Sixty Years Ago
“I often wonder if she would have died by suicide if she’d had a good live-in nanny during the winter of 1963.” —Amanda Montei
Time broke in and murdered Sylvia Plath,
grinned as she resisted its Gordian twists.
Demanding a place in two incompatible worlds,
art and family, she was granted neither.
Her Ted was no Alexander, carried no sword,
and she’d had enough of blades already. She chose
the gas that she had breathed into her poems.
Was it to be her personal final solution,
or did she think she’d wake again to curse
the morning light? Whatever her intent,
Time chose once more to smite the brave and strong,
depriving a world she left of her future art,
her children of mother’s love, while it patiently knit
an intractable choice and embroidered Sylvia’s noose.
by Jerry Krajnak
Editor’s Note: This sonnet ponders the “what if” question surrounding Plath’s death with blank verse and startling imagery.
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