Confessional poetry or "Confessionalism" is a style of poetry that emerged in the United States during the late 1950s and early 1960s. It is sometimes classified as a form of Postmodernism . It has been described as poetry of the personal or "I", focusing on extreme moments of individual experience, the psyche, and personal trauma, including previously and occasionally still taboo matters such as mental illness, sexuality, and suicide, often set in relation to broader social themes.
84-475: Sylvia Plath ( / p l æ θ / ; October 27, 1932 – February 11, 1963) was an American poet and author. She is credited with advancing the genre of confessional poetry and is best known for The Colossus and Other Poems (1960), Ariel (1965), and The Bell Jar , a semi-autobiographical novel published shortly before her suicide in 1963. The Collected Poems was published in 1981, which included previously unpublished works. For this collection Plath
168-564: A Fulbright Scholarship to study at Newnham College , one of the two women-only colleges of the University of Cambridge in England, where she continued actively writing poetry and publishing her work in the student newspaper Varsity . At Newnham, she studied with Dorothea Krook , whom she held in high regard. She spent her first-year winter and spring holidays traveling around Europe. Plath met poet Ted Hughes on February 25, 1956. In
252-655: A Unitarian , Plath experienced a loss of faith after her father's death and remained ambivalent about religion throughout her life. Her father was buried in Winthrop Cemetery in Massachusetts. A visit to her father's grave later prompted Plath to write the poem "Electra on Azalea Path". After Otto's death, Aurelia moved her children and her parents to 26 Elmwood Road, Wellesley, Massachusetts , in 1942. Plath commented in "Ocean 1212-W", one of her final works, that her first nine years "sealed themselves off like
336-573: A 1961 BBC interview now held by the British Library Sound Archive , Plath describes how she met Hughes: I'd read some of Ted's poems in this magazine and I was very impressed and I wanted to meet him. I went to this little celebration and that's actually where we met... Then we saw a great deal of each other. Ted came back to Cambridge and suddenly we found ourselves getting married a few months later... We kept writing poems to each other. Then it just grew out of that, I guess,
420-402: A 1977 interview with Paris Review , Richard Wilbur criticized confessional poetry, saying, "One of the jobs of poetry is to make the unbearable bearable, not by falsehood, but by clear, precise confrontation. Even the most cheerful poet has to cope with pain as part of the human lot; what he shouldn't do is to complain, and dwell on his personal mischance." Deep image poet Robert Bly made
504-458: A conquest: what they have won is a major expansion of the territory of poetry." There were however clear moves towards the "confessional" mode before the publication of Life Studies . Delmore Schwartz 's confessional long poem Genesis had been published in 1943; and John Berryman had written a sonnet sequence in 1947 about an adulterous affair he'd had with a woman named Chris while he was married to his first wife, Eileen (but since publishing
588-518: A current affairs television series The Christian Science Monitor Reports , which was distributed via syndication to television stations across the United States. In 1988, The Christian Science Monitor Reports won a Peabody Award for a series of reports on Islamic fundamentalism. That same year, the program was cancelled, and The Monitor created a daily television program World Monitor , anchored by former NBC correspondent John Hart , which
672-441: A cut, a bruise, a kitchen bowl, a candlestick—everything became usable, charged with meaning, transformed. Her poems are full of references and images that seem impenetrable at this distance, but which could mostly be explained in footnotes by a scholar with full access to the details of her life." Many of Plath's later poems deal with what one critic calls the "domestic surreal" in which Plath takes everyday elements of life and twists
756-437: A departure from her earlier work into a more personal arena of poetry. Robert Lowell 's poetry may have played a part in this shift as she cited Lowell's 1959 book Life Studies as a significant influence, in an interview just before her death. The impact of Ariel was dramatic, with its dark and potentially autobiographical descriptions of mental illness in poems such as " Tulips ", " Daddy " and " Lady Lazarus ". Plath's work
840-649: A feeling that we both were writing so much and having such a fine time doing it, we decided that this should keep on. Plath described Hughes as "a singer, story-teller, lion and world-wanderer" with "a voice like the thunder of God". The couple married on June 16, 1956, at St George's, Bloomsbury , with Plath's mother as the sole witness. They spent their honeymoon in Paris and Benidorm , Spain. Plath returned to Newnham in October to begin her second year. During this time, they both became deeply interested in astrology and
924-568: A good omen. The northern winter of 1962–1963 was one of the coldest in 100 years; the pipes froze, the children—now two years old and nine months—were often sick, and the house had no telephone. Her depression returned but she completed the rest of her poetry collection, which would be published after her death (1965 in the UK, 1966 in the US). Her only novel, The Bell Jar , was published in January 1963 under
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#17327799136001008-853: A hand-written note to the literary critic Keith Sagar, discovered in 2001, that the anti-depressants prescribed were a "key factor" in Plath's suicide. He said Plath had previously had an adverse reaction to a prescription she had taken when they lived in the U.S. These pills were sold in England under a different name, and although Hughes did not name the pills explicitly, he claimed a new doctor had prescribed them to Plath without realizing she had taken them before with adverse effects. Several commentators have argued that because anti-depressants may take up to three weeks to take effect, her prescription from Horder would not have taken full effect prior to her death; however, others have pointed out that adverse effects of anti-depressants can begin immediately. The live-in nurse
1092-544: A history of depression. Plath wrote poetry from the age of 8, her first poem appearing in the Boston Traveller . By the time she arrived at Smith College, she had written over 50 short stories, and her work had been published in numerous magazines. At Smith, she majored in English literature and won all the major prizes in writing and scholarship, including literary prizes for her poetry. Additionally, she received
1176-879: A more serious, focused writer. At this time Plath and Hughes met the poet W.S. Merwin , who admired their work and was to remain a lifelong friend. Plath resumed psychoanalytic treatment in December, working with Ruth Beuscher. Plath and Hughes traveled across Canada and the United States, staying at the Yaddo artist colony in Saratoga Springs , New York, in late 1959. Plath stated that at Yaddo she learned "to be true to my own weirdnesses", but she remained anxious about writing confessionally, from deeply personal and private material. The couple moved back to England in December 1959 and lived in London at 3 Chalcot Square , near
1260-399: A note reading "Call Dr. Horder", including the doctor's phone number. It is argued Plath turned on the gas at a time when Thomas would have been likely to see the note, but the escaping gas seeped downstairs and also rendered Thomas unconscious while he slept. However, in her biography Giving Up: The Last Days of Sylvia Plath , Plath's friend Jillian Becker wrote, "According to Mr. Goodchild,
1344-530: A police officer attached to the coroner's office... [Plath] had thrust her head far into the gas oven... [and] had really meant to die." Horder also believed her intention was clear. He stated that "No one who saw the care with which the kitchen was prepared could have interpreted her action as anything but an irrational compulsion." Plath had described the quality of her despair as "owl's talons clenching my heart". In his 1972 book on suicide, The Savage God , friend and critic Al Alvarez claimed that Plath's suicide
1428-511: A position at the university in part based on the suggestions of his psychiatrist, who advised Lowell to establish a routine in his life to help mitigate the effects of bipolar disorder. Lowell's class drew in a number of talented poets, including Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath . Sexton joined the class in 1958, and working with Lowell proved pivotal in building her poetic voice. In 1958, Sylvia Plath would also join Lowell's course. After exposure to
1512-566: A private women's liberal arts college in Massachusetts, where she excelled academically. While at Smith, she lived in Lawrence House, and a plaque can be found outside her old room. She edited The Smith Review. After her third year of college, Plath was awarded a coveted position as a guest editor at Mademoiselle magazine, during which she spent a month in New York City. The experience was not what she had hoped for, and many of
1596-495: A profit. Subsequently, The Monitor began relying more on the Internet as an integral part of its business model. The Monitor was one of the first newspapers to put its text online in 1996 and also one of the first to launch a PDF edition in 2001. It was also an early pioneer of RSS feeds. In 2005, Richard Bergenheim , a Christian Science practitioner , was named the new editor. Shortly before his death in 2008, Bergenheim
1680-486: A ship in a bottle—beautiful, inaccessible, obsolete, a fine, white flying myth". Plath published her first poem at the age of eight in the Boston Herald ' s children's section. Over the next few years, Plath published multiple poems in regional magazines and newspapers. At age 11, Plath began keeping a journal. In addition to writing, she showed early promise as an artist, winning an award for her paintings from
1764-425: A short time. However, she continued to take care of her physical appearance and did not outwardly speak of feeling guilty or unworthy. Horder prescribed her an anti-depressant, a monoamine oxidase inhibitor , a few days before her suicide. Knowing she was at risk with two young children, he made strenuous efforts to have her admitted to a hospital; when that failed, he arranged for a live-in nurse. Hughes claimed in
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#17327799136001848-419: A similar criticism. Some literary critics of Confessional poets have noticed a shared ambition among many of these writers to become celebrities. In concurrence with the proliferation of popular culture during the 1950s, confessionalism offered readers a detailed view of the writer's personal hardships, and in light of the considerable public attention which confessional poets received, the confessional movement
1932-523: A summer editor position at the young women's magazine Mademoiselle . On her graduation in 1955, she won the Glascock Prize for " Two Lovers and a Beachcomber by the Real Sea ". Later, at Cambridge, she wrote for the university publication Varsity . Nights, I squat in the cornucopia Of your left ear, out of the wind, Counting the red stars and those of plum-color. The sun rises under
2016-551: A typescript of "some 130 pages", but in 1995 he spoke of just "sixty, seventy pages". Olwyn Hughes wrote in 2003 that the typescript may have consisted of the first two chapters, and did not exceed sixty pages. And I Am the arrow, The dew that flies Suicidal, at one with the drive Into the red Eye, the cauldron of morning. from the poem " Ariel ", October 12, 1962 The posthumous publication of Ariel in 1965 precipitated Plath's rise to fame. The poems in Ariel mark
2100-521: A weekly, which launched in 1960, and the weekly World Edition, which replaced the London edition in 1974. Mark Sappenfield became the editor in March 2017. The Christian Science Monitor is not primarily a religious-themed paper and does not evangelize, though each issue of the paper does usually contain a single religious themed article in the Home Forum section, generally related to a topic from
2184-540: Is a nonprofit news organization that publishes daily articles both in electronic format and a weekly print edition. It was founded in 1908 as a daily newspaper by Mary Baker Eddy , the founder of the new religious movement Christian Science , Church of Christ, Scientist . The newspaper has been based in Boston since its establishment. The Christian Science Monitor has won multiple Pulitzer Prizes and other journalistic accolades in its history. The Monitor
2268-442: Is often held within the genre of confessional poetry and the style of her work compared to other contemporaries, such as Lowell and W.D. Snodgrass . Plath's close friend Al Alvarez , who wrote about her extensively, said of her later work: "Plath's case is complicated by the fact that, in her mature work, she deliberately used the details of her everyday life as raw material for her art. A casual visitor or unexpected telephone call,
2352-473: Is seen by some literary critics as a form of celebrity culture . A literary movement called the language poets formed as a reaction against confessional poetry and took as their starting point the early modernist poetry composed by Gertrude Stein , William Carlos Williams , and Louis Zukofsky . Despite this, Language poetry has been called an example of postmodernism in American poetry . By far
2436-477: Is the new breakthrough that came with, say, Robert Lowell's Life Studies , this intense breakthrough into very serious, very personal, emotional experience which I feel has been partly taboo. Robert Lowell's poems about his experience in a mental hospital, for example, interested me very much." A. Alvarez however considered that some poems in Life Studies "fail for appearing more compulsively concerned with
2520-546: The Monitor published an account of Carroll's kidnapping and subsequent release, with first-person reporting from Carroll and others involved. In October 2008, citing net losses of US$ 18.9 million per year versus US$ 12.5 million in annual revenue, The Monitor announced that it would cease printing daily and instead print weekly editions. The last daily print edition was published on March 27, 2009. The weekly magazine follows on from The Monitor 's London edition, also
2604-607: The Scholastic Art & Writing Awards in 1947. "Even in her youth, Plath was ambitiously driven to succeed." Plath attended Bradford Senior High School, which is now Wellesley High School in Wellesley, Massachusetts , graduating in 1950. Just after graduating from high school, she had her first national publication in The Christian Science Monitor . In 1950, Plath attended Smith College ,
Sylvia Plath - Misplaced Pages Continue
2688-529: The 1950s and 1960s, including Robert Lowell , Sylvia Plath , John Berryman , Anne Sexton , and W. D. Snodgrass . In 1959 M. L. Rosenthal first used the term "confessional" in a review of Robert Lowell's Life Studies entitled " Poetry as Confession ". Rosenthal differentiated the confessional approach from other modes of lyric poetry by way of its use of confidences that (Rosenthal said) went "beyond customary bounds of reticence or personal embarrassment". Rosenthal notes that in earlier tendencies towards
2772-447: The 1950s. She strongly believed in women's abilities to be writers and editors while society forced them to fulfill secretarial roles: Now with me, writing is the first delight in life. I want time and money to write, both very necessary. I will not sacrifice my time to learn shorthand because I do not want any of the jobs which shorthand would open up, although those jobs are no doubt very interesting for girls who want them. I do not want
2856-691: The Apostle bears the inscription that Hughes chose for her: "Even amidst fierce flames the golden lotus can be planted." Biographers have attributed the source of the quote either to the Hindu text The Bhagavad Gita or to the 16th-century Buddhist novel Journey to the West written by Wu Cheng'en . Plath's daughter Frieda Hughes is a writer and artist. On March 16, 2009, Plath's son Nicholas Hughes died by suicide at his home in Fairbanks, Alaska, following
2940-667: The Bible in science classrooms. In 1997, the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs , a publication critical of United States policy in the Middle East, praised The Monitor for its objective and informative coverage of Islam and the Middle East. During the 27 years while Nelson Mandela was in prison in South Africa after having been convicted of sabotage, among other charges, The Christian Science Monitor
3024-538: The Holocaust , the Cold War , and existential threat brought by the proliferation of nuclear weapons had made public matters daunting for both confessional poets and their readers. The confessional poets also worked in opposition to the idealization of domesticity in the 1950s, by revealing unhappiness in their own homes. The school of "confessional poetry" was associated with poets who redefined American poetry in
3108-524: The Primrose Hill area of Regent's Park , where an English Heritage plaque records Plath's residence. Their daughter Frieda was born on April 1, 1960, and in October, Plath published The Colossus , her first collection of poetry. In February 1961, Plath's second pregnancy ended in miscarriage; several of her poems, including "Parliament Hill Fields", address this event. In a letter to her therapist, Plath wrote that Hughes beat her two days before
3192-608: The Schobers, had lived in a section of Winthrop called Point Shirley, a location mentioned in Plath's poetry. Otto Plath died on November 5, 1940, a week and a half after Sylvia's eighth birthday, of complications following the amputation of a foot due to untreated diabetes . He had become ill shortly after a close friend died of lung cancer . Comparing the similarities between his friend's symptoms and his own, Otto became convinced that he, too, had lung cancer and did not seek treatment until his diabetes had progressed too far. Raised as
3276-559: The US in 1971. Describing the compilation of the book to her mother, she wrote, "What I've done is to throw together events from my own life, fictionalizing to add color—it's a pot boiler really, but I think it will show how isolated a person feels when he is suffering a breakdown... I've tried to picture my world and the people in it as seen through the distorting lens of a bell jar". She described her novel as "an autobiographical apprentice work which I had to write in order to free myself from
3360-471: The United States and then in England. Their relationship was tumultuous and, in her letters, Plath alleges abuse at his hands. They had two children before separating in 1962. Plath was clinically depressed for most of her adult life and was treated multiple times with early versions of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). She died by suicide in 1963. Plath was born on October 27, 1932, in Boston , Massachusetts. Her mother, Aurelia Schober Plath (1906–1994),
3444-642: The badly managed ECT, blaming him for Sylvia's suicide attempt". Plath seemed to make a good recovery and returned to college. In January 1955, she submitted her thesis The Magic Mirror: A Study of the Double in Two of Dostoyevsky 's Novels , and in June graduated from Smith with an A.B. , summa cum laude . She was a member of the Phi Beta Kappa academic honor society, and had an IQ of around 160. She obtained
Sylvia Plath - Misplaced Pages Continue
3528-499: The body. A periodical of our own will counteract to some extent this public nuisance; for through our paper, at the price at which we shall issue it, we shall be able to reach many homes with healing, purifying thought. Eddy declared that The Monitor ' s mission should be "to spread undivided the Science that operates unspent" (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, Mary Baker Eddy, p. 353:16). MonitoRadio
3612-538: The collection "a real find" and "exhilarating to read", full of "clean, easy verse". Bernard Bergonzi at the Manchester Guardian wrote the book was an "outstanding technical accomplishment" with a "virtuoso quality". From the point of publication, she became a presence on the poetry scene. The book was published in America in 1962 to less-glowing reviews. While her craft was generally praised, her writing
3696-479: The confessional mode with other core aspects of their output; this absorption of the confessional into a larger, more diverse oeuvre comes under the umbrella of 'Poeclectics', whereby confessionalism becomes, for certain poets, just one important strand in a writing approach that deploys "all kinds of style, subject, voice, register and form". In the 1970s and 1980s many poets and writers, like Sharon Olds , Marie Howe , and Franz Wright , were strongly influenced by
3780-468: The confessional to be a place where you go and talk with a priest. I personally haven't been to confession since I was twelve years old". Another significant, if transitional figure was Adrienne Rich ; while one of the most prominent, consciously "confessional" poets to emerge in the 1980s was Sharon Olds whose focus on taboo sexual subject matter built on the work of Ginsberg . But some contemporary modern poets produce plural bodies of work that combine
3864-516: The confessional, there was typically a "mask" that hid the poet's "actual face", and states that "Lowell removes the mask. His speaker is unequivocally himself, and it is hard not to think of Life Studies as a series of personal confidences, rather shameful, that one is honor-bound not to reveal". In a review of the book in The Kenyon Review , John Thompson wrote, "For these poems, the question of propriety no longer exists. They have made
3948-442: The current depressive episode she was experiencing; it had been ongoing for six or seven months. While for most of the time she had been able to continue working, her depression had worsened and become severe, "marked by constant agitation, suicidal thoughts and inability to cope with daily life." Plath struggled with insomnia, taking medication at night to induce sleep, and frequently woke up early. She had lost 20 pounds (9 kg) in
4032-417: The day's news. The paper reports on issues including natural disasters, disease and mental health issues, homelessness, terrorism, and death. The paper's editorials have advocated against government interference in an individual's right to choose their own form of healthcare. They also support the separation of church and state , and the paper has opposed efforts to teach fundamentalist interpretations of
4116-420: The era of McCarthyism , a term first coined by The Monitor , the paper was one of the earliest critics of U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy . The paper's circulation has ranged widely, from a peak of over 223,000 in 1970 to just under 56,000 shortly before the suspension of the daily print edition in 2009. Partially in response to declining circulation and the struggle to earn a profit, the church's directors and
4200-400: The evenings sat in on creative writing seminars given by poet Robert Lowell (also attended by the writers Anne Sexton and George Starbuck ). Both Lowell and Sexton encouraged Plath to write from her personal experience. She openly discussed her depression with Lowell and her suicide attempt with Sexton, who led her to write from a more female perspective. Plath began to consider herself as
4284-575: The events that took place during that summer were later used as inspiration for her novel The Bell Jar . She was furious at not being at a meeting that Mademoiselle editor Cyrilly Abels had arranged with Welsh poet Dylan Thomas , a writer whose work she loved, according to one of her boyfriends, "more than life itself". She loitered around the White Horse Tavern and the Chelsea Hotel for two days, hoping to meet Thomas, but he
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#17327799136004368-403: The first labeled "confessional." Most notably "confessional" were the poems in the final section of Life Studies in which Lowell alludes to his struggles with mental illness and his hospitalization at McLean's, a mental hospital in Massachusetts. Plath remarked upon the influence of these types of poems from Life Studies in an interview in which she stated, "I've been very excited by what I feel
4452-414: The images, giving them an almost nightmarish quality. Plath's poem "Morning Song" from Ariel is regarded as one of her finest poems on freedom of expression of an artist. Confessional poetry The confessional poet's engagement with personal experience has been explained by literary critics as an effort to distance oneself from the horrifying social realities of the twentieth century. Events like
4536-486: The inclusion of " Christian Science " in the paper's name, over initial opposition by some of her advisors who thought the religious reference might repel a secular audience. Eddy also saw a vital need to counteract the fear often spread by media reporting: Looking over the newspapers of the day, one naturally reflects that it is dangerous to live, so loaded with disease seems the very air. These descriptions carry fears to many minds, to be depicted in some future time upon
4620-610: The manager of the Christian Science Publishing Society were purportedly forced to plan cutbacks and closures (later denied), which led in 1989 to the mass protest resignations by its chief editor Kay Fanning (an ASNE president and former editor of the Anchorage Daily News ), managing editor David Anable, associate editor David Winder, and several other newsroom staff. Those developments also presaged administrative moves to scale back
4704-450: The miscarriage. In August she finished her semi-autobiographical novel The Bell Jar ; immediately afterwards, the family moved to Court Green in the small market town of North Tawton . Nicholas was born in January 1962. In mid-1962, Plath and Hughes began to keep bees, which would be the subject of many Plath poems. In August 1961, the couple rented their flat at Chalcot Square to Assia (née Gutmann) Wevill and David Wevill . Hughes
4788-725: The most controversial reaction against confessional poetry is known as New Formalism , which argues for the return to rhymed , metrical , and narrative poetry . New formalism began during the 1970s and early 80s when younger poets from the Baby Boom Generation began to fight against the dominance of both free verse and confessional poetry. In 1981, New Formalist poet R.S. Gwynn published The Narcissiad , which literary critic Robert McPhillips later dubbed, "a Popean mock epic lambasting contemporary poets". The Christian Science Monitor The Christian Science Monitor ( CSM ), commonly known as The Monitor ,
4872-532: The past". Plath dated a Yale senior named Dick Norton during her junior year. Norton, upon whom the character of Buddy in The Bell Jar is based, contracted tuberculosis and was treated at the Ray Brook Sanatorium . While visiting Norton, Plath broke her leg skiing, an incident that was fictionalized in the novel. Plath also used the novel to highlight the issue of women in the workforce during
4956-409: The pen name Victoria Lucas and was met with critical indifference. Before her death, Plath tried at least twice to take her own life. On August 24, 1953, she overdosed on sleeping pills; then, in June 1962, she drove her car off the side of the road into a river, which she later characterized as a suicide attempt. In January 1963, Plath spoke with John Horder , her general practitioner. She described
5040-482: The personal topics in Lowell's and Sexton's poems, Plath was drawn to confessional themes herself and began including them in her own work. Other key texts of the American "confessional" school of poetry include Plath's Ariel , Berryman's The Dream Songs , and Sexton's To Bedlam and Part Way Back , though Berryman himself rejected the label "with rage and contempt": "The word doesn't mean anything. I understand
5124-638: The pillar of your tongue. My hours are married to shadow. No longer do I listen for the scrape of a keel On the blank stones of the landing. from "The Colossus", The Colossus and Other Poems , 1960 By the time Heinemann published her first collection, The Colossus and Other Poems in the UK in late 1960, Plath had been short-listed several times in the Yale Younger Poets book competition and had her work printed in Harper's , The Spectator and The Times Literary Supplement . All
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#17327799136005208-616: The poems in The Colossus had been printed in major U.S. and British journals, and she had a contract with The New Yorker . It was, however, her 1965 collection Ariel , published posthumously, on which Plath's reputation essentially rests. "Often, her work is singled out for the intense coupling of its violent or disturbed imagery and its playful use of alliteration and rhyme." The Colossus received largely positive UK reviews, highlighting Plath's voice as new and strong, individual and American in tone. Peter Dickinson at Punch called
5292-542: The poems of her posthumous collection Ariel during the final months of her life. In December 1962, she returned alone to London with their children and rented, on a five-year lease, a flat at 23 Fitzroy Road —only a few streets from the Chalcot Square flat. William Butler Yeats once lived in the house, which bears an English Heritage blue plaque for the Irish poet. Plath was pleased by this fact and considered it
5376-496: The precedent set by confessional poetry with its themes of taboo autobiographical experience, of the psyche and the self, and revelations of both childhood and adult traumas. In an essay published in 1985 poet Stanley Kunitz wrote that Lowell's Life Studies was "perhaps the most influential book of modern verse since T. S. Eliot 's The Waste Land ." Artists such as Peter Gabriel , Morrissey , and Madonna have all described Sexton as being influential to their work. In
5460-414: The print newspaper in favor of expansions into radio, a magazine, shortwave broadcasting, and television. Expenses, however, rapidly outpaced revenues, contradicting predictions by church directors. On the brink of bankruptcy, the board was forced to close the broadcast programs in 1992. By late 2011, The Monitor was receiving an average of about 22 million hits per month on its website, slightly below
5544-466: The processes of psychoanalysis than with those of poetry" while conversely Michael Hofmann saw the verbal merit of Lowell's work only diminished by emphasis on "what I would call the C-word, 'Confessionalism'". In a poetry class he taught at Boston University in the late 1950s, Lowell would go on to inspire confessional themes in the work of several prominent American poets. In 1955 Lowell requested
5628-460: The rigid hours of a magazine or publishing job. I do not want to type other people's letters and read their manuscripts. I want to type my own and write my own. So secretarial training is out for me. That I know. (Sylvia Plath's letter to her mother, 10 Feb 1955) In 1963, after The Bell Jar was published, Plath began working on another literary work, titled Double Exposure , which was never published. According to Ted Hughes in 1979, Plath left behind
5712-421: The sonnets would have revealed the affair to his wife, Berryman didn't actually publish the sequence, titled Berryman's Sonnets , until 1967, after he divorced from his first wife). Snodgrass' Heart's Needle , in which he writes about the aftermath of his divorce, also preceded Life Studies . Life Studies was nonetheless the first book in the confessional mode that captured the reading public's attention and
5796-464: The supernatural, using ouija boards. In June 1957, Plath and Hughes moved to the United States; beginning in September, Plath taught at Smith College, her alma mater. She found it difficult to both teach and have enough time and energy to write, and in the middle of 1958, the couple moved to Boston. Plath took a job as a receptionist in the psychiatric unit of Massachusetts General Hospital and in
5880-471: The whirling blackness that I honestly believed was eternal oblivion". She spent the next six months in psychiatric care, receiving more electric and insulin shock treatment under the care of Ruth Beuscher . Her stay at McLean Hospital and her Smith scholarship were paid for by the author Olive Higgins Prouty , who had also recovered from a mental breakdown. According to Plath's biographer Andrew Wilson, Olive Higgins Prouty "would take Dr Tillotson to task for
5964-793: Was a radio service produced by the Church of Christ Scientist between 1984 and 1997. It featured several one-hour news broadcasts a day, as well as top of the hour news bulletins. The service was widely heard on public radio stations throughout the United States. The Monitor later launched an international broadcast over shortwave radio, called the World Service of the Christian Science Monitor . Weekdays were news-led, but weekend schedules were exclusively dedicated to religious programming. That service ceased operations on June 28, 1997. In 1986, The Monitor started producing
6048-508: Was already on his way home. A few weeks later, she slashed her legs "to see if she had enough courage to kill herself." During this time, she was not accepted into a Harvard University writing seminar with author Frank O'Connor . Following ECT for depression, Plath made her first medically documented suicide attempt on August 24, 1953, by crawling under the front porch and taking her mother's sleeping pills. She survived this first suicide attempt, later writing that she "blissfully succumbed to
6132-417: Was an unanswered cry for help. In a BBC interview in March 2000, Alvarez spoke about his failure to recognize Plath's depression, saying he regretted his inability to offer her emotional support: "I failed her on that level. I was thirty years old and stupid. What did I know about chronic clinical depression?... [S]he kind of needed someone to take care of her. And that was not something I could do." An inquest
6216-530: Was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in Poetry in 1982, making her the fourth to receive this honor posthumously. Born in Boston , Massachusetts, Plath graduated from Smith College in Massachusetts and the University of Cambridge , England, where she was a student at Newnham College . Plath later studied with Robert Lowell at Boston University , alongside poets Anne Sexton and George Starbuck . She married fellow poet Ted Hughes in 1956, and they lived together in
6300-562: Was due to arrive at nine on the morning of February 11, 1963, to help Plath with the care of her children. Upon arrival, she could not get into the flat but eventually gained access with the help of a workman. They found Plath dead with her head in the oven, having sealed the rooms between her and her sleeping children with tape, towels, and cloths. She was 30 years old. Plath's intentions have been debated. That morning, she asked her downstairs neighbor, art historian Trevor Thomas (1907–1993), what time he would be leaving. She also left
6384-476: Was founded in 1908 in part as a response by Mary Baker Eddy to the journalism of her day, which relentlessly covered the sensations and scandals surrounding her new religion with varying accuracy . In addition, Joseph Pulitzer 's New York World was consistently critical of Eddy, and this, along with a derogatory article in McClure's , furthered Eddy's decision to found her own media outlet. Eddy also required
6468-526: Was held on February 15 and concluded that the cause of death was suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning . Hughes was devastated; they had been separated for six months, due to his affair with Assia Wevill. In a letter to an old friend of Plath's from Smith College, he wrote: "That's the end of my life. The rest is posthumous." Wevill also died by suicide, using a gas stove, six years later. Plath's gravestone in Heptonstall 's parish churchyard of St. Thomas
6552-420: Was immediately struck with Assia, as she was with him. In June 1962, Plath had a car accident, which she later described as a suicide attempt. In July 1962 Plath discovered Hughes was having an affair with Wevill; in September, Plath and Hughes separated. Beginning in October 1962, Plath experienced a great burst of creativity and composed most of the poems on which her reputation now rests, writing at least 26 of
6636-530: Was initially shown on the Discovery Channel . In 1991, World Monitor moved to the Monitor Channel , a 24-hour news and information channel. The channel launched on May 1, 1991, with programming from its Boston TV station WQTV . The only religious programming on the channel was a five-minute Christian Science program early each morning. In 1992, after eleven months on the air, the service
6720-476: Was one of the newspapers he was allowed to read. Five months after his release, Mandela visited Boston and stopped by The Monitor offices, telling the staff "The Monitor continues to give me hope and confidence for the world's future" and thanking them for their "unwavering coverage of apartheid". Mandela called The Monitor "one of the more important voices covering events in South Africa". During
6804-555: Was replaced by a veteran Boston Globe editor and former Monitor reporter John Yemma. In 2006, Jill Carroll , a freelance reporter for The Monitor , was kidnapped in Baghdad . Although Carroll was initially a freelancer, the paper worked tirelessly for her release, even hiring her as a staff writer shortly after her abduction to ensure that she had financial benefits. She was released safely after 82 days. Beginning in August 2006,
6888-592: Was shut down amid huge financial losses. Programming from the Monitor Channel was also carried nationally via the WWOR EMI Service , a nationally oriented feed of WWOR-TV , a New Jersey –based television station launched in 1990 due to the SyndEx laws put into place the year prior. The print edition continued to struggle for readership, and, in 2004, faced a renewed mandate from the church to earn
6972-609: Was the American-born daughter of Austrian immigrants, and her father, Otto Plath (1885–1940), was from Grabow , Germany . Plath's father was an entomologist and a professor of biology at Boston University who wrote a book about bumblebees in 1934. On April 27, 1935, Plath's brother Warren was born. In 1936 the family moved from 24 Prince Street in Jamaica Plain , Massachusetts, to 92 Johnson Avenue, Winthrop, Massachusetts . Since 1920, Plath's maternal grandparents,
7056-541: Was viewed by some critics at the time as more derivative of other poets. I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked [...] as I sat there, unable to decide [which fig], the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet. The Bell Jar , 1963 Plath's semi-autobiographical novel—her mother wanted to block publication—was published in 1963 and in
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