Cryptically confronting and subtly depressive, Sylvia Plath’s poetry caught the minds of young writers and poetry enthusiasts whilst disgruntling older, more traditional generations of poetry readers. Her use of imagery depicting a world tarnished, the war of a dysfunctional family and a depressive mind and imagination took the poetry world by storm and even after 55 years, Sylvia Plath is a prominent figure throughout the world of literature.

Plath’s work is heavily influenced by, and imbedded in, the confessional poetry movement. A movement between the 1950’s and 60’s, that witnessed the rise of personal or first person writing, “I”, and highly private or emotional subject matter such as trauma, death and depression, all of which can be found in much of Plath’s writing. This element of her work, already ‘outrageous’ for many was heightened by the fact that she was a woman. This movement allowed her to openly and bluntly address and express the outrage she and many other women felt to the periods’ societal and gender norms. Her use of language and poetic technique are lost when not read aloud, most prominently in “daddy” where the poem takes on a sing-song, lullaby rhythm that amplifies the meaning and connotations within …show more content…
These reading of her earlier poems are hard to escape when looking back, but it is important to not always take her writing as purely autobiographical. This too is a difficult task as many of her most popular works, namely ‘Daddy’ and the poems found in Selected Poems, were written as such, though they would later on hold many wider connotations. These readings and scrutinies spilled over into her life. Critics and fans analysed her entire life from her troubled childhood, to her bouts with severe depression, attempted suicides, her troubling and rocky marriage to Ted Hughes, all of which that finally to her unfortunate and gruesome