I’ve just blown through Plath’s Collected. Again. She does get a little. . . dark. I did a quick Google search for Plath and ecocriticism and didn’t get a lot of focused hits, which I find odd because she seems terribly interested in the landscape, flora and fauna around her. She was a horsey girl and went on a nine week camping trip with her husband around the US at one point. She has poem after poem devoted to animals, plants, beaches, oceans, hills and on and on. She was a beekeeper, for chrissakes. And her relationship to these bits of nature aren’t romanticized. Beaches smell bad. The world threatens. Gardens provide and enclose. Animals die and rot, including humans. The confluence of science and nature can be awful, though it also reveals deep truths.
In the early going, the poems can be a bit drab, but during the late 1950s and early 60s, they sizzle. Except for ‘63. Not a good year. I’m frankly stunned that she’s not one of the poets the ecocrit/ecopoetry people have gone back to reclaim. But then, she’s not a man.
Oh. Did I say that out loud?
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