Sylvia+Plath

__ **Sylvia Plath** __

__About Sylvia__ - Born on October 27, 1932- She started writing when she was a very little girl, publishing her first poem at the age of 8. - She lived with her mother since her father died when she was just eight years old- She attempted her first suicide in college by swallowing numerous sleeping pills- On February 11, 1963, Sylvia Path killed herself in her apartment when her two children were in the rooms upstairs. She died from the fumes the kitchen stove gave off.

__Influences__ - Her father was a main topic of many of Plath’s poems like, //Daddy//. Additionally, her father was a beekeeper when she was little, inspiring her to write the poem, //The Arrival of the Bee Box//. - Anne Sexton became one of her biggest influences. There are a lot of similarities between the early work of Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath’s work. Sylvia Plath met Anne Sexton at Robert Lowell’s writing workshop during the late 1950’s. Sylvia admired Sexton and Lowell because of their intensity especially when writing about topics like suicide, mental illness, and family relationships. - Other influences were John Berryman and Theodore Roethke showed Plath about confessional poetry, which much of her poems turned into. - Most of her poems became widely known after her death. Even though her best poems were written in the 1960’s, many of them can be related to modern times. __Famous Works__ - Her most famous one is probably Ariel, even though it was published after she was dead. - Former husband, Ted Hughes, published three volumes of her poems after she had passed. //The Collected Poems// was so outstanding that it won the Pulitzer Prize in 1982, and she was the first poet to win the Pulitzer Prize after death (Poets).