*A BOOK OF THE YEAR IN THE DAILY TELEGRAPH AND THE TIMES* *WINNER OF THE SLIGHTLY FOXED PRIZE 2021* 'Surely the final, the definitive, biography of Sylvia Plath' Ali Smith The bees are a metaphor for the drudgery and low status work endured by women of the time.The first biography of this great and tragic poet that takes advantage of a wealth of new material, this is an unusually balanced, comprehensive and definitive life of Sylvia Plath. Plath identifies as the queen bee, a metaphor for her yearning for independence and greater control. There is no regular rhyme scheme, though Plath uses internal rhyme, assonance and consonance for rhythm and emphasis. There are twelve of them here, many of the lines short and abrupt and enjambed, according to the meaning she wishes to convey, for example at the end of stanza one and the beginning of stanza two. Plath resumes her characteristic quintains, five-line stanzas. Note that the title ‘Stings’ is ambiguous, referring to bee stings and also painful experiences. The drone impregnates the queen and the moment he does so his abdomen splits open, losing the entrails which the queen then totes behind her as proof that she has guaranteed the future of the hive.

Throughout the ‘Bee’ sequence unexpressed violence is implied by the queen’s method of mating the mate is chosen from drones who pursue her nuptial or, as Plath calls it, bride-flight. For more information about Plath’s feminism here is a useful link. Plath has developed her control of the bees and the confidence now to pursue a feminist agenda, a theme that’s brought out especially strongly in stanza five. In some ways ‘Stings’ is another ‘Bee Meeting’, but this time the speaker and the bee seller are equals-working together and similarly attired for the job. Not only have the bees been set free and now live in and around their hive, but the speaker has moved on and explores her own feelings in terms of resentment and vulnerability. ‘Stings’ is the third poem of the ‘Bee’ sequence. Some of the themes and emotions in her poem “Daddy” are revisited here. She both loved and hated him and, in her confusion, struggled to assert her identity. Underlying much of Plath’s work is the theme of her relationship with her father. The second theme evokes the opposite, the controlling figure of her father, Otto Plath, a German-speaking biologist specializing in entomology and author of Bumblebees and Their Ways (1934), who died when she was eight. Plath had an interest in the Greek philosopher, Plato, who records Socrates teaching that poetry emanates from ‘honey-springs’ (honey being the food of the gods), and that the best poems are written by ‘divine dispensation’, so the poet produces poetry through inspiration, as a bee produces honey.

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