Sylvia Plath was an American poet and novelist, closely associated with confessional poetry. Her major works include The Colossus, The Bell Jar, and the posthumous collection Ariel.
Sylvia Plath
Collected Poems
Faber, 1990.
In this day before the day nobody is about.
A sea of dreams washes the edge of my green island...
The great roses, many of them scentless,
Rule their beds like beheaded and resurrected and all silent royalty,
The only fare on my bare breakfast plate...
One poem, Queen Mary's Rose Garden, describes a 6am visit to 'a wonderland / hedged in and evidently inviolate'. Written in 1960 when the author was living in Primrose Hill.
Letters Home
Faber, 1990.
They are mowing the lawns everywhere, and the smell of cut grass, plants, and warm earth is delicious. Nothing is so beautiful as England in April
On 21st April 1960, three weeks after her daughter was born, she sat on a bench in the park 'facing the sun' and wrote to her mother. A lyrical description of another visit a few weeks earlier with her husband Ted Hughes appears in the same volume.