Decoding Sylvia Plath

Welcome to my page on Decoding Sylvia Plath’s early poems. I have done a lot of work over the past decade and a half on Plath’s poetry. Plath’s early poems are often ignored as her training ground in finding her voice. Here, I’ll show you how Sylvia Plath’s early work has great value–and mystery. In my first book, Fixed Stars Govern a Life: Decoding Sylvia Plath, (Stephen F. Austin State University Press, 2014), and subsequent Decoding Sylvia Plath’s “Lady Lazarus” and Decoding Sylvia Plath’s “Daddy” (both Magi Press, 2017), I reveal new interpretations and multi-layered dimensions of Plath’s poetry through the use of the tarot and Qabalah. It was only natural that I should go back to explore Plath’s early work and see if she had done the same in The Collected Poems of Sylvia Plath, especially those written before her mystical masterpiece, Ariel. Below, have fun exploring how Sylvia Plath incorporated news stories, celebrity gossip, and art into her early works. Maybe most exciting is how many of these poems are documents of her prescience.
“I want to write at least ten good news poems….” Sylvia Plath in a letter to her mother, Monday, 25 April 1955
Bibliography:
UJ – The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath, edited by Karen V. Kukil  (c) 2000, Anchor Books
CP – The Collected Poems of Sylvia Plath, edited by Ted Hughes, (c) 1981 HarperPerennial
LSP: Vol. 1 – The Letters of Sylvia Plath Volume I: 1940-1956  edited by Peter K. Steinberg and Karen V. Kukil (c) 2017, Faber and Faber
LSP: Vol. 2 – The Letters of Sylvia Plath Volume II: 1956-1963  edited by Peter K. Steinberg and Karen V. Kukil (c) 2017 Faber and Faber
RC – Red Comet The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath by Heather Clark  (c) 2020 Alfred A. Knopf