Plath committed suicide during a prolific time in her life. Accompanying each entry, the author includes footnotes with background information about the people and events alluded to in the poems. I nibble/ at the whippet's neck./ Her lips fury-red, she bites/ me teeth tearing my cheek./ I retreat, imprinted, stunned") and her suicide ("She could not help burning herself/ From the inside out,/ Consuming herself/ Like the sun./ But the memory of her light blazes/ Our dark ceiling," Hemphill writes, in the style of Plath's poem "Child"). Hemphill stays true to the basic framework of the poet's life, highlighting her major milestones: her childhood, college years, her hospitalization and first suicide attempt, as well as her first meeting with poet Ted Hughes whom Plath would marry (in a poem from his viewpoint, he describes her as "Blond and tall as a magazine/ swimsuit model. Hemphill ambitiously undertakes a fictionalized portrait of Sylvia Plath in poems, many of them inspired by Plath's own works.
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