Tragic death runs in
Sylvia Plath's family. When she was just eight years old, her father died of complications from diabetes, which could have been prevented if he had sought treatment earlier. Perhaps in part because of this death, Plath struggled with depression throughout her life, which she ended herself in February of 1963, after she and her husband, poet
Ted Hughes, separated, leaving Plath to care for their two children.
Plath's poetry carries us into the mind of a woman surrounded by such tragedy – yet her poems are as beautiful as they are dark.
The poem we're looking at here, "Mirror," was written in 1961, roughly two years before Plath's suicide. But it wasn't published for another ten years, when it appeared in Plath's book
Crossing the Water, which Ted Hughes arranged to have published posthumously.
It's tempting to read "Mirror" as a reflection of Plath's difficult life, but the poem has merit aside from its author's biographical intrigues. This poem has a mind of glass – sharp, clear, and unforgettable – and would be compelling no matter who wrote it.