Her waifish mouth was not a sufficient indicator of the devastatingly heavy words that spent a lifetime rushing out of it. With a fixed, widened vernacular and a mythical lightness in her utter weight of being, Sylvia Plath wrote volumes of poetics. She left the world to stand tongue-tied with her bravery of thought. Deemed the foundress of confessional poetry, she is more arguably part of a female movement in literature that chose to speak their own language, in their own restless voice that refused to be silenced. Women have a history of being subdued in an overt manner, so any truth-telling could appear confessional. We still stand with her words in our hands like a ghost bouquet tracing her thoughts and grasping at her fierce preciousness like flowers we wish not to dry.
A flower left out.
My bones hold a stillness, the far
Fields melt my heart.
-Sylvia Plath, Ariel
Words by Brit Parks