sylvia plath a biography linda wagner martin

Wagner-Martin writes, 'We care about Sylvia Plath because of her poems, and her progress toward her last poems is one of modern literature's most exciting narratives.' A finer way to express why we read Plath and why her poetry and prose matters cannot be stated. It shows the value of good archival research, looking at drafts of poems and their deleted or otherwise unused lines and unfinished ideas. Wagner-Martin draws much of her information and analysis from her own experience in working on Plath, as well as the working papers for her 1987 biography, and includes interview transcriptions and correspondence with Plath's friends and family members. Each chapter is clearly written and easy to read, full of wonderful, original analysis and shows the constant connections and a continual narrative, in Plath's body of work. The themes in Plath's poetry and prose that Wagner-Martin examines include 'Plath's Hospital Writing', 'Plath's Poems about Women', as well as 'Recalling the Bell Jar' and 'Lifting the Bell Jar', amongst others. There was no other aim for Sylvia Plath.' It is with this in mind that Wagner-Martin writes one of the best critical books on Plath. In the Preface, she states that Plath's life was 'genuinely a literary life. A good critic can convince the reader that their approach to the subject is the right way, despite any amount of knowledge one may possess about the said subject.

Discouraged by the number of mediocre books I've read recently about Plath (particularly poems about Plath), I thought I'd give a critical work a read, just to reestablish a connection with good writing about Plath.

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Sylvia plath a biography linda wagner martin