This Week in Books: Sylvia Plath Continues to Fascinate
Her life is still being unpacked 60 years after her death.
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Sylvia Plath lived only to the age of 30—this year marks the 60th anniversary of her death. When you consider all that has been written about her, and the writers still thinking of her, the shortness of her existence is shocking. Like the condensed imagery in her poetry—that unforgettable —her life, unpacked, reveals so much about the times in which she lived, about the forces working against her ambitions. We have an this week by the Brazilian writer Rafaela, which also turns 60 this year, and how it helped form Bassili’s perceptions of the United States as a place of both promise and peril. The essay reminded me of my own recent encounter with Plath.
