This is a
touching column about the legacy of suicide, of Plath and Sexton. I taught both these poets recently, and it's hard to get away from talking about their deaths as a way into their poetry. But it's also hard to ignore, as a mother, their impact on their children.
3 comments:
I was reading some Olena Kalytiak Davis and was struck by how much her Sexton and Plath influence showed. It's time to stop being ashamed of the influence. I'm so glad you taught them. Next time I teach poetry, they're coming in.
I love both those poets, and Plath especially. She is a wonderful writer, period.
I read a piece in the most recent New Yorker about the Wittgenstein family--an inordinately creative and brilliant family which was plagued with suicides. This is so interesting to me, the question of what seems to be wired in and what other things affect depression.
I'm intrigued by the idea of genetic and emotional heredity in the article. Now on my way towards 50, I'm ever-more aware of the failings of my own parents--one psychotic episode, emotional difficulties with retirement, some depression. If I have similar struggles with retirement will it be because of the genetic component or my own hit-the-rock-in-the-road obsession?
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