Teachers don't eliminate poets from the curriculum, they only add ones to
the slate for any given term. Plath is one of the most taught poets in the
world, and this ubiquity is the source of my favorite Plath criticism.
Years ago grading AP Placement tests for filthy lucre, the set poem was
Plath's "Sow." Another reader at my table started whooping over some
benighted hayseed who had managed to write an interpretation that hinged
on the presence in the poem of two pigs. I asked to read the paper, and
quickly saved the student's bacon--he or she was from a family in the
business, and had been confused by citygirl Plath's reference to the "sow"
as a "hog." I steered them right.
David Latane
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