Sylvia Plath did for confessional poetry what Kim Kardashian did for the selfie. Wait, that didn’t come out quite right. Sylvia Plath did for confessional poetry what Hunter S. Thompson did for gonzo journalism. Or: she did for confessional poetry what John Stagliano did for gonzo porn. You get the idea. Unlike Kardashian, Thompson, and Stagliano, Plath was clinically depressed for most of her adult life, and committed suicide in 1963 (age 31). Just before she died, her semi-autobiographical novel The Bell Jar was published, and in 1982, she won a posthumous Pulitzer Prize for her Collected Poems.

Plath wrote this week’s poem, “Mad Girl’s Love Song,” when she was still a student at Smith College, and while it might not be as polished as her later work, it’s a lovely, raw take on young love.

Mad Girl’s Love Song

by Sylvia Plath

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell’s fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan’s men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you’d return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

Want more hot verse?
Walt Whitman’s Poem Praises Women Who Love Sex as Openly as Men Do