By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
Like many of her poems, including her mature poems from her late period, ‘Elm’ is an obscure Sylvia Plath poem which resists straightforward analysis. Plath’s complex and ambiguous use of symbolism renders ‘Elm’, if not impenetrable, then at the very least, challenging. You can read ‘Elm’ here before proceeding to our analysis of the poem below.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘Words’ was one of the last poems Sylvia Plath wrote before her tragic suicide in February 1963. (Plath would kill herself on 11 February 1963, in a London apartment she had decided to rent because W. B. Yeats had once lived there; ‘Words’ was written on 1 February.)
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
Sylvia Plath (1932-63) was a prolific poet for the few years that she was active before her untimely death, by her own hand, aged just 30. But what are her greatest poems? A few titles spring to mind, but it’s not easy to reach a consensus on, say, Sylvia Plath’s top ten best poems.
Five interesting facts about the poet Sylvia Plath
1. The first time Sylvia Plath met Ted Hughes, she was so excited that she bit him on the face.Â
The two felt an inexplicable attraction to one another and almost immediately began biting each other’s faces off – literally. When they left the party at which they had met, Plath noticed that blood was running down Hughes’ face.
Interesting facts about the life and work of Dylan Thomas 1. Dylan Thomas was born in Dylan Marlais Thomas, in Swansea, in 1914. His middle name was Marlais, which was a nod to his great-uncle, William Thomas, who was also a poet. William Thomas’s bardic name was Gwilym Marles. 2. One of Thomas’s first published poems was … Read more