Though it is true that readers can deduce quite alot about any writer from their style and their substance,there is not a directly autobiographical element in most poetry.It is from the emotions that images often come and the context of emotions may not be directly expressed or even mentioned.Sylvia Plath wrote a poem”Parliament Hill Fields” which might be interpreted as a mourning for a child miscarried.However it has a much wider possible interpretation and indeed one way of coping with loss and tragedy is by looking at it from a wider perspective,seeing one’s self as part of a large group of women who have lost infants before birth and then part of all of humanity who have suffered grief and loss.Very view if any one can grow to middle age without losing a beloved friend or relative perhaps a parent or sibling.Some people have been driven near to madness by it.
Sylvia Plath seemed able to cope with what was a tough life.She was constantly studying and writing,gave birth to Frieda and lived happily with Ted Hughes who helped her enormously [ and vice versa]
To have done all she had done including miscarriage and then birth of a second child without any family near her would have been tough for anyone.But she seemed to cope better than most.
How far her life,her depression and so on should be always discussed in relation to her poems and their interpretation it is hard to know.Naturally her own life was the starting point for poems like “Daddy” but they have a much wider significance in the age of Fascism she grew up in.
If I write from the point of view of a man,it does not signify I’d like t o be a man although on the Internet it might help to fend of pursuers who lurk looking for women [ and no doubt the other way round]
But if we read poetry or prose let’s judge it on its merits and not tear it apart for clues about the identity and being of the writer
How my heart sings 