DARKNESS MELTING

A freshly critical approach to Sylvia Plath’s poetry challenges assumptions that have shaped readers’ understanding of one of the 20th century’s most studied poets.

Niccolini’s work of extensive literary analysis has a provocative thesis: Sylvia Plath’s poems were not inspired by her well-known struggles with mental health or the tensions in her marriage to fellow poet Ted Hughes, but rather by her own writer’s block. In her verse, per the author, “emptiness became the giver-of-inspiration paradoxically.” The book mainly consists of close readings of many of Plath’s poems, mostly taken from the posthumously published collection Ariel (“Critic George Steiner called the harrowing Ariel poems a ‘bitter triumph’ that Plath ‘could not return from’”). Niccolini posits that metaphors of silent nature, cut thumbs, and bubbling cauldrons represent the poet seeking (and often failing to find) the source of poetic inspiration. The author supports her readings with a biographical narrative emphasizing Hughes’ influence, particularly his conception of inspiration as a divine force to be worshipped and channeled through various superstitions and practices. Niccolini’s interpretations are persuasive and illuminating; they provide fresh insight into Plath’s haunting, mysterious metaphors and reveal a poet tormented by a ceaseless desire to create and a hounding fear of her own impotence. What’s missing is a clear sense of the author’s own estimation of Plath as a poet—Niccolini wavers on the fundamental question of her artistic success. Was Plath’s work (as many claimed during her lifetime) mannered and derivative, lacking an authentic voice, or did her own battles with creativity lead to something fresh and personal? The author hesitates to provide a definitive answer to this question, resulting in a fresh and compelling reading of an author’s work that sometimes questions whether these poems are worth the reader’s time.

A rigorous study that reveals hidden dimensions of Plath’s craft.