Sylvia Plath a "piss poor writer?"

I always connect with people like Esther in Plath's The Bell Jar.

I found this group http://www.www.facebook.com/search/?flt=1&q=the+bell+jar&o=69&s=10#!/group.php?gid=8120892465&v=info&ref=search

"the whole sylvia plath arse-licking thing is pissing me off for the following reasons:

* She is in no way a particularly amazing writer yet her work has continued to recieve repeated exposure.

*there seems to be the idea that her writing, and in particular her piss-poor novel 'the bell jar', is an important cultural artifact simply because it was written by a woman.

*there seems to be some confusion amongst the legions of her, largely teenage girl fans, between catharsis (as exhibited by artists of talent) and whinging (as exhibited by this bint)

*Her suicide seems to largely overshadow all academic criticism of not only her own work but that of her infinitely more talented husband Ted Hughes.

*She won't shut up about her fucking nazi dad."

The last comment I don't know about.

I read some of Ted Hughes work, he is talented but he's a poet, and Plath is a poet AND a writer. It's not a competition, I could read both of their works. But Plath will always appeal to me more because of The Bell Jar, as a woman, as human being in this world, I GOT Esther.

Where in The Bell Jar does she whinge? I've heard some interviews with her and she was cool, classy and sophisticated. No trace of whinging. If you want to write about everything, you need to go everywhere, fashionable and unfashionable topics. I KNOW "whingeing," what Plath does is explore and articulate more in depth to how she is interviews. Her poems could be seen as whingey ..if you read one line.

Well, here's the thing, I'm not a teenage girl but sometimes as a woman near 30 I can still feel lost and sad, maybe not in the same way as when I was a teen but certainly to the same depth. There's a reason teenage girls like Sylvia Plath's work. In this world, infamy IS big BUT talent always shines through. Not in all cases, but people who have talent are remembered not only by a t"eenage fan base" as the author of the group thinks in this case, but by a large section of the population decades later. The reason; identification. Our identity is in Plath's work and we can identify with Plath's work.

How is her work "piss poor?" I can't get over how The Bell Jar flows so well, the way she has with her words, it's poetic but also very honest and a very well written and very good story. It's also very sad, there's this inevitabality.

I wonder how many teen boys wouldn't want to admit they're a fan of Sylvia Plath, yet I'll bet a fair few could identify with The Bell Jar. THANK GOD it has a strong female voice, but it's also universal. I would say she IS an amazing writer. Even if I couldn't identify with the heroine, the writing is amazing, just is, and I wonder what the author of this group has read to think otherwise. What have I missed out on?