“Daddy” is a poem by Sylvia Plath that was first published in her posthumous volume, Ariel (1965). Plath wrote the controversial poem in 1962, during the furiously productive period that preceded her death by suicide in February 1963. A prime example of “confessional poetry,” it conveys the intensity of Plath’s feelings about her deceased father, and her memory of his brutishness. This intensity indicates an unprocessed and unhealed trauma that continues to cause torment.

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