The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
by Sylvia Plath
First published 2000 · English · 767 pages
- Poetry
- Biography and memoir
This is the fullest published version of Plath's private journals, covering her years from student days at Smith College through her time in Cambridge and her marriage. Earlier editions had been cut, and this one restores much more of what she wrote. The entries record daily life, reading, ambitions, friendships, moods and her struggle to become a writer, along with candid reflections on love and self-doubt. Readers can see how she trained herself in observation and craft. It is valuable both as a personal document and as background to her poems and prose.
Quotes
I talk to God but the sky is empty.
It is raining. I am tempted to write a poem. But I remember what it said on one rejection slip: After a heavy rainfall, poems titled RAIN pour in from across the nation.
The blood of love welled up in my heart with a slow pain.
With me, the present is forever, and forever is always shifting, flowing, melting. This second is life. And when it is gone it is dead. But you can't start over with each new second. You have to judge by what is dead. It's like quicksand... hopeless from the start.