SYLVIA PLATH: Method and Madness
Edward Butscher
Few modern poets have generated as much controversy as Sylvia Plath. In the aftermath of her suicide in 1963 at the age of thirty, Plath's popularity and stature have steadily increased due to her powerful, self-revelatory imagery and her unflinching stare into the abyss of the human soul.
Now back in print with an updated commentary by the author, Sylvia Plath: Method and Madness masterfully explores the paradoxes of this fascinating woman: the overachieving daughter desperate for approval, the tormented poet warring with her demons, the doting mother who abandons her babies, the resentful wife raging against the confines of domesticity and an unfaithful but famous husband. Butscher shows us both victim and avenging goddess.
Reviews and Comments
"Butscher documents, thoroughly and convincingly, Plath's unbelievable and pathetic success-drive and explodes, once and for all, the romantic myth of Sylvia Plath as 'extremist poet' who died for the sake of her art, the very opposite seems to be true."
Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post Book World
"She comes across more often as one sinned against than sinning, whose art provided a temporary outlet for her pain."
Chicago Sun-Times
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