WHY ARE SYLVIA PLATHS POEMS STILL APPEALING TO A MODERN AUDIENCE?
Cynically I would say that her tragic death, her relationship with Hughes and his enduring reputation as a poet and a man have all kept her poems alive. There’s no question that her poetry is good, though, and still stands up. I think in many ways her confessional, personal style catches more the mood of a broader contemporary audience than the literary audience she initially would have appealed to. In the1950s WW2 was very recent, so her allusions in a poem like Daddy aren’t as raw as they would have seemed then, but we have seen many horrors since, and the specific retains a universality. So, although her shocking expressions do not seem quite so shocking, they still resonate, and her verse is dense without being overly complex and is therefore still very accessible.
