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amymo73 's review for:
Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath
by Heather Clark
Wow. What an amazing, in-depth, work about Sylvia Plath. I knew little about her. I read The Bell Jar, years ago, and know of her through cultural references, but knew little about her history.
What I took most away from this work:
How much she WORKED at being a poet. She studied. And copied. And studied. And wrote. And played with her voice. And found her voice. It wasn't about sitting down and writing herself -- she was well-read so as to understand what she liked and didn't and practiced and was on this track from a young age. Did her mother push her to achieve what was her own unfulfilled artistic dreams? Perhaps. But I think like many young women, we overemphasize the role our mother's play when we're facing deciding who it is we want to be and how we want to be in this world.
My difficulty with certain passage of the book was that I'm not that familiar with all of Plath's work, and I felt at times as if the author was providing "facts not in evidence" to me. But that's my reading, not her approach.
What I also took away is how it isn't that long ago that women still (well, we probably still do) have this pull between being an artist (or insert career here) and balancing a desire to also be a traditional wife/mother role. Also how Sylvia kept looking for TIME TO WRITE. And she was a full-time artist. Or that was her goal. So not having a regular job doesn't make that any easier, eh?
The other thing -- while she wrote because she loved it, felt she NEEDED to write, she also learned very early ways to make money writing, how to be professional about it, even as a woman in a world where only men were writers. (Maybe that's why she had to be uber professional and incessant about sending her stuff out.) In a way, it was Plath's work ethic when it came to the business/profession of writing that helped launch the career of Ted Hughes.
"Sylvia Plath took herself and her desires seriously in a world that often refused to do so."
"Anything to evade the life not lived, the poem not written, the love not realized. Plath spread her wings, over and over, at a time when women were not supposed to fly."
"Sylvia's 'perfectionism,' often derided as neurotic or pathological, needs to be understood within the historical and sociological context of the American immigrant experience, which framed her life. Her desire to excel on all fronts has its roots in the Germanic aspirational work ethic that was her inheritance."
"These very early poems .. suggest that the origins of her art were not rooted in trauma or supplication, but in confidence, pleasure, and self-satisfaction. Writing was not something Sylvia did to please others, but to please herself."
"She was at the mercy of a patriarchal medical system that assumed that highly ambitious, strong-willed women were neurotic."
What I took most away from this work:
How much she WORKED at being a poet. She studied. And copied. And studied. And wrote. And played with her voice. And found her voice. It wasn't about sitting down and writing herself -- she was well-read so as to understand what she liked and didn't and practiced and was on this track from a young age. Did her mother push her to achieve what was her own unfulfilled artistic dreams? Perhaps. But I think like many young women, we overemphasize the role our mother's play when we're facing deciding who it is we want to be and how we want to be in this world.
My difficulty with certain passage of the book was that I'm not that familiar with all of Plath's work, and I felt at times as if the author was providing "facts not in evidence" to me. But that's my reading, not her approach.
What I also took away is how it isn't that long ago that women still (well, we probably still do) have this pull between being an artist (or insert career here) and balancing a desire to also be a traditional wife/mother role. Also how Sylvia kept looking for TIME TO WRITE. And she was a full-time artist. Or that was her goal. So not having a regular job doesn't make that any easier, eh?
The other thing -- while she wrote because she loved it, felt she NEEDED to write, she also learned very early ways to make money writing, how to be professional about it, even as a woman in a world where only men were writers. (Maybe that's why she had to be uber professional and incessant about sending her stuff out.) In a way, it was Plath's work ethic when it came to the business/profession of writing that helped launch the career of Ted Hughes.
"Sylvia Plath took herself and her desires seriously in a world that often refused to do so."
"Anything to evade the life not lived, the poem not written, the love not realized. Plath spread her wings, over and over, at a time when women were not supposed to fly."
"Sylvia's 'perfectionism,' often derided as neurotic or pathological, needs to be understood within the historical and sociological context of the American immigrant experience, which framed her life. Her desire to excel on all fronts has its roots in the Germanic aspirational work ethic that was her inheritance."
"These very early poems .. suggest that the origins of her art were not rooted in trauma or supplication, but in confidence, pleasure, and self-satisfaction. Writing was not something Sylvia did to please others, but to please herself."
"She was at the mercy of a patriarchal medical system that assumed that highly ambitious, strong-willed women were neurotic."