![]() ![]() In the massive effort that is Red Comet, Clark admirably identifies and resists the morbid tendency to look at every moment, every work, as a signpost on the way to Plath’s tragic suicide. (There is, of course, the larger question of why we label art consumed by teenage girls as unintelligent and lesser.)īiographer and Plath scholar Heather Clark lifts the poet’s life from the Persephone myth it has become and examines it in all its complexity. Her name comes up again and again alongside figures such as Lana del Rey in articles referencing the “sad girl aesthetic.” When my daughter saw my copy of Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath lying bricklike by my chair, she reacted with surprise: “Oh! They sing about her in the Heathers musical!” Somehow this poet, named a genius in her lifetime, is now deemed “confessional” and relegated to a literary space where intellectuals raise their eyebrows knowingly and dismiss her work to 16-year-old-girl-land. These days, Sylvia Plath is often considered part of the intense realm of the teenage girl. ![]()
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