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Sylvia Plath
Born: October 27, 1932 Died: February 11, 1963 (aged 30)

Sylvia Plath was born on October 27, 1932 in Boston Massachusetts. Her parent's names were Otto and Aurelia Plath. She had a younger brother named Warren who was born in April 1935. Her father died a week and a half after her eighth birthday and after his death she experienced a lost of faith. Plath wrote poetry from the age of eight, and a poem appeared in Boston Travelle. Plath attended Bradford Senior High School and graduated in 1950.By the time she arrived at Smith College she had written over fifty short stories and published in a raft of magazines.After high school she went to Smith College.


She married Ted Hughes in 1956. After she found out about his affair in July 1962 they separated. Soon after they separated and she returned to London with her children Frieda and Nicholas Hughes. On February 11, 1963 Plath committed suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning. She did this by placing her head in her gas oven and sealing off the walls and doors with wet towels and washcloths. Before her death Plath was depressed and on anti-depressants. Sylvia's work is still studied today and thousands of people visit her grave site each year.

Edge

The woman is perfected.
Her dead
Body wears the smile of accomplishment,
The illusion of a Greek necessity
Flows in the scrolls of her toga,
Her bare
Feet seem to be saying:
We have come so far, it is over.
Each dead child coiled, a white serpent,
One at each little
Pitcher of milk, now empty.
She has folded
Them back into her body as petals
Of a rose close when the garden
Stiffens and odors bleed
From the sweet, deep throats of the night flower.
The moon has nothing to be sad about,
Staring from her hood of bone.
She is used to this sort of thing.
Her blacks crackle and drag.

Female Author

All day she plays at chess with the bones of the world:
Favored (while suddenly the rains begin
Beyond the window) she lies on cushions curled
And nibbles an occasional bonbon of sin.
Prim, pink-breasted, feminine, she nurses
Chocolate fancies in rose-papered rooms
Where polished higboys whisper creaking curses
And hothouse roses shed immortal blooms.
The garnets on her fingers twinkle quick
And blood reflects across the manuscript;
She muses on the odor, sweet and sick,
Of festering gardenias in a crypt,
And lost in subtle metaphor, retreats
From gray child faces crying in the streets.