Your Own, Sylvia Quotes

“I fret for Sylvia.
She appears anchored

to the idea of sinking,
which is silly when she so clearly

soars above almost everyone.”
― Stephanie Hemphill, Your Own, Sylvia: A Verse Portrait of Sylvia Plath

“The tides here are too rough. I sink here, happy only when I hoard my little blue sleeping pills, stash the blades of my razor. I accumulate a drawer of drop-out devices, so by December I can escape to a Merry Christmas.”
― Stephanie Hemphill, Your Own, Sylvia: A Verse Portrait of Sylvia Plath

“She said the night was March and black
and that the hill where he kissed her
and enveloped her in his arms
was a sea of grass and she rooted
to the ground like a sapling,
like it was natural and yet
all created for her moment of romance.”
― Stephanie Hemphill, Your Own, Sylvia: A Verse Portrait of Sylvia Plath

“She breaks. She's sick. Throw a rope, a net. She falls like a shot-up plane. Help her find the landing strip, Her feet are wet— She'll learn, she'll train. She walks a rope on fire, “Look Ma, no hands.”
― Stephanie Hemphill, Your Own, Sylvia: A Verse Portrait of Sylvia Plath

“Inside a book, she captures all that's lost. She journals so her words won't fly away.”
― Stephanie Hemphill, Your Own, Sylvia: A Verse Portrait of Sylvia Plath