Content Warning: This article contains mentions of suicide.
How do you separate Sylvia Plath’s poetic works from the sensationalized mythology surrounding her legacy? This is one of the questions that biographer Heather Clark sought to answer during “Sylvia Plath: An American Icon,” a discussion of Clark’s 2020 biography “Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath.”
The event was attended largely by the public with only a smattering of Smithies filling the folding seats set up in the Carroll Room. But Smith had representation outside of the student body at the event, with alumna Judith Raymo ’53, a contemporary of Plath, interviewing Clark. Raymo is a collector of original Plath manuscripts, letters, and other documents. In June 2022, she donated her extensive collection to the Mortimer Rare Book Collection at Smith. Her discussion with Clark celebrated that gift while reflecting on Clark’s nearly 2,000 page biography.
As Clark pointed out, “Red Comet” is the 11th published biography of Sylvia Plath, along with countless articles and dissertations. But with new material coming out, including the publication of “The Letters of Sylvia Plath” in 2018, “Red Comet” remains relevant and unique. “There was a lot to mine from,” said Clark.
But perhaps the more important reason for Clark’s biography, as she mentioned throughout the conversation, was the sensationalized aspect of Plath’s memory that has prevented a serious discussion of her work.
Clark cited this need for a biography that did not sensationalize Plath’s memory. “She was one of the most important writers of the 21st century and I felt like … there was so much attention paid to the manner in which she died that it almost eclipsed her trailblazing poetry,” said Clark. “I felt that she had been mythologized in other biographies.”
While Plath’s suicide factors into the discussion of her work and life, Clark didn’t highlight it in her discussion. When Judith Raymo brought up Plath’s suicide attempt in the context of its portrayal in “The Bell Jar,” Clark was quick to note, “Plath was writing fiction. It was autobiographical fiction, but it was a novel, not a memoir.”
Clark also questioned the term “confessional poetry,” which is a label that has long been applied to Plath’s work. “I have concerns that that term can put Plath’s poems into a box. That people can only read them autobiographically, when in fact she was an enormously learned poet,” said Clark. “Her poems are personal, but they’re also finely crafted and elusive in really sophisticated ways. Sometimes the confessional term doesn’t bring that to light in the way that it should.”
Clark’s separation of fact and fiction around Plath’s life extends to more specific matters, such as the publication of her final book of poetry, “Ariel.” “Ariel” was published posthumously by Plath’s former husband, Ted Hughes. However, in his publication, Hughes rearranged the order of the poems, deviating from the specific instructions Plath left before her death.
“In the original ‘Ariel,’ the first word was ‘love,’ and the last word was going to be ‘spring.’ So there was this hopeful trajectory in her version of ‘Ariel’… Hughes, in his version, ends with the darker poems. So he shifted the trajectory into a more teleological sensibility that she was heading towards suicide. And that, of course, had a huge impact on Plath’s legacy,” said Clark. “That did help solidify this mythology that became associated with Plath: poet of darkness, poet of death.”
But with Clark’s biography comes a newfound way of conceptualizing Plath. In separating the author’s mythology from her legacy, her poems can be viewed in a new light. As Clark said during the discussion, “Plath’s poems offer hope.”
