Sylvia Plath Poems

American poet Sylvia Plath is now regarded as one of the leading voices in American literature in the 20th century.

In the years since her suicide in 1963, Sylvia Plath's poems have appeared in countless anthologies, and were even awarded a posthumous Pulitzer Prize in 1982. Sylvia Plath poems are powerful statements regarding her mental state, as she battled clinical depression and a failing marriage.

Some of Sylvia Plath's more famous poems are as follows:

• Daddy
• Lady Lazarus
• Morning Song
• Letter in November
• Tulips

Sylvia Plath published her first poem at the age of eight, in the children's section of a Boston newspaper. She continued to write and publish poems through her adolescence and during her period at Smith College, where she was the editor of the Smith Review. After winning a Fulbright scholarship, Plath studied at Newnham College, Cambridge University, where she met and married fellow poet Ted Hughes. Many of her works during this time were published in Varsity, the student newspaper.

Despite the deterioration of her mental state, marked by several suicide attempts, Sylvia Plath's work took on a marked intensity during this period. Her poems became powerful, confessional pieces. Her first collection The Colossus, appeared in October 1960. Many of the poems upon which her literary reputation rests were written in the final months of her life, many of which appear in the collection Ariel, which was published shortly after her death. The Collected Poems, published in 1981, was awarded a Pulitzer Prize.