Critics and readers alike commonly suggest that Plath's poetry is direct evidence of her mental instability, and that her poetry leaves a set of clues leading directly to her suicide. The problem is, if we are to accept this sort of judgement on her work and believe that the poetry is, in this sense, directly autobiographical, what then happens to the poetry? Poetry by definition is a superior form of creativity in writing, not a string of self-indulgent, autobiographical ramblings. When we label Plath's work as such, it loses its value as art and disappears as poetry.

In this dissertation I shall attempt to refute this singular judgement on Plath's poetry by demonstrating varied interpretations of her most famous poems. I shall do this by locating and discussing her prime influences, examining her reasons for extremity and her motivations.

In chapter one I shall demonstrate a line of analysis wh

The chopping imagery gives the process of writing the poem a laboured, almost strained feeling. It is as though writing has become hard work and the writer is growing weary. The use of 'echoes' to represent the energy of the words is a telling metaphor that represents the past. The echoes are all that is left of the stroke; the creator of the words, the poet, is past tense. 'Words' is about the way poems remain and echo long after the writer has died. The use of the horse at the end of the stanza is reminiscent of the title poem of the 'Ariel ' collection, where the rider of the horse is escaping into 'the red eye, the cauldron of morning'. David Holbrook says of 'Ariel ' that the rising morning sun usually symbolizes re-birth and that the speaker in the poem sees this as a threat. The threat here he says comes from the memory of electro-convulsive treatment that Plath had to undergo after her first suicide attempt. Plath has the fear of being 'burn't like a witch '. By this Holbrook is insinuating that the rider in Ariel is reluctant to be re-born. Does this then infer that the rider preferred not to be re-born?. Ariel is an ambiguous poem with a wide range for interpretation; we shall look at it again in chapter two.

xWagner-Martin, Linda 'Sylvia Plath: A Literary Life', (Macmillan Press 1991) p.113.

"Kill the dead poet - use her own words!"

Some common words found in the essay are:
Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes, Al Alvarez, God Rhodes, Drip Thicken, Robert Graves, Linda Wagner-Martin, Death Undoubtedly, David Holbrook, Faber Faber, faber faber, plath's poetry, plath sylvia, 'lady lazarus', edited introduction, ted hughes, sylvia plath, 'sylvia plath, 'collected poems', hughes faber faber, sylvia 'collected, 'collected poems' edited, introduction ted hughes, edited introduction ted, faber faber 1981,
Approximate Word count = 10182
Approximate Pages = 41 (250 words per page double spaced)