{"id":8036,"date":"2008-05-06T14:48:32","date_gmt":"2008-05-06T18:48:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=8036"},"modified":"2010-07-20T13:57:12","modified_gmt":"2010-07-20T17:57:12","slug":"being-a-plath-fan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=8036","title":{"rendered":"Being a Plath Fan"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"PlathSylvia.jpg\"I was thrilled to read the following piece about what it’s like to be a Plath fan<\/a>. Wonderful writing and observations, I think – and great thoughts on the confluence of art and biography, something that Plath can never escape. It is why she continues to fascinate … but when you strip away the biography, and take a look at the damn work<\/i> … that is what lasts.<\/p>\n

Sylvia Plath was a strange, brilliant case — a good, not spectacular poet, with great devotion to her craft, whose life and vision caught on something jagged in 1962, and suddenly she became a genius. You only have to reread \u00e2\u0080\u009cThe Applicant\u00e2\u0080\u009d or \u00e2\u0080\u009cDaddy\u00e2\u0080\u009d or \u00e2\u0080\u009cLesbos\u00e2\u0080\u009d or \u00e2\u0080\u009cLady Lazarus\u00e2\u0080\u009d or \u00e2\u0080\u009cFever 103\u00e2\u0080\u009d or \u00e2\u0080\u009cCut\u00e2\u0080\u009d to see it. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And:<\/p>\n

Every few years, Plath is exhumed, and piles of new material are exposed — yet her grave is somehow bottomless. Every last bit of her is excavated, autopsied and put on display (The Peanut-crunching crowd \/Shoves in to see \/ Them unwrap me hand in foot –\/The big strip tease.\/ Gentleman , ladies \/ These are my hands \/My knees<\/em>), yet the crowd can\u00e2\u0080\u0099t get to the bottom of it. And the reason is that the poems themselves are poisonous. Holding them up to the bright light of day, or trotting them out in academic papers, or reading them in the context of new biographical information twenty or thirty or forty years after the poet gassed herself doesn\u00e2\u0080\u0099t take away their sting. They are still alive, and they are still curses.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yup. That’s pretty much it.<\/p>\n

Read the whole thing.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was thrilled to read the following piece about what it’s like to be a Plath fan. Wonderful writing and observations, I think – and great thoughts on the confluence of art and biography, something that Plath can never escape. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[9],"tags":[88],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8036"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8036"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8036\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23612,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8036\/revisions\/23612"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}