Your Own, Syliva by Stephanie Hemphill

Your Own, Sylvia
Stephanie Hemphill

Hemphill, Stephanie. 2007. Your Own, Sylvia. New York: Random House, Inc. ISBN:9780375937996.

An emotional journey through the life of Sylvia Plath is the basis of this verse novel by Stephanie Hemphill. Hemphill takes the life of Plath and creates a moving piece of fiction through poetry, both hers and Plath’s. Chronologically written from Plath’s beginnings to after her death, the poems invoke raw emotion from the people in her life who knew her best. Based on real events, people, and conversations, the fictionalized account could very well hold some truth. With the outline of the book similar to the way Plath’s own poetry was published, the author also includes biographical sketches and end notes for each poem to put them into perspective for the reader.

Long, short, rhyming, and terse, the poetry is wide and varied in this verse novel. As each poem has its own subject or author the poems are written to reflect that. At the beginning the poems are lilting and full of life, as the book progresses and real life takes over the poems become short and clipped. Events including Sylvia’s pregnancies, divorce, and descent into mental illness become the focal point and the reader can sense the shift in the life of the poet through Hemphill’s poetry. At the end the poetry shifts again to remorse and remembrance as the characters struggle to move on.

The language of the poetry in this book is meant to portray the sad and tragic life of a celebrated poetess. The poems are carefully arranged to gain a circular perspective to Plath’s life through her friends and family. Using very vivid words the reader can see and feel the raw emotion on the page:

Sylvia’s eyes burn crimson,
no tears, but she look like she might cry. (Hemphill, 213)
&
Her poetry cuts me to the spine,
Beautiful and brutal.
Her words startle my eyes.
She has etched down parts of me,
of us, of her. (Hemphill, 238)

These short examples of the poems in the book show the way language can convey so many different meanings.

This book, character, and format are meant to evoke emotion of the deepest kind. For those that are familiar with Plath and her work it may cut deeper, but the new reader will feel the emotional decrepitude of the subject. This very heavy subject is not for the feint of heart, very real depiction of suicide, death, and scarring are very real and may only be suited for older teens and young adults.

From School Library Journal:
"Form is of paramount importance, just as it was to Plath herself. Many of the selections were created "in the style of" specific Plath poems, while others are scattered with Plath's imagery and language. While the book will prove an apt curriculum companion to Plath's literary works as touted on the jacket, it will also pull the next generation of readers into the myth of Sylvia Plath."—Jill Heritage Maza, Greenwich High School, CT


In conjunction with glowing reviews this book has also won several awards, the 2008 Printz Honor and the 2008 Myra Cohn Livingston Award. For those that appreciate a novel the verse form the author has two more verse novels in the works and should be published in the next couple of years. Other authors that write verse novels include Call Me Maria by Judith Ortiz Cofer, Crank by Ellen Hopkins, and The Geography of Girlhood by Kristen Smith.

To bring this book alive, teachers or educators might have students pick a poet and have them write poetry about that poet from a biographical standpoint. Another way to teach about poetry from this book would be to have students or members of the group pick a poem from the book and write a short paper based on the period in Plath's life from which the poem comes from, using the poem as the center of the paper.