Deaths and entrances: The influence of spectrality and death in Sylvia Plath and Dylan Thomas

The power behind the poetry of Dylan Thomas and Sylvia Plath is found in their ability to remain perpetually and actively open, even in the face of death. Both poets explored death within their poetry to better understand their world, and their relationship to it. To tap into the very power of death, serves to propel the success of their images. This thesis is an attempt to understand how far death influenced the two poets as they wrote, rather than how death affected their actual lives. The proximity to death allows both poets to achieve unparalleled power in their poems. This latent power is always awaiting the reader to experience and breathe new life into their words. Rather than being held back by death, Thomas and Plath instead pursue a freedom of movement within their poetry to explore life, in spite of death. Compelled to dispel the myths around both poets. actual deaths, this thesis attempts to negate the reductive misconceptions that have risen from criticism and biographical speculation, and instead find the true vitality of the two poets, which is found only in their poetry. Thomas and Plath, in their poetic efforts have left bodies of work that, although informed by death, are invariably more interested with life, and its possibilities.