“A bit of a professional”— Sylvia Plath

Perhaps one of the best-known American poets of the twentieth century, Sylvia Plath has captivated generation after generation of readers. But even the most dedicated of Plath fans might not know that the poet’s career got an early start, at the age of only eight! On this day, August 10, in 1941, Sylvia Plath’s first published poem was printed in a local Boston newspaper. She continued to publish work throughout high school, in popular magazines such as Seventeen, and while a student at Smith College.

When asked in a 1962 radio interview how she first began writing poetry, Plath had this to say:

I don't know what started me, I just wrote it from the time was quite small. I guess I liked nursery rhymes and I guess I thought I could do the same thing. I wrote my first poem, my first published poem, when I was eight-and-a-half years old. It came out in The Boston Traveller and from then on, I suppose, I've been a bit of a professional.

Photographs and objects from Plath’s early life will be on display in an upcoming exhibition at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery. One Life: Sylvia Plath will trace Plath’s biography through photographs, self-portraits, manuscripts, and other objects. The exhibition will also explore how Plath constructed her identity throughout her lifetime. In her journals, Plath considers her place in literary history, ranking herself alongside other famous female poets and describes her belief that she might one day become “The Poetess of America.”  When Peter Orr asked her what exactly a young poet writes about, Plath said:

Nature, I think: birds, bees, spring, fall, all those subjects which are absolute gifts to the person who doesn't have any interior experience to write about. I think the coming of spring, the stars overhead, the first snowfall and so on are gifts for a child, a young poet.

As Plath grew, both as a person and a poet, she turned to her own life as inspiration and subject matter for her poetry—the “interior experience” that she describes. As the interview concludes, Plath’s describes the pleasure to be found in writing poetry:

Oh, satisfaction! I don't think I could live without it. It's like water or bread, or something absolutely essential to me. I find myself absolutely fulfilled when I have written a poem, when I'm writing one.

It seems that for Plath, living life and writing life were almost one in the same.

All quotations are taken from a 1962 interview with Peter Orr.