"The Marilyn Monroe of modern literature" - Carl Rollyson

"a raving avenger of womanhood and innocence" - Thomas McClanahan

"an explosively liberated poetic voice" - Frieda Hughes

"a portrait of marriage in contemporary Western culture" - Pamela J Annas

"the woman is the role she plays; she does not exist apart from it" - Pamela J Annas

"I believe [poetry] should be relevant to larger things like Hiroshima and Dachau" - Sylvia Plath

"the speaker's own psychic oppression is represented in the more general symbol of the Nazi oppression of the Jews"