Your Own, Sylvia

Your Own, Sylvia
 by Stephanie Hemphill

Bibliography

Hemphill, S (2007). Your own, Sylvia. New York, NY: Knopf Books for Young Readers. ISBN 9780329643362

Summary

Your Own, Sylvia is a book of poems that provides a glimpse into the life of Sylvia Plath.  Each poem is written from the perspective of someone who knew Sylvia or in the style of one of Sylvia's own poems. Sylvia Plath's vibrant personality, her struggle with mental illness, her personal relationships, and her suicide are all portrayed through the poems.

Critical Analysis

Your Own, Sylvia is accurately subtitled A Verse Portrait of Sylvia Plath.  After reading the novel, you will come away feeling you know Sylvia better, and you will probably want to explore more about her.

Hemphill has done a good job writing the free-verse poems.  Some are full of beautiful language, some sound like they are coming from the mouth of the person they are credited to, all blend into a pleasing narrative which will attract the young adult reader.

Review Excerpts

* While the book will prove an apt curriculum companion to Plath's literary works as touted on the jacket, it will also pull the next generation of readers into the myth of Sylvia Plath. -- School Library Journal

* The result is an intimate, comprehensive, imaginative view of a life that also probes the relationships between poetry and creativity, mental fragility, love, marriage, and betrayal.-- Booklist


Connections

*Other titles worth reading by Stephanie Hemphill

• Things Left Unsaid: A Novel in Poems (2005)
• Easy (2007) 
• Wicked Girls: A Novel of the Salem Witch Trials (2010)

* Expert from Your Own, Sylvia

Madness
Dr. Ruth Barnhouse Beuscher, Sylvia's therapist
Fall 1953

Repression cuts off
circulation like a tourniquet,
and Sylvia throbs with desire.

I advise Sylvia to experiment,
to stop fretting over a white
wedding dress. Does this shock
the patient? Not really.
Sylvia has been slicing at her arm,
waiting for someone
to grant her permission. A junior in college,
she may be ready for this.
'But what would Mother think?'
Sylvia snickers. She wraps a mink stole
of secrets around her shoulders,
luxuriates in playing foul
behind her mother's back.

Perhaps when she holds back
her desires, her mind
splinters into madness, into deadwood
that we must burn away by electric shock.
I encourage her to release her idea
of the bad girl, punishable for physical contact.

I ask her to think about herself, not her mother,
about how Sylvia represses Sylvia.
I want to tell her to do what she wants.
I need to help her to let go of her fears."


Dr. Ruth met with Sylvia for daily psychotherapy sessions, during which Ruth explained to Sylvia her methods and techniques and why she was using them. Sylvia responded well to this sort of inclusion and respect. Dr. Barnhouse Beuscher employed fairly orthodox Freudianism, which entailed leading analysis and discussion about Sylvia's childhood. At the time of the above poem, Sylvia and Dr. Ruth met at McLean Hospital for inpatient treatment, but later they would have sessions at Dr, Beuscher's private practice. They were in contact via phone, letters, or in person every week until Sylvia's death ten years later.