SOURCE: "'Poem for a Birthday' to 'Three Women': Development in the Poetry of Sylvia Plath," in Critical Quarterly, Vol. 21, No. 4, 1979, pp. 63-72.

In the following essay, Aird examines Plath's rapid creative development after the publication of The Colossus. Challenging "the oversimplified and rather sentimental theory" that motherhood inspired Plath's artistic growth during this period, Aird cites Plath's remarkable commitment to her work and the influence of Robert Lowell, Anne Sexton, and Theodore Roethke.

Critical discussion of Plath's poetry is understandably focused on the magnificent late poems with occasional forays into the earlier exercises of The Colossus—and they were precisely exercises in style and image by a poet identifying her subjects. It therefore seems useful to pay some attention to the question of development, to the nature and timing of the transition from The Colossus to Ariel and to the poetic and biographical factors affecting this development. 'Poem...