the shadow of Plath.

I know this may be old news for those of us keeping up on such... but I have had the entire situation on my mind for some reason lately. Any Sylvia Plath fans out there? I used to chalk her up with the other "legends" who entered legendary status because of an untimely death... such as, in my opinion, Morrison from the Doors... and I will leave my examples at that so as not to offend any potential devotees out there. I changed my mind about Plath, however, after delving into her life a bit. Thought I would share a little time line of her life with you guys. Interesting to me, but if nothing else, puts my petty probs into perspective.

She was born October 27, 1932 in Boston, Massachusetts. She was the first child of Aurelia Schober and Otto Emil Plath. Three years after Sylvia was born, her brother Warren became her parent's second child. In 1936, the Plaths moved to Winthrop, Massachusetts, close to her mother's parents. Winthrop was also close by the Atlantic Ocean and Sylvia was fascinated by it. During this time, her father, Otto, was diagnosed with lung cancer but he refused to go to anymore doctors. Finally, in 1940, Otto died. Also in 1940, Plath's first poem and first drawing published in Boston newspapers.

Two years later, when Sylvia was almost 10 years old, the family moved away from the ocean- back inland to Wellesley, Massachusetts. In Wellesley, Plath and her brother started school at Marshall Perrin Grammar School. In 1944, Plath started Alica L. Phillips Junior High School and managed to maintain an "A" average. She also wrote poems for The Phillipian, the school's literary magazine. In 1947, Plath graduated from Phillips, and began her legacy of winning scholarships and awards- she won Honorable Mention in National Scholastic's Literary Contest, and is only student in the school's history to earn a sixth letter, as well as an Achievement Certificate from the Carnegie Institute.

In 1947, she also entered high school at Bradford High School. She graduated in 1950, receiving a full scholarship to Smith College. In August of that same year, Seventeen magazine published her short story, "And Summer Will Not Come Again," and The Christian Science Monitor published "Bitter Strawberries, " a poem. In 1953, Plath won the chance to be a guest editor at Mademoiselle magazine in New York. She spent the summer there and upon her return home in late July, she learned that she had been rejected from a writing class at Harvard summer school. She was already depressed and exhausted from New York, and the rejection made it worse. Her mother sought psychiatric help, but all it resulted in was a series of un-professional painful shock treatments. So finally, on August 24, 1953, she tried to commit suicide. She left a note saying she had gone for a walk and preceded to swallow a large number of sleeping pills and then crawled into a small space under her house. She was discovered three days later and rushed to a hospital. To recover, she spent five months at a private hospital called McLean's. This was paid for by Mrs. Olive Higgins Prouty, a generous benefactress of Plath. In 1950, Plath had won a scholarship from the Olive Higgins Prouty Fund and wrote her to express her thanks. Mrs. Prouty responded and continued to be an adviser and friend of Plath throughout college. This period of her life, from New York to the end of her stay in the private hospital, Plath recorded in her book, The Bell Jar.

In 1954, Plath won several poetry contests at Smith College and wrote her honor's thesis on 1955 Dostoevsky's use of "doubles" in two of his novels. She graduated summa laude of her class and ended up winning yet another scholarship-this time to Cambridge University, England. At Cambridge, she continued to have great academic success and in March of 1956, she met Ted Hughes, the British poet. Four months later, on June 16, 1956, Hughes and Plath were married. The newlyweds spent their honeymoon at Benidorm, a small fishing village in southern Spain. In 1957, the couple moved to Massachusetts, where Plath taught English at her old college- Smith College. The next year, Sylvia and Ted moved once again-to Boston. Here Plath wrote and attended poetry classes at Boston University, which were taught by Robert Lowell.

They stayed in America until 1959, when they returned to London, England. The very next year Plath's first child was born. Her name was Frieda Rebecca Hughes. This same year, Plath published her first major work-a collection of poems called The Colossus and Other Poems. In 1961, Plath got pregnant again, but unfortunately had a miscarriage. After this, the family moved to Devon, England.

In 1962, Plath's first son was born- Nicholas Farrar Hughes. Unfortunately, this year was also the beginning of the couple's marital trouble. During the summer of 1962, Sylvia learned of Ted's adultery and they were separated. Plath took the children with her and moved to a flat in London. Here she started to write poems quickly and voluminously. In 1963, The Bell Jar was published under the pseudonym, Victoria Lucas. However, ill health was starting to effect Plath and she said, "I am fighting now, against odds and alone." Although she seemed to be recovering, she even said, "The next five years of my life look heavenly," the "odds" must have overwhelmed her. Sylvia Plath lived just long enough to see The Bell Jar in print...

On February 11, 1963, after carefully sealing the kitchen so her children would not be harmed, Sylvia Plath took a bottle of sleeping pills and stuck her head in a gas oven. Her downstairs neighbor, knocked out by gas seeping through the floor, believed she had intended him to rescue her when he smelled the gas.

Almost from the day she died, readers and scholars have been faced with the enigma of her suicide in addition to being perplexed and thwarted by her mental illness. Sylvia Plath's unabridged journals lend credence to a theory that she not only suffered from mental illness (probably bipolar disorder) but also from severe PMS. (Seriously... that is an actual diagnosis. Take notes ladies...)

Not long to follow, Ted's mistress Assia Wevill also committed suicide by gassing not only herself, but the young daughter they had together. It is assumed she created a "copy cat" suicide after Ted broke off their affair.

According to the AFP: "Unmarried and childless, the 47-year-old Hughes had recently left his teaching post at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks' school of fisheries and ocean sciences to make pottery in a home studio."

On March 16 of this year, Plath's son Nicholas commited suicide by hanging himself from his home. His suicide occurs 46 years after his mother's. If you do the math, you can see he was barely even one when his mom stuck her head in the oven, leaving behind a poetic legacy for both scholars and artsy wannabes to marvel over for centuries. Left behind is Frieda, daughter and sister, who has witnessed the suicide of her mother at the age of 3, the death of her father from cancer, and recently her last link to the Plath family, her brother. She is a painter and

Poppies in October

Even the sun-clouds this morning cannot manage such skirts.
Nor the woman in the ambulance
Whose red heart blooms through her coat so astoundingly--

A gift, a love gift
Utterly unasked for by sky

Palely and flamily

igniting its carbon monoxides, by eyes
Dulled to a halt under bowlers.

O my God, what am I
That these late mouths should cry open
In a forest of frost, in a dawn of cornflowers.

--Sylvia Plath