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nothingunrealistic · 4 years

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do you have any Kleinsen or deh fic recommendations? I've read most of the popular ones already, so some of the less common ones would be awesome

sure! some of these recs come from this post of mine and this post of milo’s; some are new. i’ve split them up into two sections: kleinsen and gen/other. i didn’t list more than one or two works from any particular author, but if you like a given fic, i definitely recommend checking out the author’s other work. under a cut!

kleinsen

to avoid re-reccing the most popular fics, i’ve kept it to those with under 250 kudos (as of posting this, anyway.)

you’re not the only one (who doesn’t wanna be alone tonight) by literalvampire - 27.0k, canon divergent oneshot. evan and jared decide to go to a halloween party, a decision that winds up completely changing their relationship. this fic has everything: misunderstandings and miscommunication! puns! inadvertently making people jealous! jared and alana friendship / gay solidarity! the intimacy of applying and removing someone’s makeup for them! cats, and Cats!

bake from the heart by literalvampire - 5.1k, post-canon oneshot. they’ve fought, and now they’re friends again, and to show it, jared’s helping evan (who he totally doesn’t have a crush on anymore, definitely not, no way) bake for his mom’s birthday. sweet, funny, and reclaims “cinnamon rolls” for the delicious pastry rather than oversimplified and infantilized fictional characters.

why mess up a good thing by otachi - 4.4k, post-canon oneshot. jared and evan go to a college party, to meet people and be sociable, and then decide they’d rather just go home (because oh my god, they’re roommates) and hang out together. misunderstandings and discussions of feelings ensue. great characterization, great banter, and a delightfully sweet ending.

through a window, counting birds by otachi - 4.5k, vaguely post-canon oneshot. evan and jared are just hanging out on a summer night and both quietly head over heels for one another. it’s much more about Thoughts And Feelings than about plot here, and those thoughts and feelings are perfectly on point with regards to characterization and beautifully laid out for us.

baby, be gentle (it’s my first time) by jetpacks - 8.8k, canon divergent oneshot. a 5+1 fic about the times evan and jared nearly confessed their feelings to one another, and the time they finally did. a great combination of silly teenage shenanigans & banter and desperately trying & failing to talk about feelings.

on nights so cold, i know you need some company by kkamikaze - 8.6k, post-canon / canon divergent oneshot. jared reads the letter that’s been posted online as connor’s note, figures out what it is, and immediately goes to evan to have a conversation they should have had long ago. i don’t think i’ll ever get tired of “jared reads the letter” fics, and this is a great exploration of how he might respond to that.

only fools fall for you by heklin - 7.1k, time travel au oneshot. on the first day of school, jared listens to evan’s story about falling out of a tree - and then gets sent back in time to that moment, over and over again. an exploration of the history of jared and evan’s friendship, and how jared might deal with finding out how evan really broke his arm.

watch how a cold broken teen will desperately lean on a superglued human of proof by PrinceDrew - 1.2k, soulmate au oneshot. connor, evan’s soulmate (not a typo) dies, evan falls apart, and jared is there to help evan put himself back together. deeply tragic, and probably not your thing if you can’t stand connor/evan in any form, but wonderfully written.

dear evan asshat (orphaned) - 0.8k, post-canon oneshot. after their fight, jared writes more emails to evan that he doesn’t send. one of my favorite tropes for this pairing - this fic is very short, but it packs a lot of pain in there.

Porto Ruby by captchaluff - 1.9k, pre-canon oneshot. evan goes over to jared’s house to do homework, but they end up drinking and sharing secrets instead. a really interesting look at what they might have been like in middle school, though with a less than hopeful ending.

the maroon hoodie by jamb - 4.2k, everyone lives au oneshot. all the teens are friends, and they’d all be having a great time if jared weren’t Suffering Terribly thanks to seeing evan wearing his hoodie and then trying to figure out how to date him. delightful duo of low-stakes kleinsen pining and playfully antagonistic jared & connor friendship, if that’s your bag.

have you listened to me lately? lately, i’ve been fuckin’ crazy by outlawslikeus - 1.0k, post-canon oneshot. evan’s dropped jared, and jared’s read the letter, and now jared spends his time writing emails he’ll never send. a character study of jared at his most heartbroken.

and now, for some recs of my own work, because i love attention!

love, comment, and subscribe - 6.5k, canon-compliant oneshot. takes the idea of jared’s tech inspect and extends it into a series of videos being made over the course of canon that document jared’s gradual unraveling. make sure you have “show creator style” on for this one!

futile devices - 8.3k, multichapter. a collection of prompt fics, originally posted on tumblr, with a common focus on jared and evan’s relationship and everything that tends to go unspoken between them. these cover a wide range of compliance with and divergence from canon, sometimes including the deh novel.

no comfort in the truth - 3.7k, soulmate au multichapter. specifically, it’s a spin on the “last words your soulmate ever says to you” concept, while sticking closely to the events of canon. this one is entirely will roland’s fault for saying he doesn’t think evan and jared would ever reconcile.

if you only say the word - 1.8k, canon-compliant oneshot. my own take (one of them, anyway) on Jared Reads The Letter, and one that could easily be happening in the background of the reprise of ywbf. the first thing i ever wrote (though not the first thing i published) for deh - i think it holds up still.

gen/other

most of these don’t focus on romantic relationships much or at all; since such stories generally aren’t as popular anyway, i’m not sticking closely to the 250 kudos threshold here.

Somebody To Find You by stayawake - 3.8k, canon compliant oneshot. a retelling of canon from alana’s perspective. i love alana dearly, and this does an excellent job of exploring her actions in canon, how she feels about connor’s death and others’ reactions to it, and what she might go through after posting the letter online.

feeling stupid, feeling small by nosecoffee - 2.2k, pre-canon oneshot; jared & connor, jared & evan, jared & zoe. jared is lonely, and he’s depressed, and he doesn’t feel like a person, and even hanging out with the murphys now and again won’t do much to fix that. a deeply sad look at what jared’s life, and his interactions with evan, zoe, and connor, might have been like before canon.

every sun doesn’t rise by nosecoffee - 3.5k, canon divergent oneshot; evan & connor, evan & jared. connor is dead, and now he’s a ghost, and he’d appreciate it if someone came and got his body, so he makes his way to evan to ask for help, and jared gets pulled in along the way. a downer of a fic, but morbidly funny as well.

i’ll be waiting for you until we meet again by demistories - 7.0k, soulmate au oneshot; alana & connor, evan & jared. in this au, you can talk to your soulmate (romantic or platonic) in dreams; connor’s known his soulmate for years, but he doesn’t know her name. a fun look at a connor-alana friendship, as well as connor’s possible friendships with evan, jared, and zoe in a kinder timeline.

they were kids that i once knew by PrinceDrew - 4.3k, canon divergent oneshot. evan and connor both die by suicide, though only connor’s death is recognized as such, and when a story about the two of them being best friends emerges from the public grief, jared gets lost in the middle. very well-written and deeply sad.

and mine:

the lights will arise - 3.9k, canon-compliant multichapter; alana & jared. part of the same series as if you only say the word, and examines alana’s arc during canon and how it could intersect with jared’s. all part of my agenda to 1) let alana and jared be Friends and 2) actually let us see what they’re up to during ywbf reprise.

let facts be submitted to a candid world - 11.3k, au multichapter wip (2/7 chapters); alana & jared, alana/female oc. it’s a national treasure au. alana is nicolas cage. that’s it. i have no idea if i’ll ever update this again, but you might enjoy what’s there anyway.

#inbox #anonymous #dear evan hansen #kleinsen #other people write #sometimes i write

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plexxable-reads · 4 years

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REVIEW: Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse

✪✪✪✪✪

Read: 7/22/20-7/26/20

Okay, pals. Buckle up.

I want to start this review with a confession— I DNF Game of Thrones...

I know, I know. Scold me. GRRM's style and prose is just way too slow for me. To me, he writes like he has severe ADD, and I mean no offense to anyone with attention deficit problems, but I can't read a saga that derails itself over and over and over ad nauseam. I just can't do it, can't get into it. Thank goodness GoT translated very well onto the screen (ignoring the final season that I just have decided to wipe from my memory Eternal Sunshine style to deal with the grief, obvi), or I might not have ever become familiar with that world.

I bring this up as introduction because Rebecca Roanhorse is a brilliant author and I will take this statement to my grave. She has not only managed to build a brilliantly lush and visceral world like so many legendary fantasy storytellers have done before her, but she managed to do so without needless expository! Nothing was missed, nothing was left unsaid necessarily, but I could just tell that she was very intentional with where she decided to embellish, and from a reader standpoint it absolutely thrilled me! So, thank you Rebecca for knowing that it wasn't necessary to launch into an entire 5 paragraph expository section, detailing (view spoiler)

There several other examples where she chose not to divulge useless information for the sake of taking up a page, but this one was the first time I really was like, "Oh, wow, thank god.. T H A N K Y O U".

I'm not going to go into too much crazy detail as far as plot and characters go, I'm not that kind of reviewer, and you have a very fine summary provided by the author/publisher at the top of the goodreads page, bookstore description, etc. but here's a little synopsis in case you haven't actually read anything about this book before reading this review:

This epic takes place pre-columbian infiltration, so like our author, its characters are indigenous (YES PLEASE LOVE). Thus, the lore that Roanhorse introduces us to is influenced by a lot of real native customs and culture. Every chapter begins with telling us where on the map we are, and gives us a timeline in relation to the Convergence: when the Sun, Moon, and Earth all are in alignment. The first character we are introduced to is a young boy, 10 years before convergence, Serapio. His mother carves sigils into his skin, and blinds him, because she believes he is The Crow God. It's difficult to talk much about Serapio without getting into spoiler territory, so I'll just leave it at that he's endlessly fascinating, and a far more intruiging take on GoT's (not to keep bringing this comparison back....) Bran. I have a lot of mixed up feelings about Ser, and I think anyone who has finished the book can understand why. We don't return to that timeline for some time, as the next main character we meet, 20 days from convergence, is Xiala—a ship captain and a drunk, to be direct. We meet her in a jail cell, locked up for public indecency and getting physical with a Lord Pech. She is bailed out by another merchant lord, Lord Balam, on the promise that she is to captain a ship carrying precious cargo, that must arrive across the map before convergence. Although Xiala insists to Balam that there's not enough time and that it cannot be done, he seems oddly confident that she'll do as he desires. Xiala is incredibly likeable, the kind of heroine that I love to relate to. She's moody, she's super comfortable with her (pan)sexuality... oh, and she's a Teek: she can hold influence over water. Pretty handy in her profession, as you might imagine. Our third main character in the same aforementioned timeline, is newly appointed Sun God, Naranpa. I have a great deal of love for Naranpa—she ascended despite coming from a common clan, not of Sky Made, like all of the other priesthood. She's a realist, and has very keen instincts for people: Iktan— her nonbinary sheild, knife, and former lover (who is the first character to feature nonbinary pronouns!!) is one that I'm still not sure how to feel about. That said, Abah her priesthood nemisis, can go straight to hell. Fuck Abah. The final main character arc that we follow along the timeline towards the Convergence is Okoa— Prince of Tova, Carrior Crow. His journey starts later in the timeline because he's only brought in when (view spoiler). He is so essential to the plot, and I'm excited to learn more of him from a more personal level in the installments of the series to come.

The other choice of note that had me grinning from ear to ear and screaming, "Y E S S S S S" at 2am, most likely waking my husband, dog, and our neighbors: Xe, Xir, Xed freakin pronouns. NONBINARY PEOPLE, YALL. YES, NOT JUST ONE. YES. YES. What a treat.

I gotta tell you guys, I have, like many, been making a much more conscientious effort to read more fiction by BIPOC authors, and I am kicking myself and my privilege for not doing so sooner. BIPOC authors are murdering the fantasy/sci-fi game right now, and this is just another brilliant example.

Frankly, if HBO or Netflix doesn't option

Black Sun

for a series, they would honestly be pretty fuckin stupid.

Btw, here's a map just in case you're like me and thought while reading an ARC,

hmmmm, I'm loving this but I'd really like a map...

https://simonandschusterpublishing.co...

Okay, I'm done rambling, but seriously: this is in my top 5 favorites of the year. It's amazing. Endofstory.

ENJOY!

#black sun #rebecca roanhorse #netgalley #book review #book blog

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mysteryshelf · 7 years

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MERRY MYSTERY WEEK: BLOG TOUR - The Body in the Casket

Welcome to

THE PULP AND MYSTERY SHELF Merry Mystery Week Special!

DISCLAIMER: This content has been provided to THE PULP AND MYSTERY SHELF by Partners in Crime Book Tours. No compensation was received. This information required by the Federal Trade Commission.

The Body in the Casket

by Katherine Hall Page

on Tour December 4, 2017 – January 12, 2018

Synopsis:

The inimitable Faith Fairchild returns in a chilling New England whodunit, inspired by the best Agatha Christie mysteries and with hints of the timeless board game Clue.

For most of her adult life, resourceful caterer Faith Fairchild has called the sleepy Massachusetts village of Aleford home. While the native New Yorker has come to know the region well, she isn’t familiar with Havencrest, a privileged enclave, until the owner of Rowan House, a secluded sprawling Arts and Crafts mansion, calls her about catering a weekend house party.

Producer/director of a string of hit musicals, Max Dane—a Broadway legend—is throwing a lavish party to celebrate his seventieth birthday. At the house as they discuss the event, Faith’s client makes a startling confession. “I didn’t hire you for your cooking skills, fine as they may be, but for your sleuthing ability. You see, one of the guests wants to kill me.”

Faith’s only clue is an ominous birthday gift the man received the week before—an empty casket sent anonymously containing a twenty-year-old Playbill from Max’s last, and only failed, production—Heaven or Hell. Consequently, Max has drawn his guest list for the party from the cast and crew. As the guests begin to arrive one by one, and an ice storm brews overhead, Faith must keep one eye on the menu and the other on her host to prevent his birthday bash from becoming his final curtain call.

Full of delectable recipes, brooding atmosphere, and Faith’s signature biting wit, The Body in the Casket is a delightful thriller that echoes the beloved mysteries of Agatha Christie and classic films such as Murder by Death and Deathtrap.

Book Details:

Genre: Mystery Published by: William Morrow Publication Date: December 5th 2017 Number of Pages: 238 ISBN: 0062439561 (ISBN13: 9780062439567) Series: Faith Fairchild, 24 Purchase Links: Amazon 🔗 | Barnes & Noble 🔗 | Goodreads 🔗

Read an excerpt:

Chapter One

“Have Faith in Your Kitchen,” Faith Fairchild said, answering the phone at her catering firm. She’d been busy piping choux pastry for éclairs onto a baking sheet.

“Mrs. Fairchild?”

“Yes? This is Faith Fairchild. How may I help you?”

“Please hold for Max Dane.” The voice had a plummy, slightly British tone, reminiscent of Jeeves, or Downton Abbey’s Carson. The only Max Dane Faith had heard of had been a famous Broadway musical producer, but she was pretty sure he’d died years ago. This must be another Max Dane.

She was put through quickly and a new voice said, “Hi. I know this is short notice, but I am very much hoping you are available to handle a house party I’m throwing for about a dozen guests at the end of the month. A Friday to Sunday. Not just dinner, but all the meals.”

Faith had never catered anything like this. A Friday to Sunday sounded like something out of a British pre-World War II country house novel—kippers for breakfast, Fortnum & Mason type hampers for the shoot, tea and scones, drinks and nibbles, then saddle of lamb or some other large haunch of meat for dinner with vintage clarets followed by port and Stilton—for the men only. She was intrigued.

“The first thing I need to know is where you live, Mr. Dane. Also, is this a firm date? We’ve had a mild winter so far, but January may still deliver a wallop like last year.”

A Manhattan native, Faith’s marriage more than 20 years ago to the Reverend Thomas Fairchild meant a radical change of address— from the Big Apple to the orchards of Aleford, a small suburb west of Boston. Faith had never become used to boiled dinners, First Parish’s rock hard pews and most of all, New England weather. By the end of the previous February there had been 75 inches of snow on the ground and you couldn’t see through the historic parsonage’s ground floor windows or open the front door. Teenage son Ben struggled valiantly to keep the back door clear, daily hewing a path to the garage. The resulting tunnel resembled a clip from Nanook of the North.

“I’m afraid the date is firm. The thirtieth is my birthday. A milestone one, my seventieth.” Unlike his butler or whoever had called Faith to the phone, Max Dane’s voice indicated he’d started life in one of the five boroughs. Faith was guessing the Bronx. He sounded a bit sheepish when he said “ my birthday,” as if throwing a party for himself was out of character. “And I live in Havencrest. It’s not far from Aleford, but I’d want you to be available at the house the whole time. Live in.”

Leaving her family for three days was not something Faith did often, especially since Sunday was a workday for Tom and all too occasionally Saturday was as he “polished” his sermon. (His term, which she had noticed over the years, could mean writing the whole thing.)

Ben and Amy, two years younger, seemed old enough to be on their own, but Faith had found that contrary to expectations, kids needed parents around more in adolescence than when they were toddlers. Every day brought the equivalent of scraped knees and they weren’t the kind of hurts that could be soothed by Pat The Bunny and a chocolate chip cookie. She needed more time to think about taking the job. “I’m not sure I can leave my family…” was interrupted. “I quite understand that this would be difficult,” Dane said and then he named a figure so far above anything she had ever been offered that she actually covered her mouth to keep from gasping out loud.

“Look,” he continued. “Why don’t you come by and we’ll talk in person? You can see the place and decide then. I don’t use it myself, but the kitchen is well equipped—the rest of the house too. I’ll email directions and you can shoot me some times that work. This week if possible. I want to send out the invites right away.”

Well, it wouldn’t hurt to talk, Faith thought. And she did like seeing other people’s houses. She agreed, but before she hung up curiosity won out and she asked, “Are you related to the Max Dane who produced all those wonderful Broadway musicals?”

“Very closely. As in one and the same. See you soon.”

Faith put the phone down and turned to Pix Miller, her closest friend and part-time Have Faith employee.

“That was someone wanting Have Faith to cater a weekend long birthday celebration—for an astonishing amount of money.” She named the figure in a breathless whisper. “His name is Max Dane. Have you ever heard of him?”

“Even I know who Max Dane is. Sam took me to New York the December after we were married and we saw one of his shows. It was magical—the whole weekend was. No kids yet. We were kids ourselves. We skated at Rockefeller Center by the tree and…”

Her friend didn’t go in for sentimental journeys and tempted as she was to note Pix and Sam skated on Aleford Pond then and now, Faith didn’t want to stop the flow of memories. “Where did you stay? A suite at the Plaza?” Sam was a very successful lawyer.

Pix came down to earth. “We barely had money for the show and pre-theater dinner at Twenty-One. That was the big splurge. I honestly can’t remember where we stayed and I should, because that’s where—” She stopped abruptly and blushed, also unusual Pix behavior.

“Say no more. Nine months later along came Mark?”

“Something like that,” Pix mumbled and then in her usual more assertive voice, added “You have to do this. Not because of the money, although the man must be loaded! Think of who might be there. And the house must be amazing. We don’t have anything booked for then and I can keep an eye on the kids.”

The Millers lived next door to the parsonage and their three now grown children had been the Fairchilds’ babysitters. Pix played a more essential role: Faith’s tutor in the unforeseen intricacies of childrearing as well as Aleford’s often arcane mores. Faith’s first social faux pas as a new bride—inviting guests for dinner at eight o’clock— had happily been avoided when her first invite, Pix, gently told Faith the town’s inhabitants would be thinking bed soon at that hour, not a main course.

Faith had started her catering business in the city that never slept before she was married and was busy all year long. Here January was always a slow month for business. The holidays were over and things didn’t start to pick up until Valentine’s Day—and even then scheduling events was risky. It all came down to weather.

Pix was at the computer. Years ago she’d agreed to work at Have Faith keeping the books, the calendar, inventory—anything that did not involve any actual food preparation.

“We have a couple of receptions at the Ganley Museum and the MLK breakfast the standing clergy host.”

The first time Faith heard the term, “standing clergy”, which was the town’s men and women of any cloth, she pictured an upright somberly garbed group in rows like ninepins. And she hadn’t been far off.

“That’s pretty much it,” Pix added, “except for a few luncheons and Amelia’s baby shower—I think she baby sat for you a couple of times when she was in high school.”

“I remember she was very reliable,” Faith said.

“Hard to believe she’s the same age as Samantha and having her second!” Pix sounded wistful. She was the type of woman born to wear a “I Spoil My Grandchildren” tee shirt. Faith wouldn’t be surprised if there were a drawer somewhere in the Miller’s house filled with tiny sweaters and booties knit by Pix, “just to be ready.” Mark Miller, the oldest, was married, but he and his wife did not seem to be in a rush to start a family.

Samantha, the middle Miller, had a long-term beau, Caleb. They were living together in trendy Park Slope, Brooklyn and Sam, an old-fashioned pater familias, had to be restrained from asking Caleb his intentions each time the young couple came to Aleford. Pix was leaning that way herself, she’d told Faith recently, noting that young couples these days were so intent on careers they didn’t hear the clock ticking.

Faith had forgotten that Amelia—who apparently had paid attention to time— was Samantha’s age and quickly changed the subject to what was uppermost in her mind—the Dane job. “Where is Havencrest?” she asked. “I thought I knew all the neighboring towns.”

“It’s not really a town so much as an enclave between Weston and Dover. I don’t think it even has a zip code. I’ve never been there, but Mother has. You can ask her about it. The houses all date to the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. I believe there’s a gatehouse at the entrance. It’s an early equivalent of the mid century modern planned communities like Moon Hill in Lexington. Havencrest wasn’t a bunch of architects like that one though. Just very rich Boston Brahmin families who wanted privacy and plenty of space. I wonder how Max Dane ended up there? From what Mother has said, the houses don’t change hands, just generations.”

“I think I’ll check my email and see if there’s anything from him yet,” Faith said. “And maybe drop by to see Ursula on my way home.” Stopping to visit with Ursula Lyman Rowe, Pix’s mother, was no chore. The octogenarian was one of Faith’s favorite people. She turned back to the éclairs, which were part of a special order, and added a few more to bring to her friend.

“I know you’ll take the job,” Pix said. “I’m predicting the weekend of a lifetime!”

***

Author Bio:

Katherine Hall Page is the author of twenty-three previous Faith Fairchild mysteries, the first of which received the Agatha Award for best first mystery. The Body in the Snowdrift was honored with the Agatha Award for best novel of 2006. Page also won an Agatha for her short story “The Would-Be Widower.” The recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award at Malice Domestic, she has been nominated for the Edgar Award, the Mary Higgins Clark Award, and the Macavity Award. She lives in Massachusetts, and Maine, with her husband.

Catch Up With Our Author On: Website 🔗, Goodreads 🔗, & Facebook 🔗!

Tour Participants:

Visit these other great hosts on this tour for more great reviews, interviews, guest posts, and giveaways!

Giveaway:

This is a rafflecopter giveaway hosted by Partners in Crime Virtual Book Tours for Katherine Hall Page and Witness Impulse. There will be 3 winners of one (1) physical copy of Katherine Hall Page’s The Body in the Casket. The giveaway begins on December 4, 2017 and runs through January 14, 2018. This giveaway is open to US addressess only.

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MERRY MYSTERY WEEK: BLOG TOUR – The Body in the Casket was originally published on the Wordpress version of The Pulp and Mystery Shelf with Shannon Muir

#shannon muir #pulp and mystery shelf

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thephilologist-blog · 8 years

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Autobiographical motifs in the poetry by Sylvia Plath - Katarzyna Chojnacka

The following article is dedicated to the subject of the autobiographical poetry of Sylvia Plath. The fundamental statement is based on the idea that Plath’s writings cannot be analyzed and understood without taking into consideration her autobiography, due to the fact that the border-lines between lyrical I and the author are blured: Sylvia Plath’s real poetic world is rooted in her own private experience (M. Perloff, 1973, p. 173). On the other hand, as Jerzy Kamionowski claims, the essence of confessional poetry means crossing one’s own bounds through conscious exploitation of the tension between truth, experience and selfcreation, selfproduction(J. Kamionowski, 2003, p. 47). He also noticed that Plath transforms her personal experience into poetic substance which serves a certain purpose – expressing general truths and universal and versatile problems of contemporary world (Ibid, p. 20). Other critics agree that Plath’s poetry is based on experience but it has been transformed:

Nevertheless, her poetry is not primarily literal and confessional… In Plath the personal concerns and everyday role are transformed into something impersonal, by being absorbed into a timeless mythic system (J. Kroll, 1978, p. 2).

Moreover, she fascinates her readers and critics by her inconsistent personality and multi-faced poetry. One of the powers of her writings comes from the tense and ambiguous attitudes towards her life as an individual, a woman (writer, mother, daughter and wife). The attention testified to Plath’s evaluation of herself: Arrogant, I think I have written lines which qualify me to be The Poetess of America(S. Plath, 2000, p. 352). Nevertheless, her poetry has posed myths and cult with diversity of interpretations.

Sylvia Plath’s real poetic world is rooted in her own private experience (M. Perloff, 1973, p. 173) and Plath’s personal life and her writing are inseparable. The above statements point at crucial keys for interpretations which cannot be omitted. Plath’s poems are more evidence when one takes her life fixed in her journals into consideration. Plath scholarship has been focused on the autobiographical correspondences in her poetry and especially on images and themes related to death. These interpretations follow not only her suicide and subsequent popularity in America, but also such interpretations often rely heavily upon The Bell Jar, first published only a month before her death, and afterwards deemed autobiographical by critics. Moreover, they are inclined to the psychoanalytical approaches due to Plath’s mental disorder and psychiatric treatment. That is why, as it was presented it the previous chapter, woman in Plath’s poetry appears not as a single identity but as a woman of ‘many masks’ whose personality appears as inconsistent, dual, conflicted and unstable. As Halbrook claims, Plath’s works draw readers’ attention to the psychological disorder known as the split personality or schizophrenia:

There are… certain poems in her oeuvre… which distort reality and follow such a sick logic that they must be declared pathological. My task must be to try to demonstrate that these are psychotic and why: and try to demonstrate how and why the poet fell victim to these tendencies (D. Halbrook, 1976, p. 239).

Whether it is true or not, the point is that Plath was not sure about who she is and how to present herself which is reflected in her poetry and the picture of a woman. To name a few of these doubts, is should be recalled some of her confessions:

You walked in, laughing, tears, welling confused, mingling in your throat. How can you be so many women to so many people, oh you strange girl? (K. Moses, 2000, p. 260).

How much of my solitude for other human is real and honest, how much is a feigned painted on by society, I do not know. I am afraid to face myself… I heartily wish that there were some absolute knowledge, some person whom I could trust to evaluate me and tell me the truth (S. Plath, 2000: p. 97).

I would like to be everyone, a cripple, a dying man, a whore, and then come back to write about my thoughts, my emotions, as that person. But I am not omniscient. I have to live my life, and it is the only one I’ll ever have. And you cannot regard your own life with objective curiosity all the time (Ibid, p. 17).

Plath had a few suicidal attempts and mental breakdowns and therefore in her poems and prose many references to her hospitalization and treatment can be found. Medical imagery includes illness and health, medical environment and anatomic pathology which serve the purpose of her inner monologues (R. Didlake, 2009, p. 135). In the previous chapter, it was discussed how Plath adopts medical environment and hospital scenery when it comes to childbearing as in the poem Three Women. It can be observed that her works are filled with body images which are pathologic and shown with a great precision as the process of vivisection. These images arose from Plath’s personal experiences like recurrent acute sinusitis, a fractured leg, a traumatic sexual encounter, recurrent depression, psychotherapy, electroconvulsive therapy, insulin-induced shock treatment, injuries associated with a suicide attempt, childbirth, miscarriage and an appendectomy. These experiences gave her unique perspective and a great insight into human response to disease and illness (Ibid, p. 139). Perhaps the most haunting example, however, is found in the poem Kindness. Here she selects a medical reference to convey the collapse of all distinction between herself and her work and the world into which both were flowing without hope of control:

The blood jet is poetry,

there is no stopping it (S. Plath, 200, p. 270).

Plath uses her realistic perspective to create surreal and alien landscapes in which isolation, fear and dread are the dominant features as in the poems Tulips or In Plaster. She concludes that she is not able to recover and collect the pieces of her personality. The feeling of split is omnipresent during her hospitalization:

And I was scared, because she was shaped just the way I was (…)

Without me, she wouldn't exist, so of course she was grateful. (…)

I wasn't in any position to get rid of her.

She'd supported me for so long I was quite limp — (…)

I used to think we might make a go of it together—

After all, it was a kind of marriage, being so close.

Now I see it must be one or the other of us (Ibid, p. 160).

Tulips links hospital environment with the speaker’s emotions. Plath speaks about the décor which is white and sterile and hospital staff who took her identity:

I have given my name and my day-clothes up to the nurses

And my history to the anesthetist and my body to surgeons (Ibid, p. 160).

Surgeons’ attitude towards the patient and her psyche is cold, indifferent and terrifying:

My body is a pebble to them, they tend it as water

Tends to the pebbles it must run over, smoothing them gently.

They bring me numbness in their bright needles, they bring me sleep (Ibid, p. 160).

After psychiatric treatment, Esther Greenwood from Plath’s novel The Bell Jar seems to be on a good way to recover. Critics are inclined to the fact that she is in some positive sens ‘reborn’ even if her future is uncertain and unknown for the readers (D. Bonds, 1990, p. 53).

The vision of Plath’s treatment is slightly different in the poem Fever 103°. The speaker’s physical condition has an impact on her surreal view of the world.Moreover, her horrifying situation contributes her symptoms.So do the powerfuldrugsshe depends upon to control these symptoms. Fever 103 ̊ refers only to home remedies: Lemon water, chicken / Water, water make me retch (S. Plath, 2000, p. 231). However, in The Jailer the speaker depends upon serious pharmaceuticals:My sleeping capsule, my red and blue zeppelin / Drops me from a terrible altitude(Ibid, p. 226). There is an awareness here that the drugs are necessary to the speaker and that she needs the chemicals to survive her nightmare life. However, there is a recognition, also, that they make her vulnerable to other forms of abuse and harm, and impede her ability to fight or escape (T. Brain, 2014, p. 19).

As Jo Gill concludes, the synecdochic representation of the self-split into body parts is a motif common to the work of other women poets and writers and is recurrent in Plath’s writing from this point on and he refers to Vigrina Woolf’s comments of her own writing process:

A shock is at once in my case followed by the desire to explain it . . . it is only by putting it into words that I make it whole; this wholeness means that it has lost its power to hurt me; it gives me, perhaps, because by doing so I take away the pain, a great delight to put the severed parts together (J. Gill, 2008, p. 36).

Plath admitted that her poems arose from personal emotional experiences, but also that she was a firm believer in the necessity to manipulating these experiences in order to make them relevant to the larger things. Much of Plath’s first person poetry originates from her own attempts to recognise and reconcile her own paradoxes, the ones she found inside herself and the ones she faced in the world she lived in (P. Annas, 1988, p. 5). To name the most striking, Susan Bassnett emphasized that Plath is called a confessional poet, an extremist poet, a post-romantic poet, a pre-feminist poet, a suicidal poet and associates her with a victim of male brutality, destroyed by a faithless husband, having been undermined by an ambitious mother and obsessed with death from childhood due to her father (S. Bassnett, 2005, p. 117). Taking her attitude toward men and women in contemporary patriarchal society into consideration, critical analysis of Plath’s writing began to shift to the feminist approach underlying socially constructed female gender roles. Plath was aware that not only society but also art was dominated by males and she attempted to fight against the male-established ‘high-art’:

The second half of the 1970s is dramatically defined by the emergence of feminist literary studies which, by adopting a largely biographical/cultural approach, begin to establish Plath at the centre of feminist canon (C. Brennan,1999, p. 53).

As Claire Brennan claims, Plath escapes enclosure and restriction, both in her life and writing by offering myths of transcendence and liberation similar to the strategies employed by many nineteenth-century women writers (C. Brennan, 1999, p. 54).Moreover, the poet (who was a mother of two children) explores metaphors of maternity and creation. Motherhood seems to be the challenge to her writing career and therefore she decides to brave the domestic difficulties which in her poetry appears as transforming ‘maternal self’ into a ‘creative self’. She speaks for herself as if she rises out of the domesticity and becomes a triumphant woman writer. According to Bassnett, Plath prefigures recent trends in feminist criticism because she needs to think through the roles of a woman as daughter to a man,as daughter to a woman, as mother in turn to a female and male child (S. Bassnett, 2005, p. 63).

As it was shown in the previous chapter, Plath deals with her femininity in different ways – showing her isolation, loneliness or fighting for her own voice in society and male-female relationship, demonstrating her own power as a woman and a poet. Pamela Annas suggests that:

Sylvia Plath’s poetry can be characterized as a search not so much for definition of self as for redefinition of self. The dialectic of Plath’s poetry is, first, the tension between a self-denied self and an other-denied self, and second, the tension between the self-image of the poet and the poet’s image of society (P. Annas, 1988, p. 7).

This statement could be the reason for recognizing Plath as schizoid person for other critics but more probably it shows Plath’s intention to deal with male poets by establishing her own identity and her distinctive role so that she could free herself from oppressive male tradition and even her husband who was a poet too:

Plath appropriates a centrally American tradition: the heroic ego confronting the sublime, but she brilliantly revises this tradition by turning Emerson’s ‘great and creative self’ into a heroine instead of a hero. Seizing a mythic power, the Plath of the poems transmutes the domestic and the ordinary into the hallucinatory, the utterly strange. Her revision of the romantic ego dramatizes its tendency toward disproportion and excess, and she is fully capable of both using and mocking this heightened sense of self, as she does in her poem Lady Lazarus (N. Baym, 2003, p. 2967).

Moreover, Plath articulates the polarity between being a mother and her personal ambitions. That is why she associates her creativity and artistic creation with woman’s fertility as in the poem Stillborn. Here biological and artistic creativity are entwined and the meaning of the poem is about intractability of language and even lack of inspiration, vital force when it comes to writing. For Plath as a writer the loss of a creative insight brings the suffering similar to those connected with miscarriage. The speaker confess:

These poems do not live: it's a sad diagnosis.

(…) and their mother near dead with distraction (S. Plath, 2000, p. 142).

Plath, utterly differently presents her artistic powers in Ariel in which the speaker is aware of her own potential. The poem is full of motion and powerful elements:

God's lioness,

How one we grow,

Pivot of heels and knees!

(…)

And I

Am the arrow (…) (Ibid, p. 239).

Plath struggled both in her writing and personal life with the concept of marriage which she both feared as stultifying to her creativity and desired for its sexual and emotional intimacy (K. Moses, 2010, p. 37). Esther Greenwood, the heroine from Plath’s The Bell Jar comments:

That's one of the reasons I never wantedto get married. The last thing I wanted was infinite security and to be the place an arrow shoots off from. I wanted change and excitement and to shoot off in all directions myself, like the colored arrows from a Fourth of July rocket (S. Plath, 2010, p. 125).

There are no doubts that her negative attitude towards men and even life was caused somehow by her father. Sylvia Plath was obsessed with his image which she recalled many times in her writings. Otto Plath died when Sylvia was a child. When she grew up she admitted that this tragedy ended her childhood. In The Bell Jar, Esther Greenwood says frankly:

I felt happier than I had been since I was about nine and running along the hot white beaches with my father the summer before he died. (…) I thought how strange it had never occurred to me before that I was only purely happy until I was nine years old (S. Plath, 2010, p. 112).

In poems such as Electra on Azalea Path, the daughter seeks absolution; the father’s abandonment of her is now read as a fault of her own. As Ralph Didlake claims, in the poem, the defining borderland between the poet and her father is populated with amputation stumps, physical decay, gangrene, dismemberment and prosthetic limbs. The recurrence of similar images in other poems that relate to her father’s death is nothing less than a horribilisfascinans, or a scene to which she is compelled to return again and again (R. Didlake,2009, p. 141).

Above all, Electra is a woman who is torn between loyalties. The daughter is left with the loss of the father to whom she had given her earliest love and with the words of the mother who explains in her own terms how he died. The ancient and modern Electras are again fused here, asked to trust the mother but seeking to know the father for themselves (S. Bassnett,2005, p. 90).

Probably the most striking image of Plath’s father is presented in highly-emotional poem Daddy which critics are the most interested in. Father-daughter relations in Plath’s poetry was the central obsession from the beginning to the end of her life and career and was also based on ambivalent feelings: love-hate. Judith Kroll claims that Daddy is a love poem but for Margaret Uroff the poem is about revenge. Nonetheless, the poem stands as the most fundamental and crucial element especially as the use of Holocaust imagery. Daddy explores themes of power and powerlessness – the poem opens with the scene of a adult child:

You do not do, you do not do

Any more, black shoe

In which I have lived like a foot

For thirty years, poor and white (S. Plath, 2000, p. 222).

The daughter searches for a father who both must be killed, and is already dead: Daddy, I have had to kill you. Her father appears as a man in black with a Meinkampf look/And a love of the rack and the scewand the speaker seems to be a victim of his authority by making allusions to feeling like a Jew. Plath declares: I have always been scared of you and tries to deal with her traumatic past at the end of the poem: Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through. In this poem, however, it could be observed how Plath changes her attitude toward her father- from love and admiration which is seen in the verse: And I said I do, I do to the feelings of hate and contempt (J. Gill, 2008, p. 62). Sylvia Plath explains her intentions when it comes to Daddy in this way:

Here is a poem spoken by a girl with an Electra complex. Her father died while she thought he was God. Her case is complicated by that fact that her father was also a Nazi and her mother very possibly part Jewish. In the daughter the two strains marry and paralyse each other – she has to act out the awful little allegory once over before she is free of it (S. Bassnett, 2005, p. 91).

The major problem in Daddy is that the daughter cannot communicate with her father. Plath creates an impression of great speed and furious energy by using broken and incomplete sentences, exclamations, repetitions and German language:

I never could talk to you.

The tongue stuck in my jaw . . .

I could hardly speak.

I thought every German was you.

And the language obscene (S. Plath, p. 223).

That is why her father is depicted as Nazi, vampire, torturer and devil who she fears. The monstrous male figure of Daddy has its female counterpart inMedusa. Many critics point out at daughter-mother relation in Plath’s works. Medusa (the poem discussed in the previous chapter) has its roots in experiencing mother’s control and interference in the daughter’s life. Daddy and Medusa are strong, bitter poems, capable of being read on many levelssimultaneously. Similar visions of Plath father appear in the Colossus which suggests in the title some gigantic and monolithic totem. The speaker compares colossus to her father talking about her incapability of making him consistent in her mind:

I shall never get you put together entirely,

Pieced, glued, and properly jointed (Ibid, p. 129).

The image of Plath’s father surpasses her all the time. She feels some boundaries when it comes to clarifying his importance and sense in her life. For no doubts, death-centered motifs in Plath’s writing arose from bereavement and unstable psyche. In The Bell Jar she uses sophisticated but captivating metaphor to justifying her obsessions and limitations as a woman and human being which have great impact on her suicide in 1963:

(…)because wherever I sat -- on the deck of a ship or at a street café in Paris or Bangkok -- I would be sitting under the same glass bell jar, stewing in my own sour air (…) The air of the bell jar wadded round me and I couldn't stir (S. Plath, 2010, p. 261).

To the person in the bell jar, blank and stopped as a dead baby, the world itself is the bad dream (Ibid, p. 330).

Title bell jar accompanied Plath from the moment of her father’s death till the moment when she killed herself. Apart from the bell jar, Plath also uses a motif of fig tree. She seems to be seduced by the aesthetic qualities of the tree which are solidity and abundance:

I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide,the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet (Ibid, p. 115-116).

The heroine is unable to make a choice, but in fact ,she is starving to deathas if she wanted everything for herself. This allegorical story shows woman’s life choices in which one choice cancels out another. As a result, the woman stands in a trap which deprives her fulfillment and fullness of femininity (J. Gill, 2008, p. 77).

As Susan Bassnett (2005, p. 136) claims, Plath’s poems are prefiguration of her end and the epitaph. What can any reader conclude from those lines in her last poem, Edge, is that Plath perceives death as a desirable shape of woman’s body and even some kind of release of her soul. Death means perfection and conscious choice.

According to Margaret Uroff, in the image of the rising lioness / Virgin / red comet, she identified a female figure violent enough to triumph in a world that Plath imagined would reduce the woman to a jade statue – but a femalealso with creatively violent powers of her own (M. Uroff, 1979, p. 169).

Although references to Plath’s biography and life are somehow risky when it comes to analyzing her poetry and prose, it is also justified due to the fact that after her death (and even because of her suicide) her writings became more popular. Inquiring readers acclaim Plath as a legend and her works as the sign of the times. Moreover, as in case of this kind of artists, since her death the cult of Sylvia Plath has begun and critics have taken attempts to reveal her true face from behind Plath’s many masks.

Sylvia Plath’s reception has been inspired by many theories. During the 1960s, critics highlighted confessional and post-romantic tendencies in her works. In the 1970s, theories on psychoanalysis and feminism gave crucial keys to analyze Plath’s poetry with regard to her autobiography. The significant number of critics places her among the most influential modern women writers and social, cultural commentators determined by traditional gender roles and patriarchal model of society. Plath’s poetry stands in relation to particular historical, cultural and ideological circumstances. To name a few, it were references to Holocaust or ‘Eisenhower Era’. Plath transformed her personal experiences as a writer, wife, mother, daughter and participant of social and cultural life into her own poetic mythology, collective system of archetypes to present a woman and femininity. In subsequent Plath studies, critics focused on aesthetic functions and language in her poetry taking self-creation, performativity,interactive art, and a renewed interest in spatial form into consideration. In the late 1980s, a feminist critique based on the philosophical, psychoanalytical and poststructuralist positions adopted by French feminist thinkers have proposed new ways of reading Plath’s work. It was the concept l’´ecrituref´eminine, which derives from the work of H´el`eneCixous, Julia Kristevaand Luce Irigaray, among others, proposes a theory of sexual difference:

It suggests that women writers (and indeed some men) challenge or escape the patriarchal ‘symbolic order’ of language by returning to the realm of the semiotic – a language of the body which exists before the symbolic and allows women a space wholly attuned to the natural rhythms and cycles of their bodies (J. Gill, 2008, p. 121).

Numerous studies have discussed the controversy surroundingSylvia Plath, her legacy, and Ted Hughes’s role as her editor. Others haveaccounted for parts of the critical heritage, the archive, the literary estate,and the Plath biographies. Death-centered, extreme poems, suicide, tragic life covered with legend and mystery gave basics to place Sylvia Plath among contemporary ‘The Cursed Poets’ (les poétes maudits).The idea comes from France and explains strong relationship between artist’s biography and writing: life writes and describes poetry and poetry completes life.

Being on unstable ground, it could be concluded that the woman in Plath’s poetry could be identified with the author itself but more probably her writing has tendencies to transform private experiences into collective and general truths.

The paper is based on: Chojnacka Katarzyna, 2013, the BA thesis entitled THE PICTURE OF A WOMAN IN THE POETRY BY SYLVIA PLATH

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