Your Own, Sylvia

Hemphill, Stephanie. 2007. YOUR OWN, SYLVIA: A VERSE PORTRAIT OF SYLVIA PLATH. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf.  ISBN 9780375837999

Brief Plot Summary:   
This anthology of poems by Stephanie Hemphill chronicles the life of Sylvia Platt from childhood through her death.  Hemphill composed the poems from the voices of different people in Platt’s life using information gleaned from Platt’s own journals, letters, and books.  The poems are complemented by footnotes describing the “authors” and their relationships with Sylvia.

Critical analysis:   
The concept of this book is fascinating.  Stephanie Hemphill chronicles Sylvia Plath’s life through poems told in the voice of friends and family members, while written in the style of Sylvia’s works.  Many different emotions are conveyed in the poems, including admiration, fondness, exasperation, envy, and sadness.  The poems read almost like stories are paint vivid pictures of the relationships in Sylvia’s tragic life.  The rhythms of the poems are easy to pick up and the prose flows from one story to the next.  The poems are not rhymes but they draw the reader in, as if they are part of a traditional novel, and the words flow freely and naturally to describe the relationships, such as in the poem “Best Friend”, which I particularly enjoyed as it describes Betsy Powley as the “Tonto to her Lone Ranger”.

Awards Won:

ALA Best Book for Young Adults, 2008

Michael L. Printz Honor Book, 2008

Southern California Council on Literature for Children and Young People Award, 2008

Kirkus Editor’s Choice, 2007

New York Public Library Books for the Teen Age, 2007

Review Excerpts:

SCHOOL LIBRARY JOURNAL

Stephanie Hemphill's book (Knopf, 2007) provides a moving portrait of Sylvia Plath's life and work through poems written from the perspective of her family members, husband, friends, colleagues, and even her doctor. Many of the poems are created "in the style of" Plath's own poems. Hemphill begins by explaining how her interest in Plath began, and then her poems are read by a full cast who take on the role of the people in her life. For example, her college roommate describes her as "the campus Lazarus, come back from the dead" when Sylvia returns to Smith College after a suicide attempt. Hemphill manages to include a great deal of straightforward biographical information about this talented but very troubled young woman in this collection. Each CD covers one aspect of the poet's life, from her early years through her marriage and her death by suicide at age 30. Reflected in these poems is the bewilderment of those who knew her but couldn't help save her from herself as well as Plath's own confusion and despair. An intense listening experience that brings this gifted poet to life.

Ching, Edith. 2009. "YOUR OWN, SYLVIA: A VERSE PORTRAIT OF SYLVIA PLATH." SCHOOL LIBRARY JOURNAL 55, no. 6: 66-67. Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed June 26, 2013).

KIRKUS REVIEWS

Who are, you, Sylvia Plath?" begins the first of more than 150 poems comprising this fictionalized biography, the genre-bending follow-up to Stephanie Hemphill's award-winning YA novel-in-verse, Things' Left Unsaid (2005). Told from the perspectives of Plath's friends, relatives and acquaintances, these poems deftly unfurl a narrative of her life from birth to just beyond her premature death, all the while directing readers to Plath's work with the aid of factual footnotes accompanying each piece. In one fell swoop, Hemphill cleverly introduces a life, a corpus and various verse forms, creating an engaging, multilayered reading experience. "My whole hope is that the book will get to teens, bring them to Sylvia Plath and hopefully be a tool to make her more accessible," says the author, "because her work is brilliant, but it's a little bit difficult at times if you don't know her story." Also a poet, Hemphill acknowledges the project's many challenges, ranging from overcoming the insecurity that her poetic rendering of Plath's life would never surpass her subject's artistry, to having her narrative survive the censoring gauntlet of the Plath estate, notorious for its aversion to publication of any kind. "I think Plath's work is so amazing… and I know my intentions were good with this," she says. "I feel it's a very fair picture, and that it's a loving picture. I mean, I adore her; she's an idol to me. For me it is her writing that stands. The biography's just there to illuminate the writing." That it does masterfully. The book was a starred Kirkus pick, called "a must for any young-adult reader of poetry or Plath."

2007. "YOUR OWN, SYLVIA: A VERSE PORTRAIT OF SYLVIA PLATH." KIRKUS REVIEWS 75, no. 23: 9. Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed June 26, 2013).

Connections: 

I did not find any specific enrichment activities related to this book so I created one.  If I were a librarian at a public library or in a middle school, I would have my students create an anthology of short poems about themselves, as told by a parent, teacher, friend, or even a pet.  The student would benefit by spending time composing original poetry and also use this as an exercise in self-awareness to ponder how others see them.

Another educational (and fun!) exercise would be to ask the students to compile a list of qualities of Sylvia that seemed to be the most common throughout the poems.  It would be interesting to see how the students’ perceptions varied.