped 2) it faithfully reflects all that it sees
2) like God it watches you unbiased
and fair from all angles
c) The speckles refer to:
1) a pink object 2) the opposite wall which has spots on it
3) pink spots in general
12. “In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a ________”
The old woman rises
like a _________?
Candle Nightingale Terrible Fish