I want to become acutely aware of all I’ve taken for granted.

Sylvia Plath’s work is sometimes overshadowed by her marriage to the poet Ted Hughes and her suicide at the age of 30. But those elements of her life, along with her clinical depression, were fundamental to her writing. She was a pioneer of confessional poetry, and her life was laid bare to the world, especially with the publication of “Ariel” in 1965, two years after her death. Beyond the tragedy of her life lies the simple fact that Plath was a magnificent writer. Like Virginia Woolf, she kept a journal that was published posthumously along with selected letters. Her prose in those private missives is beautiful, heartfelt, and honest. The quote above is from a letter to her pen pal Eddie Cohen, in which she wrote about not taking life for granted, saying, “Remember, remember, this is now, and now, and now. Live it, feel it, cling to it.”