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greg_talbot 's review for:
Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath
by Heather Clark
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.