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"Sylvia's Death"
by Anne Sexton
Country	United States
Language	English
Publisher	Houghton Mifflin
Lines	140
Pages	3

Sylvia's Death (Poem)

See also: Anne Sexton

"Sylvia’s Death" is a poem written by American poet Anne Sexton (1928 -1974). Sexton published "Sylvia’s Death" in her Pulitzer Prize winning 1966 collection of poems "Live or Die". The poem is highly confessional in tone, focusing on the suicide of friend and fellow poet Sylvia Plath in 1963, and Sexton’s own yearning for death. Due to the fact Sexton wrote the poem only days after Plath’s passing, "Sylvia’s Death" is often seen as an elegy for Plath. The poem is also thought to have underlying themes of female suppression and suffering due to the confines of domesticity.

Synopsis

“Sylvia’s Death” is an elegiac poem dedicated to Sylvia Plath. The poem begins by directly addressing Plath, asking where she went, and how she found the courage to finally give into suicide. Sexton then goes onto write of discussions, moments and the wish for death the two shared. As the poem nears the end, Sexton recognises the close relationship Plath held with death, and concludes the poem calling Plath a "friend", "tiny mother", "funny duchess" and "blonde thing".

Background

Friendship with Plath

Despite growing up in the same town, Wellesley, Massachusetts, Sexton and Plath first met in Robert Lowell’s graduate writing class at Boston University in 1958. Sexton writes that once Sylvia Plath and George Starbuck heard she was attending the seminar "they kind of followed me in”, marking the beginning of a friendship between the three. Starbuck recalls of the gatherings "They had these hilarious conversations comparing their suicides and talking and about their psychiatrists". It was their gatherings at The Ritz after their writing seminar that allowed Sexton and Plath to find a mutual bond over their yearning for death, in effect building their friendship. Sexton writes "We talked death with burned-up intensity, both of us drawn to it like moths to an electric light bulb. Sucking on it!”.

Although, Plath's feelings of exclusion upon recognising the beginning of Sexton's romantic relations with Starbuck are thought to have created a rift between the poets. Within a journal entry, Plath writes that when recognising Sexton and Starbuck's relationship she "felt our triple martini afternoons at The Ritz breaking up".

Plath's Death

The grave of poet Sylvia Plath in Heptonstall

After living a life of manic depression and attempting suicide multiple times, Plath committed suicide on the 11th of February 1963 in her London flat. At around 4:00 AM, Plath placed her head in an oven and gassed herself, dying of carbon monoxide poisoning. The surrounding doorways had been sealed by Plath, ensuring the safety of her sleeping children. Sexton seemed to have feelings of betrayal towards Plath taking her life, as the two had discussed their struggles with depression and yearning for death together. The death of Plath lead to a resurfacing of Sexton’s obsession with death and suicide, telling psychiatrist Dr. Orne “Sylvia Plath’s death disturbs me, makes me want it too. She took something that was mine,”. Just over 10 years later, Sexton took her own life. Very similarly to Plath, Sexton locked herself in her garage, turned on the engine of her car and gassed herself. She died of carbon monoxide poisoning, just as Plath did.

Style and Technique

Sexton, being coined as the 'mother' of confessional poetry, employed her usual confessional style throughout "Sylvia's Death", candidly admitting suffering and self-destructive desire for death. Parentheses are used within the poem to add specific details to the general memories and situations Sexton is writing about. Sexton also includes rhyme throughout, though more heavily within the beginning than end of the poem. A tidy structure is also seen, with lines being strictly paired in twos. Following "Sylvia's Death", Sexton wrote the rest of the poems in "Live or Die" without her usual rhyme scheme and structure (apart from one) and took on a new mode.

Analysis

The writing of “Sylvia’s Death” acted as a psychological and emotional outlet for Sexton, assisting in the poet coming to terms with the loss of her friend. Throughout the poem, Sexton’s projects her own wish for death and struggle with depression.

The beginning stanzas discuss female domestic entrapment, with Sexton describing Plath’s house as dead, built of stones and full of spoons to feed her meteor like children. Through the description of a jail cell-like home, Sexton highlights her own feelings of distain and imprisonment due to the weight of domestic chores. A tone of aggression and sadness is used as Sexton calls Plath a “thief!”. Sexton feels as through Plath stole the death she wished for, finding the bravery that Sexton couldn’t muster to “crawl down alone... into the death”. Throughout the poem Sexton personifies suicide as “our boy”, writing that his “job” of killing them is “a necessity, a window in a wall or a crib”. Within this, Sexton again addresses feminine domestic imprisonment, and offers that Plath and herself so deeply long for death as it is a window out of the walls of their homes and motherly roles. Sexton, too, plants her own depressive feelings through the heavy repetition of the word “death”, as it underlines her obsession and anxiety surrounding death, seeing it as the only escape from her suffering. Diane Wood Middlebrook argued that 'Sylvia’s Death’ has a “rivalrous attitude… a spurious tone, saturated with self-pity posing as guilt”. Through an ending depiction of Plath as a "funny duchess!", Sexton pays homage to the influence the two poets had on one another, alluding to a line within Plath's poem "The Beast".

Reception

"Sylvia's Death" was seen by some as jealousy and envy disguised as a loving elegy. The poem was criticised by Galway Kinnell, Howard Moss who rejected the work to be published in The New Yorker, and Robert Lowell who wrote that 'Sylvia's Death' had "too much push from the pathos". Although, Sexton heavily defended the poem and held much pride with the work, writing it "[belongs] more to itself than to me".

Reference List

• Feinmann, J (1993-02-16). "Rhyme, reason and depression". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2019-05-05.

• Gill, J. (2004-06-01). "Anne Sexton and Confessional Poetics". The Review of English Studies. 55 (220): 425–445. doi:10.1093/res/55.220.425. ISSN 0034-6551.

• Golden, A, ed. (2016-11-29). This Business of Words. University Press of Florida. p. 174. ISBN 9780813062204.

• Hendin, H. (1993). "The suicide of Anne Sexton". Suicide & Life-Threatening Behavior. 23 (3): 257–262. ISSN 0363-0234. PMID 8249036.

• Middlebrook, D.W (1991). "Mentors". Anne Sexton : a biography. London: Virago Press. ISBN 1853814067. OCLC 24743581.

• Middlebrook, D.W. (1992). "Circle of Women". Anne Sexton: A Biography. New York City, NY: Vintage Books. ISBN 9781853814068.

• Neimneh, S., Abu Madi, N. (2015). An Analysis of the Suicidal Tendency in Sexton’s Confessional Poems: A Reading of. 10.13140/RG.2.1.5100.9769.

• Sexton, A (1966). The Barfly Ought to Sing. Evanston, Illinois, United States: Northwestern University Press.

• Sexton, A. (1964). Sylvia's Death. Poetry, 103(4), 224-226. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy1.library.usyd.edu.au/stable/20589556