Sylvia Plath

the beautiful Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath is, in my opinion, one of the greatest female writers to have walked this earth, but sadly her clinical depression ultimately led to her demise as she committed suicide at the young age of 30. She wrote the novel, The Bell Jar, which was a semi-autobiographical story about a woman's psychological decline as her depression worsens, bringing about multiple suicide attempts and as a result, admittance to a mental health institution. She also wrote a book of poems titled Ariel, which I highly recommend to anyone who enjoys poetry. Below is my favorite poem by Sylvia Plath (mostly because of the last stanza), which can be found in Ariel:

Lady Lazarus

I have done it again. 

One year in every ten

 I manage it--

A sort of walking miracle, my skin

 Bright as a Nazi lampshade,

 My right foot

 A paperweight,

 My face a featureless, fine

 Jew linen.

Peel off the napkin

 O my enemy.

 Do I terrify?-- 

The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?

 The sour breath

 Will vanish in a day.

 Soon, soon the flesh

 The grave cave ate will be

 At home on me

 And I a smiling woman.

 I am only thirty.

 And like the cat I have nine times to die.

 This is Number Three.

 What a trash

 To annihilate each decade

 What a million filaments.

 The peanut-crunching crowd

 Shoves in to see

 Them unwrap me hand and foot--

 The big strip tease.

 Gentlemen, ladies

 These are my hands

 My knees.

 I may be skin and bone,

 Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.

 The first time it happened I was ten.

 It was an accident.

 The second time I meant

 To last it out and not come back at all.

 I rocked shut

 As a seashell.

 They had to call and call

 And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.

 Dying

 Is an art, like everything else.

 I do it exceptionally well.

 I do it so it feels like hell.

 I do it so it feels real.

 I guess you could say I've a call.

 It's easy enough to do it in a cell.

 It's easy enough to do it and stay put.

 It's the theatrical

 Comeback in broad day

 To the same place, the same face, the same brute

 Amused shout:

 'A miracle!'

 That knocks me out.

 There is a charge

 For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge

 For the hearing of my heart--

 It really goes.

 And there is a charge, a very large charge

 For a word or a touch

 Or a bit of blood

 Or a piece of my hair or my clothes.

 So, so, Herr Doktor.

So, Herr Enemy.

 I am your opus,

 I am your valuable,

 The pure gold baby

 That melts to a shriek.

 I turn and burn.

 Do not think I underestimate your great concern.

 Ash, ash--

 You poke and stir.

 Flesh, bone, there is nothing there--

 A cake of soap,

 A wedding ring,

 A gold filling.

Herr God, Herr Lucifer

 Beware

 Beware.

 Out of the ash

 I rise with my red hair

 And I eat men like air.