That mystery and obfuscation, as well as pregnant misreading, have helped to create a Plath cult is undoubtedly true. That there is a cult-like interest in her life and work (the two often seen as inextricable) can't be denied…. (p. 40)

Re-reading all of her published poems, and reading or re-reading a mass of stuff written about her, I've been struck again and again by the dramatic distancing of so much of her work, the way in which she created poems which are precisely not cries from the heart, or from a sick mind, or from the edge of the precipice in an obtrusively narrow or personal way; and at the same time I've been struck by the way these poems are indeed quarrels with herself, dramatic debates between action and stillness, fulfilment and blankness, hope and despair, anger and love—not seen in those abstract shapes, of course...