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4.64 AVERAGE
4.64 AVERAGE
dark
emotional
informative
sad
Almost 50 years after Sylvia Plath's death, her poetry and identity continue to inspire romanticism of confession and dark elegance. Heather Clark's 7-year dogged documentarian efforts come to beautiful fruition in "Red Comet".
There are so many avenues to go down here, but the impressive portrait of an artist's life, particularly a woman trailblazer who targeted a full life with writerly ambition, a husband, family and some addition to the cannon. Given her father's myth-buiding from immigrant to Harvard professor, Sylvia's indomitable will is heavy. Working in metaphor, "full of God", she equipped herself as a brilliant writer, strong, serious, inflexible and cosmopolitan. We see something of the real Plath here....someone awkward, pretentious, ambitious, quiet and full of ideas. Her limits and mismanages fully disclosed, and similarly her endless pursuit to be understood in her writing.
Clark documents the oppresive 1950s, overcast with fear of nuclear annihilation, and a world still in recovering from the infernal war against the fascism ideology and the Shoah. Though not esteemed in her time, Plath with her Oxford cohort was looking to pierce the British gentility and American cellophane/fakeness that permeated the cuddled art world of poetry.
And so this fascinating look at a poet who averred herself as an authentic voice, and found spirit heroes in D.H. Lawrence, and female writers (Emily Dickenson, Virgina Woolf); and is also tethered to the cannon of poetic greats, fashioning herself and muse Ted Hughes as part of this pedigree.
Exploration of the unconscious and the new spirit through the new school, Woolf found her community among Anne Sexton and Robert Lowell; and began to cut away to the pure directness that informs her exhalted poems like “Wintering”, “Elm”, “Daddy”, “Edge” and “Lady Lazarus”.
As you would expect, the book explores so many themes such as seeking fame, finding a romantic partner who is an artistic competitor, psychiatric evaluations, reckoning with limitations on women’s careers and identity. It’s a truly stunning work of a poet whose work burns brightly still.
Fifty years after her death, romanticism and iconoclastic artists , continue to cut away at the Mcdonads wrapper of American culture to find something primordial, dark and real. I think of the musical romantic poets who have influenced me in post-post deconstructionism (Joy Division, The Fall, Public Image), or the female artists creating work on feminine identity that continue to surface assumed roles and sacrosanct ideas. Chronicling her struggles, failures, romantic awakenings and legacy, it is a fully-engaging work that edifies the noble spirit to create and honor a personal integrity.
There are so many avenues to go down here, but the impressive portrait of an artist's life, particularly a woman trailblazer who targeted a full life with writerly ambition, a husband, family and some addition to the cannon. Given her father's myth-buiding from immigrant to Harvard professor, Sylvia's indomitable will is heavy. Working in metaphor, "full of God", she equipped herself as a brilliant writer, strong, serious, inflexible and cosmopolitan. We see something of the real Plath here....someone awkward, pretentious, ambitious, quiet and full of ideas. Her limits and mismanages fully disclosed, and similarly her endless pursuit to be understood in her writing.
Clark documents the oppresive 1950s, overcast with fear of nuclear annihilation, and a world still in recovering from the infernal war against the fascism ideology and the Shoah. Though not esteemed in her time, Plath with her Oxford cohort was looking to pierce the British gentility and American cellophane/fakeness that permeated the cuddled art world of poetry.
And so this fascinating look at a poet who averred herself as an authentic voice, and found spirit heroes in D.H. Lawrence, and female writers (Emily Dickenson, Virgina Woolf); and is also tethered to the cannon of poetic greats, fashioning herself and muse Ted Hughes as part of this pedigree.
Exploration of the unconscious and the new spirit through the new school, Woolf found her community among Anne Sexton and Robert Lowell; and began to cut away to the pure directness that informs her exhalted poems like “Wintering”, “Elm”, “Daddy”, “Edge” and “Lady Lazarus”.
As you would expect, the book explores so many themes such as seeking fame, finding a romantic partner who is an artistic competitor, psychiatric evaluations, reckoning with limitations on women’s careers and identity. It’s a truly stunning work of a poet whose work burns brightly still.
Fifty years after her death, romanticism and iconoclastic artists , continue to cut away at the Mcdonads wrapper of American culture to find something primordial, dark and real. I think of the musical romantic poets who have influenced me in post-post deconstructionism (Joy Division, The Fall, Public Image), or the female artists creating work on feminine identity that continue to surface assumed roles and sacrosanct ideas. Chronicling her struggles, failures, romantic awakenings and legacy, it is a fully-engaging work that edifies the noble spirit to create and honor a personal integrity.
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
slow-paced
What an amazing, beautiful, incredible biography of Sylvia Path!!! Heather wrote so that I felt that I knew Sylvia as a best friend would know her!!! It's as if she is still living. I feel like I could pick up the phone and chat with her as I have always known her. An amazingly written and a window into Plath's soul!!! I am surprised that it did not win the Pulitizer!! It was gut-wrenching and powerful!! I only with Sylvia could have known how many people loved and admired her incredibly powerful poetry!!!
At times I wasn't sure I'd finish, there were SO many private details, down to what she ate for dinner etc, but her inner story was so engaging and unusual, it became a page turner for me. I knew all along she would die young, but it was still devastating to read about her last few days. What a unique talent and person.
3.5 and would’ve been higher likely if I knew more about poetry. This was an endeavor to undertake but I found it fascinating at the levels where I found relevance… how young, bright, aspirational, ambitious and talented women were treated in the 50s and how ineffective our mental health systems were then. Both topics are still deeply troubling. I now must go read “The Bell Jar.”
wild to finish this biography watching crabs in ocean now to go enjoy the sea like Sylvia would’ve
With unprecedented access to Sylvia Plath’s archives, psychiatric and medical files, letters, and even family history, Heather Clark confronts the tragic, dramatic, and even spooky woman we’ve been given in previous biographies and popular myth, and demands, with nearly excruciating detail, that we see both her genius and her humanity. Red Comet is stunning in its scholarship, and haunting in its repeated and specific portrayals of how this “modern” world continues to demand physical and psychic payment from women for their art and for their genius. Highly recommended.
The standard has been set, by Heather Clark's seemingly exhaustive biography, that all biographies I shall read in the future will be measured by.
Heather rarely muses on what the unseen truth is between the lines of limited and lost information, but when she does, I know that this is in the care of someone who has enveloped themselves so deeply in the story of another, that I can trust their judgement. By the end of the book, I felt as though I had lost a dear friend on the 11th of February, 1963 - and yet, the only thing I can definitively say that I have in common with Plath, is that I am now the same age she was when she died.
The painting Clark methodically builds over 35 chapters is so compelling, it is a veritable fiction in how attached I felt to this story. The cracks that remain unchecked are simply life, as we experience it in the day to day, and I feel nothing is missing but the tiny piece of my heart that clung to the last page.
This is worth reading, even if I might struggle to find someone to recommend it to.
Heather rarely muses on what the unseen truth is between the lines of limited and lost information, but when she does, I know that this is in the care of someone who has enveloped themselves so deeply in the story of another, that I can trust their judgement. By the end of the book, I felt as though I had lost a dear friend on the 11th of February, 1963 - and yet, the only thing I can definitively say that I have in common with Plath, is that I am now the same age she was when she died.
The painting Clark methodically builds over 35 chapters is so compelling, it is a veritable fiction in how attached I felt to this story. The cracks that remain unchecked are simply life, as we experience it in the day to day, and I feel nothing is missing but the tiny piece of my heart that clung to the last page.
This is worth reading, even if I might struggle to find someone to recommend it to.