Red Comet - BookWyrm

Hardcover, 1168 pages

English language

Published Dec. 15, 2020 by Penguin Random House.

ISBN:: 978-1-78733-253-9
OCLC Number:: 1126796451

(1 review)

The first biography of this great and tragic poet that takes advantage of a wealth of new material, this is an unusually balanced, comprehensive and definitive life of Sylvia Plath.

Determined not to read Plath's work as if her every act, from childhood on, was a harbinger of her tragic fate, Clark presents new materials about Plath's scientist father, her juvenile writings, and her psychiatric treatment, and evokes a culture in transition in the mid-twentieth century, in the shadow of the atom bomb and the Holocaust, as she explores Sylvia's world: her early relationships and determination not to become a conventional woman and wife; her conflicted ties to her well-meaning, widowed mother; her troubles at the hands of an unenlightened mental-health industry; and her Cambridge years and thunderclap meeting with Ted Hughes, a true marriage of minds that would change the course of poetry in English.

Clark's clear-eyed sympathy for …

The first biography of this great and tragic poet that takes advantage of a wealth of new material, this is an unusually balanced, comprehensive and definitive life of Sylvia Plath.

Determined not to read Plath's work as if her every act, from childhood on, was a harbinger of her tragic fate, Clark presents new materials about Plath's scientist father, her juvenile writings, and her psychiatric treatment, and evokes a culture in transition in the mid-twentieth century, in the shadow of the atom bomb and the Holocaust, as she explores Sylvia's world: her early relationships and determination not to become a conventional woman and wife; her conflicted ties to her well-meaning, widowed mother; her troubles at the hands of an unenlightened mental-health industry; and her Cambridge years and thunderclap meeting with Ted Hughes, a true marriage of minds that would change the course of poetry in English.

Clark's clear-eyed sympathy for Hughes, his lover Assia Wevill, and other demonized players in the arena of Plath's suicide promotes a deeper understanding of her final days, with their outpouring of first-rate poems. Along with illuminating readings of the poems themselves, Clark's meticulous, compassionate research brings us closer than ever to the spirited woman and visionary artist who blazed a trail that still lights the way for women poets the world over.

5 editions

Geoff reviewed Red Comet by Heather Clark

Review of 'Red Comet' on 'Storygraph'

4 stars

A recommendation from my poet-child, Isabel, Red Comet is an intense and deeply engrossing thousand-page biography of Sylvia Plath. Full disclosure: I’ve never seriously read Plath’s poetry. I’ve never even read The Bell Jar. (Both I plan to remedy soon).

Red Comet twines Plath’s poetry with her life story. Given the deeply personal and autobiographical nature of her poetry, this turns out to be a beautiful way to come to understand her better. All along, as we read about her life, we read as well about what she was writing. This is sometimes deeply revealing, and sometimes shockingly incongruent, which speaks both to her honesty and her craft. I only wish everybody left us such a passionate inscrutable delirious treasure map to their psyche. As often happens with biographies, I came away with such an admiration for Plath’s unique brilliance.

And that brings us to the end. Like …

A recommendation from my poet-child, Isabel, Red Comet is an intense and deeply engrossing thousand-page biography of Sylvia Plath. Full disclosure: I’ve never seriously read Plath’s poetry. I’ve never even read The Bell Jar. (Both I plan to remedy soon).

Red Comet twines Plath’s poetry with her life story. Given the deeply personal and autobiographical nature of her poetry, this turns out to be a beautiful way to come to understand her better. All along, as we read about her life, we read as well about what she was writing. This is sometimes deeply revealing, and sometimes shockingly incongruent, which speaks both to her honesty and her craft. I only wish everybody left us such a passionate inscrutable delirious treasure map to their psyche. As often happens with biographies, I came away with such an admiration for Plath’s unique brilliance.

And that brings us to the end. Like a lot of people, all I really knew about Plath going in was intensity and tragedy. Of course Clark must address Plath’s ultimate suicide, and she does not flinch. Clark is a stylist, and while the book sticks to the facts, with an open and compassionate approach, it does so almost poetically. This is especially true in the final chapters. As Plath’s mental state deteriorates, the book picks up pace, sentences are shorter, more disjointed, and more intense. As we read about her descent, we feel it in a very effecting way.

I got a phone call very near the end. I took the call. But I was anxious, agitated, and desperate to get off the phone–to finish the work of bringing her tragedy to an end. I felt a genuine dread in the anticipation of the bang. I’m not a fan of platitudes. But more than ever before I felt the significance of the line “suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.” Here was a woman of intense brilliance. She had a life full of love and possibility. Her illness proved too massive a weight. It crushed her. And the tragedy of it is almost overwhelming. All I could think, all I could feel in the end was – what a loss. What a loss.