Critics

Question 1

McClanahan ~ “brutal”

Answer 1

“Plath is a brutal poet”

Question 2

Poetry Foundation - Plath’s death

Answer 2

“[Hughes] refused to discuss his marriage to Plath after her death.”

Question 3

Dickie ~ the “self”

Answer 3

The “self” in Plath’s poem is said to be weak, submissive, and indulging in the regressive fantasies

Question 4

Carol - “turbulent”

Answer 4

“many of [her poems] written during the final, turbulent, weeks of her life, read as if they’ve been chiseled, with a fine surgical instrument, out of arctic ice.”

Question 5

Poetry Foundation 2 - type of writing style for Plath

Answer 5

“intensely autobiographical”

Question 6

Rees - restrictions and nature

Answer 6

“Whether Plath wrote about nature or about the social restrictions on individuals, she stripped away the polite veneer.”

Question 7

Pinsky - Plath’s ego

Answer 7

“[Plath] suffered the airless egocentrism of one in love with an ideal self”

Question 8

Dongohue - Plath’s ego

Answer 8

“she showed what self-absorption makes possible in art, and the price that must be paid of it, in the art as clearly as in the death.”