Plath Scholars Who Were Poets

Plath biographer Paul Alexander (photo c. 1990) wrote plays.

The links below lead you to Plath scholars' and critics' own poetry. When I could not find published works I gave documentation. Let's celebrate these academics-critics-biographers and their creative-writing practice, past or present. This list of names doesn't include all of them. First, the poets, in no particular order:

Janet Malcolm, young New Yorker poet

Peter Davison

Edward Butscher [NSFW!]

[Francis] George Steiner

Al Alvarez

Peter K. Steinberg

Amelia Rosselli

David Trinidad

Sandra M. Gilbert

Sarah Ruden  

Emily Van Duyne

Anne Stevenson

Janet Malcolm

Diane Wood Middlebrook

Catherine Rankovic

Rosalind Constable

Aurelia Plath

Who were poets in their Youth:

Karen V. Kukil [she told me]

Anita Helle [The essay "Family Matters" in Northwest Review, Vol. 26:2 (1988), says that teenaged Helle sent her grandaunt Aurelia Plath a booklet of her poems. Aurelia read it and replied with a warning: "There is a price for such sensitivity."]

Gail Crowther

Fiction/Drama Writers:

Dido Milroy Merwin (playwright)

Tracy Brain (novelist)

Heather Clark (novelist)

Paul Alexander (playwright)

Every writer has written in more than one genre. Professionals work through a decade or two before finding their genius: Sylvia Plath is a case in point.

I confess I looked hard for any poems by Olwyn Hughes, whose spite and fury I think sprang from frustrated artistic ambitions.