Actually, through the course of the research, I became a more firm believer in my own thesis, because even I would have these moments, and my editor would write in the margin, “Don’t fall into the Plath trap. Heather Clark Author / Professor of Contemporary Poetry at the University of Huddersfield 1d. So I started with that sense of mission, but I certainly don’t think it’s something that everyone starts with. Thank you to Bamba Press for making the Spanish launch of Red Comet such a success. I felt like she’s so brilliant and witty and cerebral and ironic, and a lot of that was getting lost in the popular imagination.

I had this sense of injustice, or frankly anger, about the ways in which she had become a writer whose name was often synonymous with madness and tragedy. But I don’t necessarily believe that’s the case. It’s been drilled into my head that you need a thesis. Heather Clark: I guess I did begin with that thesis, probably because of my academic training. “Plath does something akin to Picasso in his early Cubist drawings,” Clark writes, “.a calculated, radical gesture born of impatience with a tradition that had run dry.My question is, does biography always begin with an agenda? You already had a previous understanding of this woman’s work as a scholar, but did you begin with that thesis or did the research show you what that thesis was? Just two years before her death, Plath jettisoned worn-out forms for a bolder register, embracing internal rhyme, expressive line breaks, and autobiography: The circus animals of her imagination were liberated from their cages, pacing and stalking the masculinist canon. Heather Clark, Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath Vintage, London, 2020, pp. Clark also recasts Hughes as both muse and monster, a generous reader with a cruel streak.īut Red Comet is fundamentally a work of criticism, exploring the technical leaps in Ariel, the breakthrough collection that made Plath’s name.

Here, The Bell Jar is understood not as a teen cult work (“When we see a female character reading The Bell Jar in a movie, we know she will make trouble”) but as a declaration of independence from postwar America. Suicide attempts take a backseat to fiercely focused genius. From her youth in suburban Boston to her eminent academic accomplishments and stormy relationship with fellow poet Ted Hughes, Red Comet illuminates Plath’s life in unprecedented detail.

Heather clark red comet