If generations of gloomy boys could pretend they were the next TS Eliot, then there have been plenty of gloomy girls who have their very own role model in Plath. And a very powerful role model: unlike Eliot, she succeeded in killing herself. Cue thousands of lines of self-pitying poetry without the command and talent of Plath’s.
I regularly introduce poetry to freshman English majors. Some who write angsty poetry as a form of literary self-therapy are surprised to learn that there’s a difference between the “I” who speaks in the poem (through a fictional character), and the identity of the poet who created the fictional character in order to achieve some artistic effect in the mind of the reader (rather than to achieve a verbal exorcism of personal demons).
