Sylvia Plath’s poetry exemplifies her world, through her eyes, without any apologies or excuses. Her works run lines parallel with her life in itself, the ups and downs, daily inner battles and triumphs. The themes of her poems are herself, her thoughts, feelings, and experiences. She consistently uses imagery to paint a picture of her despair. Plath is an expert at personification and rhythm. Her poetry flows when it needs to, and is chaotic when the subject matter is chaotic. She uses literary elements effortlessly to give the reader a little piece of herself.

In regards to Sylvia Plath’s poetry it is very apparent that from an early age she enjoyed writing.  Almost all of her works are pertaining to her life and the struggles she went through, even from the beginning with the loss of her father at an early age.  As her life unraveled after the death of her father, marriage to Ted Hughes, and children.  You can see the ups and downs in her personality come across in her writing. She has written some very intense poems with subjects in relation to death.  In the poem “Edge” written February 5^th 1963, a week before her death, Sylvia is predicting her own death.  She also writes about themes pertaining to depression, “Cut” a poem about self-mutilation and disfigurement.  As well as family, “Ballons” “Daddy” and “Morning Song” are poems written about her children and the emotions she went through during the time of their birth and death of her father.  “The Moon and The Yew Tree” relates to her mother.  Dysfunctional relationships were also discussed in her poetry, “The Thin People” a poem explaining her thoughts during the marriage to her husband Ted Hughes.  Self loathing, “Tulips” a poem about miscarriages, motherhood and the emotions felt during those times in her life.  Another theme I found was sadness, “Mystic” explaining Sylvia’s curiosity to death and handling her bi-polar mood swings.  The list goes on and on and with over 230 poems written it’s amazing how the poems themes tell Plath’s life story.  Plath is a poet that challenged your comfort level.  Writing about her emotions, mental state, and suicide; things that not many would talk about.  Sylvia Plath's poetry displayed darkness but honesty in her own words.  Black humor is one of the main characteristics in her poetry but that is what makes her so unique   Plath's poems also focus on the themes of women's creativity and insanity, with all the pressures on her to conform as a good wife, mother, middle-class woman, and poet.  Her writing took on a new direction of confessional poetry which orientated a new art form.