Sylvia Plath: The Poet and Her Poems
Sylvia Plath is an iconic American poet who has been offered to us through her biography and history. The purpose of this course is to look at that history, but also to confront some of the most powerful poems of the twentieth century. We will not ignore the biography, because that exposes some of the challenges Plath faced in the path to be taken seriously as a poet. But we will not end there. The poems address fears, struggles and questions we all face. So we will look to connect with the poems themselves beyond the reductive story of the poet that we have been offered.Susan Facknitz taught American Poetry and Modernism, as well as Irish Literature at JMU for 32 years. She is most interested in peoples' interaction with and response to the poems themselves. Each poem is an opportunity to explore some aspect of the world from both our own and another perspective.
Please contact our office regarding availability of this course:
540-568-4253
pce@jmu.edu