Love set you going like a fat gold watch.
The midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bald cry
Took its place among the elements.

Our voices echo, magnifying your arrival. New statue.
In a drafty museum, your nakedness
Shadows our safety. We stand round blankly as walls.

I'm no more your mother
Than the cloud that distills a mirror to reflect its slow
Effacement at the wind's hand.

All night your moth-breath
Flickers among the flat pink roses. I wake to listen:
A far sea moves in my ear.

One cry, and I stumble from bed, cow-heavy and floral
In my Victorian nightgown.
Your mouth opens clean as a cat's. The window square

Whitens and swallows its dull stars. And now you try
Your handful of notes;
The clear vowels rise like balloons.

Sylvia Plath (1932-1963), ameriška pesnica in pisateljica 

Zaslovela je s svojim avtobiografskim romanom Stekleni zvon, ki je izšel le mesec pred njeno smrtjo, izdala pa ga je pod psevdonimom Victoria Lucas. Zanjo je značilna ekspresivna samo-refleksivna poezija, polna simbolike, v kateri so odsevali groza fašizma, otroške travme, strah pred boleznijo ter soočenje s smrtjo in naravo.

Plathova se je vse življenje borila z depresijo. Večkrat si je skušala vzeti življenje, leta 1963, ko je bila stara trideset let in sredi razhoda z možem Tedom Hughesom, pa je Plathova napravila samomor. 

Ja, prebrala sem knjigo, gledala film, pretresljivo ...