1932年出生在马萨诸塞州牙买加平原的中产阶级家庭的普拉斯，在8岁就发表了第一首诗歌。她是一个敏感性情的人，有点完美主义倾向，使她成为许多人认为的一个时髦女儿、一个受人喜爱总拿最佳奖学金的优秀学生。她在1950年获得史密斯大学助学奖金，甚至招来一大群人的嫉妒。在史密斯求学期间，她创作了四百多首诗歌。
然而，表面上看起来完美的她，背后却总会跳出一些黯淡色调，这些情绪或许缘于在她8岁时父亲（一个昆虫学者）的逝世。在大学三年级结束的那个夏天，普里斯第一次企图服食过量安眠药自杀（几乎成功）。这段经历被写入她的自传体小说《钟型瓶》（The Bell Jar,1963年出版）。经过一段时间的复健，通过电击疗法和精神治疗，她曾一度继续获得学业及文学上的成功。1955年史密斯以最高荣誉毕业后，她顺利地获得富布莱特法案基金奖继续在英国剑桥大学求学。
1963年2月11日，30岁的西尔薇亚·普拉斯用煤气结束了自己的生命。死后两年，《精灵》（Ariel）——一部收入她生命遗留时期创作的诗歌集子出版了。随后，1971年《涉水》（Crossing the Water）、1972年《冬日树》(Winter Trees) 和1981年《诗歌选集》（The Collected Poems）相继问世，编辑者不是别人，正是休斯本人。
翻译自网上英文资料。
Sylvia Plath 的诗歌两首
A Better Resurrection
I have no wit, I have no words, no tears;
My heart within me like a stone
Is numbed too much for hopes or fears;
Look right, look left, I dwell alone;
A lift mine eyes, but dimmed with grief
No everlasting hills I see;
My life is like the falling leaf;
O Jesus, quicken me.
Sylvia Plath
一次彻底重生
我没智慧，我没话语，没泪水；
我体内的心脏如一石
麻痹了，因过多的希望、恐惧；
左右瞧瞧，我孑然一身；
一旦抬起眼睛，却黯然神伤
瞧不见永恒的巅峰；
我的生命像片落叶；
噢，耶稣，拯救我。
西尔薇亚·普拉斯
A Birthday Present
What is this, behind this veil, is it ugly, is it beautiful?
It is shimmering, has it breasts, has it edges?
I am sure it is unique, I am sure it is what I want.
When I am quiet at my cooking I feel it looking, I feel it thinking
'Is this the one I am too appear for,
Is this the elect one, the one with black eye-pits and a scar?
Measuring the flour, cutting off the surplus,
Adhering to rules, to rules, to rules.
Is this the one for the annunciation?
My god, what a laugh!'
But it shimmers, it does not stop, and I think it wants me.
I would not mind if it were bones, or a pearl button.
I do not want much of a present, anyway, this year.
After all I am alive only by accident.
I would have killed myself gladly that time any possible way.
Now there are these veils, shimmering like curtains,
The diaphanous satins of a January window
White as babies' bedding and glittering with dead breath. O ivory!
It must be a tusk there, a ghost column.
Can you not see I do not mind what it is.
Can you not give it to me?
Do not be ashamed--I do not mind if it is small.
Do not be mean, I am ready for enormity.
Let us sit down to it, one on either side, admiring the gleam,
The glaze, the mirrory variety of it.
Let us eat our last supper at it, like a hospital plate.
I know why you will not give it to me,
You are terrified
The world will go up in a shriek, and your head with it,
Bossed, brazen, an antique shield,
A marvel to your great-grandchildren.
Do not be afraid, it is not so.
I will only take it and go aside quietly.
You will not even hear me opening it, no paper crackle,
No falling ribbons, no scream at the end.
I do not think you credit me with this discretion.
If you only knew how the veils were killing my days.
To you they are only transparencies, clear air.
But my god, the clouds are like cotton.
Armies of them. They are carbon monoxide.
Sweetly, sweetly I breathe in,
Filling my veins with invisibles, with the million
Probable motes that tick the years off my life.
You are silver-suited for the occasion. O adding machine-----
Is it impossible for you to let something go and have it go whole?
Must you stamp each piece purple,
Must you kill what you can?
There is one thing I want today, and only you can give it to me.
It stands at my window, big as the sky.
It breathes from my sheets, the cold dead center
where split lives congeal and stiffen to history.
Let it not come by the mail, finger by finger.
Let it not come by word of mouth, I should be sixty
By the time the whole of it was delivered, and to numb to use it.
Only let down the veil, the veil, the veil.
If it were death
I would admire the deep gravity of it, its timeless eyes.
I would know you were serious.
There would be a nobility then, there would be a birthday.
And the knife not carve, but enter
Pure and clean as the cry of a baby,
And the universe slide from my side.
