No matter how casual a relationship you’ve had with 20th-century American poetry, you’ve heard the name Sylvia Plath. Maybe you’ve already dared to experience her dark but compelling literary world, or maybe you just know a few of the basic elements of her life and career: her autobiographical novel The Bell Jar, her famously harrowing poetry collection Ariel, her stormy marriage to British poet laureate Ted Hughes, her death by her own hand at the age of thirty. But what better day than today, the 83rd anniversary of Plath’s birth, to get better acquainted with her work?
And what better way than to hear that work read in Plath’s own voice? Sure, you could just pick up one of the many yellowed mass-market paperback copies of Ariel you see on bookshelves all across America and plunge in, but you might first consider turning to our archives, which contain a 2013 post in which we featured Plath reading fifteen poems that would appear in the Ariel collection that, published two years after her death (“left sitting on the kitchen table to be found along with her body,” noted Josh Jones), would raise her poetic reputation to new heights. You can hear the first part of these readings, recorded in 1962, at the top of this post, and the rest at this original post.
We might feel lucky that, in her short life, she left even those performances for posterity, but there’s more: last year, we featured Sylvia Plath reading her poetry, the 1977 record released by pioneering pre-audiobook label Caedmon which contains 23 poems Plath committed to tape as early as 1959. Find all of the readings here.
If these two audio collections give you a taste for the poet biographer Carl Rollyson called “the Marilyn Monroe of modern literature,” have a listen to Credo Records’ album Sylvia Plath, which offers some material you’ll have heard alongside some you won’t have. Having listened to all this, you’ll hardly associate the adjective “celebratory” with Plath’s work — but that doesn’t mean that, on what would have been her 83rd birthday, poetry-lovers can’t celebrate it.
If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newsletter, please find it here.
If you would like to support the mission of Open Culture, consider making a donation to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your contributions will help us continue providing the best free cultural and educational materials to learners everywhere. You can contribute through PayPal, Patreon, Venmo (@openculture) and Crypto. Thanks!
Related Content:
Hear Sylvia Plath Read Fifteen Poems From Her Final Collection, Ariel, in 1962 Recording
The Art of Sylvia Plath: Revisit Her Sketches, Self-Portraits, Drawings & Illustrated Letters
Sylvia Plath Reads Her Poetry: 23 Poems from the Last 6 Years of Her Life
Sylvia Plath, Girl Detective Offers a Hilariously Cheery Take on the Poet’s College Years
Colin Marshall writes elsewhere on cities, language, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Angeles, A Los Angeles Primer, the video series The City in Cinema, and the crowdfunded journalism project Where Is the City of the Future? Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall or on Facebook.
Plath sounds just like I imagined…a pretentious, self-absorbed snob. She and Ted Hughes DESERVED each other!
Many important artists are far, far from perfect people, like everyone else. I think of Picasso, Mailer, Fitzgerald, Hemmingway, even the wonderful Dickens. I could go on and on… Where would this world be without them? She reads beautifully, despite her slightly snobbish air. I listened to the wonderful Yeats and stopped before his dull and insufferable delivery ruined his poetry for me.
shut up bill w sylvia rules you toe fungus
I didn’t listen. I didn’t like her voice. She sounded surprisingly old, for such a pretty face.
Is it just me, or did somebody miss an opportunity by not making a biographical film with Faye Dunaway as Sylvia Plath?
She reads with a pure rage, disdain, … I hear now how much she resented all the trappings of being a woman in a man’s world. It comes across in the poetry, always, but to hear it, clarifies so much about her unhappiness. Thank you for this!