It may be that she was simply an extreme case, that many other poets' works nurse and analyse their roots as doggedly as hers do, but that she is distinguished by an unusually clear root system and an abnormally clear and clinically exact system of attending to it... Maybe her singularity derives from a feminine bee-line instinct for the real priority, for what truly matters - an instinct for nursing and repairing the damaged and threatened nucleus of the self and for starving every other aspect of her life in order to feed and strengthen that, and bring that to a safe delivery.

-Ted Hughes, 'Sylvia Plath and Her Journals'