the short life and blazing art of sylvia plath

“Red Comet” reviews the evidence but offers an apologia from Frieda Hughes, who contends that “my father was not the wife-beater that some would wish to imagine he was. Another episode, which Plath described in no uncertain terms, occurred in February 1961, when Hughes beat Plath so severely she suffered a miscarriage. It includes photographs of her throughout her life, rarely seen artwork. Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath is the most comprehensive biography of Plath to date, clocking in at over a thousand pages Clark’s access to the materials of Plath, her family, and friends is unparalleled.

“I remember,” Plath wrote, “hurling a glass with all my force across a dark room instead of shattering the glass rebounded and remained intact: I got hit and saw stars.” Clark writes of the passage: “Plath’s colon suggests that she ‘got hit’ by the ricocheting glass, not by Hughes” - a conclusion contrary to the one many other readers have reached. A visual history of the writer Sylvia Plath is to go on show at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC. The ensuing altercation caused Plath to report in her journal that the fight left her with a strained thumb and Hughes with claw marks on his cheeks. In May 1958, when Plath was teaching at Smith, she saw Hughes strolling on campus with a student.

Portions of “Red Comet” are deeply moving, but a tendency to downplay Hughes’s violence will likely attract critics.

The short life and blazing art of sylvia plath