Sylvia Plath: Reflections On Her Legacy

Lena Dunham Reflects On Sylvia Plath

My focus through most of college was "confessional female poets" with an emphasis on those who had committed suicide. Although I firmly catalogued myself as "anxious but not depressed", I was inexorably drawn to the work of women who existed on the lip of a complete and utter nervous breakdown. I could only begin to imagine the pressures that weighed on Sylvia Plath (child rearing, marital distress, bitter London cold) but her work had a normalising effect on my emotional life and her use of language in her poetry and prose, rhythmic, angry, injecting volatile emotion into a myriad of SAT words, rang in my head as I walked to class or drifted off at 4am.

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