Poetry and Co-dependency: The Poetry of Sylvia Plath - Professor Belinda Jack

Are we correct to examine the work of Sylvia Plath through the lens of her relationship with Ted Hughes? Professor Jack discusses the poetry of Sylvia Plath: www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and...
Readers and critics have been exploring Plath's work for half a century. Is there anything new to be said? The publication of Plath's complete journals in 2000 and the release of her personal papers in various archives as well as those of her estranged husband, the poet Ted Hughes, and the publication of his Birthday Letters (1998) and correspondence (Letters of Ted Hughes, 2009) provided material for persuasive research about Plath and Hughes's shared creative processes. Plath's despair and suicide influence our reading of her poetry. To what extent should we be influenced by the creative co-dependency of her poetic relationship with Hughes and his poetry?
The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and...
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[@romanmichaelilies7443]

Thank you for bringing into discussion less known poems of Sylvia Plath. I loved the minute analysis of "Sheep in Fog" at the end.

[@somethingyousaid5059]

I've heard Sylvia speak and this lady sounds like Sylvia when she speaks. I love the sound of her voice.

[@davis7099]

Agree, This is the great American voice before vocal fry and upspeak took over. Her voice is great.

[@sweetjoybefallthee]

You realize that this woman is not American, right?

[@ktnworth]

@@sweetjoybefallthee Hahaha touche

[@jez2466]

To be honest, no she doesn't. Plath sounded American, Professor Jack sounds British. A huge difference.

[@Iamagoat2]

excellent lecture and entry into the very contrasting modes of Hughes and Plath. I do feel she was a bit too kind about Hughes, but that is subjective, and it was redeemed, i feel, by emphasizing his tendency to always control, via language, in a rather violent and sadistically paternal way (not only in his own artistic work, but also in the perception of his own legacy as well as Sylvia's legacy). More importantly, I very much enjoyed her opening up the complexity of Plath's work beyond her biography. She was a woman of great contradictions, yet, contradictions that put her into a sphere of poets that are unmatched in their ability to simultaneously taken in the horror and beauty of experience with both great feeling, contextuality, order, disorder, influence, and miraculous "moments of being" charged with the essence of fresh artistic inspiration. She also did this at a time where the female voice had to work against a great inner schizophrenia to be taken seriously amongst the male giants. She could not be too emotional or too analytical. She felt the weight of conventions of motherhood / marriage and domesticity (and idealized/hated them all at once), while also wanting to be taken seriously as a poet with HER own voice, and that must have been quite the extraordinary challenge due to the anxiety of influence of males that loomed in the cannon she studied and the dominance of a similar godlike, rational, orderly male influence in her personal life (where all the men eventually abandon her, and she feels vulnerable and sometimes angry at her feminine abyss...that darkness that she equated with her emotional well of subconscious unrest and chaos, the sea, which she so often felt needed to be made "coherent" to keep her from falling into a space without meaning. Hence a good study of her journals shows a constant contradiction of wanting to work / create (and it leading to exhaustion), or have free time to create, but then feeling undisciplined and as if she was floating away with no inspiration. All this while trying to fit in being a wife/mother/social butterfly, while deeply also wanting to inhabit her interior without extra outside influences demanding or confusing her voice. Her output and development in her short 30 years is far more inspiring than most poets I can think of, especially her boldness moving into the confessional form which, sadly, is now often associated with juvenile angsty poetry, which is certainly not how hers reads. Ted, his editing, burning, analyzing, forming, and ending up as a long standing poetic "giant," definitely contributed to this misunderstanding of Plath's brilliance. I would go so far as to say, he was the vampire who had to suck her lifeforce to give credence to his otherwise rather predictable and "textbook" style of mirroring those before him. He is, in a way, that rook trying desperately to order things, even those he couldn't such as forces of nature, she was such a force, and he was always critiquing her vs. supporting her in her true voice/self (as one can see in her journals as well as in his actions toward her legacy). I believe he was afraid she would outshine him by being on the cusp of something far more innovative. I don't think his growing into older age ever showed signs of this changing, either. At any rate, I liked this lecture very much, and the poems she used to emphasize her points were exquisite examples.

[@paulrossman4145]

Great response Chris B!

[@frankcorrenti5941]

A thoroughly interesting presentation by Professor Belinda Jack. Held my attention. And an excellently produced video of rare content and exceptional quality. While I did not find anything that changes my high opinion of Ted Hughes or Sylvia Plath, this critical and close focus on rather esoteric detail is illuminating. I would not conclude much from such a brief, though thorough presentation, no detraction intended.

[@sattarabus]

Belinda accomplishes a very difficult task: she unobtrusively substantiates the synergy of simplicity and erudition. She guides you through figures of speech and figures of thought and the web of syntactic warp and weft that accentuates the patterns that underpin the the fabric of the the poems under study. Sylvia and Ted may not have been made for each other, but creativity never hesitates to cannibalize itself or its alter ego.

[@lizziebkennedy7505]

I’ve always believed Plath’s best poems were written immediately after the cohabitation with Hughes’ had ceased. From July 62 onward, she wrote herself into into a canon. We tend to overlook that Hughes was gone when most of Ariel was written.

[@4Mr.Crowley2]

It’s honestly amazing - she woke very early and would write furiously for a few hours until she needed to care for her children.

[@tattoofthesunn795]

She and her lectures have been fulfilling my nights for intriguing background as I write, make jewelry or generally space TF out, as we are ought to do

[@chopin65]

There is always a limit to a reader's ability experience a poem. I admire the professor's analysis of the relationship of these great poets. But I have heard Ted Hughes' reading of "Sheep in Fog" and I don't get a sense of the reduction she speaks of. She points out one truth of every great poet. Great poets will early on find themselves under a trance by the poets they have read. Yet as they develop they always turn inward and carry-on a dialog with themselves. It is almost like poetry is reduced to their singular voice, their subjects, their view of the world and how it is translated by their language.

[@Poemsapennyeach]

Excellent lecture. Well done to the Professor.

[@zoex7993]

Super illuminating lecture. Thank you!!

[@Poemsapennyeach]

Belinda Jackson is excellent.

[@solgato5186]

Path rearranged her feathers and released her shine

[@shelbiherzog]

Well done, thanks for sharing.

[@constancewalsh3646]

Never have a scholar discuss human beings, let alone discuss poets. Poets should not be discussed. The words of Sylvia Plathe taken literally, as in 'exchange of limbs.' . Cold and utter desecration of both poets and their work. Of course they were dependent and co-dependent each on the other! They were the product of their times as well as personal backgrounds. This is painful.

[@SailendraNarayanTripathy]

Grt presentationProf!congrats!

[@martigrecia5645]

there seems to be an awesome sense of hurried, (almost) run amok Anxiety in her voice-and in his, an unbearable staid Pomposity in his. i would imagine that in time-having kept very intimate company with one another, (as poets) that the tenor which i am aware of within their voices, must have developed into a growing little by little Irritant for One another.

[@lakeshagadson357]

I love this poem.

[@lakeshagadson357]

i like sylvia plath the way i like virigina wolf.

[@lizziebkennedy7505]

“The forces are psychological.” What else could they be? Plath is always reduced to her psychology.

[@versesbroth2974]

It's a bit dusturbing when someone can't assume the end of a love relationship, threats you with suicide as a revenge, call you vampire, compares herself with a holocaust victim... Even her father 'abandoned' her despite diying of a desease. I think the main source of inspiration for Plath was the distorted bipolar world she inhabited, a fenomenal black hole of introspection menacing with ruin all around. She is a perfect myth used by some feminists, the perfect marthyr, but if she would have recovered, went back to the US with her children, went on with her career, she probably had regret some poems as 'immature', and why not, she would have written a response to 'Birthday Letters', probably better, but with the same tenderness and forgiveness that Hughes'. Call the latter 'monster', sistematically, is as barren as call Plath 'hysterical'. If you know well how the mental illness works, and unfortunately I have a bunch of the like in my family, you understand how distorted, unbalanced and threatening they see the world, coaxing and compromising other's lifes. Journals and poems are completely unreliable as sources of true facts, they are literature. I think the lecture is clear enough about it. Hughes was not a saint (who can claim it for theirself) but anyone should live with such a burden, and less someone who spent his live to confort our souls.

[@emanuelacomerio5334]

Sylvia Plath e ' un caso sia letterario per le ragioni che ho detto ieri, sia un caso psichiatrico. Ne' le due sfaccettature possono essere separate avendo un unico principio temporale. Casi del genere sono numerosi nel panorama letterario internazionale. Penso a Etty Hillesum o anche ad Alda Merini (16 anni). Sylvia Plath era quella gamba di suo padre otto e che il padre preferi' farsi amputare. Il distacco, della gamba ovvio, segna una svolta per Sylvia. Citazioni: Daddy, e Lettera d'amore (una gamba e una testa).

[@lizziebkennedy7505]

Theodore Roethke was her major influence, as both she, her teachers and most critics have observed. But Roethko commits the cardinal sin of not being English (neither was Eliot but don’t tell anyone).

[@MrFrampo56]

T.S. or George?

[@archiewoosung5062]

Classic case of looking for what supports your theory; finding it & ignoring everything else?

[@lizziebkennedy7505]

The English are as touchy about Ted Hughes as they are about Meghan Markle. Americans interfering where they shouldn’t be.

[@archiewoosung5062]

@@lizziebkennedy7505 Most of the English don't know of Hughes (or Plath) and most of those who do couldn't care less about Meghan (or Harry).

[@rukhsanakhan5010]

Hughes was a monster, both his partners and his son committed suicide

[@deliren135]

@@lancejohnson127 sure, Hughes can't be blamed fully for these three suicides, but i don't think he helped at all either.

[@lizziebkennedy7505]

@@lancejohnson127 nice jump over Assia there, Buddy.

[@punkchick701]

Assia also murdered her own child before she killed herself, she was disturbed.

[@bablugorai8524]

hi

[@StephB93]

Oh spare me the poetry! ..too subjective..The psychology is MUCH more interesting ..NPD Hughes and codependent obsessive Plath…exactly why I left my degree in Literature to pursue Psychology 🤞

[@AAwildeone]

The only interesting thing about this lecture is that she has the audacity to say, "codependency - and I use the term very loosely..." How can someone, even with a British accent, be taken seriously after a ludicrous qualification like that...? Rubbish.

[@lizziebkennedy7505]

Perhaps because of the compelling science on the topic since Jung....