Sylvia Plath

The poetry of Sylvia Plath is based not on mental illness or psychoanalysis, but rather on folk-tale, literature and myth . the profound knowledge of Plath enabled her to create a personal system of poetic symbols based on mythical archetypes. Plath recognized a correspondence between her personal experience and these collective mythical archetypes.her ability was to combine the personal and the mythical in her poetry . Plath explred different possibilities in trying to resolve the conflict between the selves. In her final poems she even distanced herself from the necessity of rebirth.The concept of the White Goddess intrigued both plath and her husband Hughes and inspired them in their work to create poetry with mythical roots.Plath recognized certain aspects of myth which corresponded to her personal experiences. In other words, Plath personalized the mythical and mythologised the personal.perhaps the reason why the images of Plath's poetry continue to fascinate readers is because, as Rank says, thay are fundamental to mankind.

Maria Theresa

Apprehensions

poem by Sylvia Plath

There is this white wall,
Above which the sky creates itself
Infinite, green, utterly untouchable.
Angels swim in it, and the starts, in indifference also.
Thy are my medium.
The sun dissolves on this wall, bleeding its lights.

A gray wall now, clawed and bloody.
Is there no way out of the mind?
Steps at my back spiral into a well.
There red wall winces continually:
A red fist, opening and closing,
Two gray, papery bags
This is what I am made of, this and a terror
Of being wheeled off under crosses and a rain of pietas.

On a black wall, unidentifiable birds
Swivel their heads and cry.
There is no talk of immortality among these!
Cold blanks approach us:
They move in a hurry.

(28 May 1962)