Sylvia Plath - Poet, Author

Great Talent in Great Darkness

Almost from the day she died, readers and scholars have been faced with the enigma of her suicide in addition to being perplexed and thwarted by her mental illness. Sylvia Plath's unabridged journals lend credence to a theory that she not only suffered from mental illness (probably bipolar disorder) but also from severe PMS.

Poppies in October

Even the sun-clouds this morning cannot manage such skirts.
Nor the woman in the ambulance
Whose red heart blooms through her coat so astoundingly--

A gift, a love gift
Utterly unasked for by sky

Palely and flamily

igniting its carbon monoxides, by eyes
Dulled to a halt under bowlers.

O my God, what am I
That these late mouths should cry open
In a forest of frost, in a dawn of cornflowers.

--Sylvia Plath