Poets Blog

Poets: Atwood vs Dickinson vs Plath

In class, we researched about these three poets about their personal lives and the factors that might have impacted their writings. The common thing that I found in these three poets is that they all had some struggles throughout their lives. Atwood experienced a divorce with her first husband, Dickinson lost several her close friends, and Plath divorced with her husband and killed herself. They all were unlucky in love! Dickinson never got married, Atwood and Plath got divorced. These factors definitely influenced their writings because I read many poems that deal with struggles and death.
The poet that I think I most alike is Sylvia Plath. Although Plath lived the most “dark” life, I found myself that I have the most similarities with her. First, Plath has travelled many times in her life. She was born in the U.S but later moved to England and then moved back to the U.S again. Similarly, I have travelled many times in my life. I was born in Korea, moved to China, moved to Canada, and then came back to Korea. I think moving to different countries may have affected her works because she may have experienced a culture shock and met so many different people that might have changed her life such as her husband. I, too, experienced the culture shock whenever I moved to different countries. For me, this was very stressful for me at first because I have to step up and try to adjust to the different culture.
The next similarity that I have common with Plath is the struggle when I go through depression. Plath had experienced a drastic depression in her life after the divorce and raising two children by herself. When she went through her depression, it was extremely hard for her to get out of that depression (she even tries to kill herself and she did!). Although I am not this serious as Plath, I struggle to get out of my depression once I’m depressed. I become a really emote person and probably no one would want to talk to me during this period of time. Compared to other people, we (Plath and I) become more emote and have hard time escape from the depression.
The last thing that I like about Plath is her use of imagery. Plath uses a ton of imagery in her poems compared to other poets. Her poem is filled up with imagery that arouses emotions and dark feelings. I love her use of imagery because it really creates distinctive picture in my head that I can remember my own experience related with her poem. While Emily Dickinson tend to use many symbols in her poems, Plath tend to use more imagery to evoke the readers’ emotion.