O'Rourke goes on to say that although poems like "Daddy" or "Lady Lazarus" seem "crudely self-involved," the majority of Plath's poetry is abstract, symbolic, and in general quite distant from the confessional poets with whom she is grouped. Despite this, Plath's poetry is often viewed today as overwrought, histrionic, or hysterical, when in fact it was symbolic, calculated, and often purposefully stripped of specific biographical references. The poems are often described in overly emotional or psychoanalytic ways: "neurotic," "savage emotion," "pathological," and "sadistic." Plath's fantastical life and death lend her to a type of literary celebrity that polarizes her work, creating both profound love as well as profound distaste. As celebrities are products of the cultural landscape, they become archetypes or ideals; they are no longer individuals, but representations of culture, race, or nationality. They become the property of the society who grants them popularity.
[...] of Ariel: The Restored Edition, by Sylvia Plath. Iris-A Journal About Women 67.March (2005). RDS Contemporary Women's Issues. Rutgers University May 2007 < http:>. Gill, Gillian. “Before her final infamous decay'” Rev. of The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath, by Karen Kukil. Christian Science Monitor 92.235 (October 2000): 19. RDS Contemporary Women's Issues. Rutgers University May 2007 < http:>. Ostriker, Alicia. “Visions and revisions [Part 2 of Rev. of Birthday Letters, by Ted Hughes. Women's Review of Books 15.9 (June 1998): 8. [...]
[...] of Ariel: The Restored Edition, by Sylvia Plath. Iris-A Journal About Women 67.March (2005). RDS Contemporary Women's Issues. Rutgers University May 2007 < http:>. Ostriker, Alicia. “Visions and revisions [Part 2 of Rev. of Birthday Letters, by Ted Hughes. Women's Review of Books 15.9 (June 1998): 8. RDS Contemporary Women's Issues. Rutgers University May 2007 < http:>. Broe, Mary Lynn. “Plathologies: The 'Blood Jet' Is Bucks, Not Poetry.” Belles Lettres 10.1 (Fall 1994): 48-52. RDS Contemporary Women's Issues. Rutgers University May 2007 < http:>. [...]
[...] The tragedy of Sylvia Plath's death is good myth-making, especially for feminists, and as a result, her poetry was worshiped with burning incense. However, in their attempt to raise Plath to the level of a goddess, many feminist scholars marginalized her work. Plath was no longer a complex individual, her work was no longer for everyone, it was for a narrow, specified group. Gerbig and Muller-Wood outline the contradictory messages in Sylvia Plath hero- worship: Her suicide in 1963 continues to be taken as the telos toward which her life as well as her writing moved with relentless inevitability. [...]
[...] The other argument that has resulted in the general dismissal of Sylvia Plath's poetry is the excessive focus on the unconscious cultural and social conceptions which influenced her. Sylvia Plath's biography and body are only useful in how they absorb surrounding Egotistical and Superegotistical commands. Plath is not so much a Woman as she is Woman as Mother or Woman as Wife; her poetry is the fight against roles and culture rather than the fight against her physical body or her physical history. [...]
[...] of Sylvia Plath and the Theatre of Mourning, by Christina Britzolakis and Sylvia Plath: A Critical Study, by Tim Kendall. Modernism/modernity 8.4 (November 2001): 675-79. DeShong, Scott. “Sylvia Plath, Emmanuel Levinas, and the Aesthetics of Pathos.” Postmodern Culture 8.3 (May 1998). Project Muse. Rutgers University May 2007 < http: ture deshong.html>. Blake, David Haven. “Public Dreams: Berryman, Celebrity, and the Culture of Confession.” American Literary History 13.4 (Winter 2001): 716-36. Leighton, Angela. Time, and Out: Women's Poetry and Literary History.” MLQ: Modern Language Quarterly 85.1 (March 2004): 131-48. [...]
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