Lidy

30 Days of Poetry Love 2- Anthology- Sylvia Plath*

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Credit image: National Poetry Month logo/Poets.org

 

For the eighth day of National Poetry Month I’m sharing a poem by Sylvia Plath. She was a confessional 20th century poet, also married to fellow poet, Ted Hughes.

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Credit image: Poets.org, photo credit: Rollie McKenna

Mental health illness is one of the biggest untreated issues in the United States. Sylvia Plath herself suffered from manic depression. From which there was no medication to treat it at the time. She tried to commit suicide by swallowing sleeping pills at the age of 19.

Sylvia survived the attempt and received electro-shock therapy treatment. Her experiences from that period of time led to the writing and publication of The Bell Jar. She committed suicide again after the dissolution of her marriage and after writing Ariel. She gassed herself with the kitchen oven. And died at the age of 30.

Here is a reading of Lady Lazarus read by Sylvia Plath:

10 comments

    • Yes it is. To think, what more poetry she could’ve written had she lived. According to Mayo Clinic, electroshock treatment creates seizures in the brain to quickly reverse symptoms of mental health illness. They say it’s much safer today as smaller, controlled currents are used. But then it makes me wonder, how much Sylvia suffered back then when she had to undergo the treatment.

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  2. Sylvia’s first round of electroshock therapy as an out-patient in the summer of 1953 was totally botched. Because of that, she had an extreme fear of the procedure. When she was forced to undergo it again at McLean hospital, it seemed to work. It’s been speculated that the reason for her rapid recovery at that time was that she was determined not to go through it again.

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