on this book:

Since the death of Sylvia Plath in 1963, analytical approaches to her work have been as divided as the imagery of her work itself. Due to the fact that Plath committed suicide and frequently used imagery of a psychological nature in her work, a great number of critics have taken a biographical and/or psychoanalytical approach to her poetry. They have used Plath's personal history as a primary guideline to clarify her poetic imagery. she is, indeed, one of the most 'personal' poets to be found. In an interview, Plath herself stated that her poems arose from personal emotional experiences, but that she was a firm believer in the necessity of '[manipulating] these experiences' in order to make them 'relevant to the larger things.'

the poet Ted Hughes (see Before us stands yesterday.), plath's husband for some time, characterized her poetry as 'crackling verbal energy'. this energy is apparent in her poems' biting precision of word and image. Gestures in her life of defiance and ecstasy, love or despair, are re-imagined in brilliant archetypal patterns. In the year before her suicide, she was writing the poems that secured her fame - poems about her children and her failed marriage, about death and her imagination. the famous poem Lady Lazarus is a good example of this:

Dying
Is an art, like everything else
I do it exceptionally well.

I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I've a call.