User:Foucauldienspirit/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Sylvia's Death

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath are prominent American poets and with name recognition, it's easy for discourse around the actual poetry to be abstracted by their celebrity. My initial impression of the article was that, there's a lot of subjective analysis with infrequent scholarly interjections. Much of the information feels biographical, which is an obvious hurdle considering that the poem was interpreted as biographical, but that is also a red flag in terms of presenting objective information about the poem itself.

comment-np
You make a good point about the difficulties of writing about a literary work that presents itself as biographical or “confessional.”  Your reasons for choosing the article are strong.

Evaluate the article
Lead Section: The lead section starts off good, while the use of the word "written" to designate the time it was published is objectionable, the author does a good job of succinctly introducing that this an article about a known poet Sylvia Plath and that it was written by Anne Sexton (we are even given the years she was alive). We are given the first time it appears in print, allowing us to contextualize the poem. And finally, the author offers a short overview of the poem's meaning (while in need of sources), well-intentioned.

Content: As it pertains to the content, I think all the information is very relevant to understanding who Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath were and what their relationship meant. The reception also does a good job of outlining the pushback against Sexton's poem.

Tone and Balance: As mentioned previously, this article includes a lot of subjective analysis. In the lead, the author starts off by characterizing the poem as "highly confessional", with no citation. The term "confessional" a genre of poetry, however we are not provided with an evaluation or other source to confirm that it is in fact "confessional". Then, the use of adjectives like "highly", or later on when they mention Sexton's rhyme scheme as what she "usually" implores; these are examples of subjective inflections the author is trying to make in the content. Secondly, when the information is sourced, the author occasionally decides to not name the scholar by write, " It is thought that", followed by analysis, without citing whom it's thought by. On a positive note, as we move further through the article, we see the interjection of more scholarly analysis being cited.

Sources and References: Despite my objection to the lack of sourced information, the sources that are used adhere to Wikipedia references standards. Sources such as JSTOR, publishing sources like the Northwestern University Press and the International Journal of Language and Literature, as well as sourcing from Sexton's biographers.

Organization and Writing Quality: The article is structured well. The information functions like a funnel going from a wider context and narrowing into the complexities of the poem and then the reception. The writing quality veers away from colloquial terminology, but I have trepidation about calling it professional. The author's personal voice comes through very strong, even without the use of "I" and the article reads more like an opinion piece, than a neutral article. Examples of this are the way they describe the poem as "elegiac", without another source to agree. Another example is as follows, " 'Sylvia's Death' holds a consistent theme of suffering and death at the hands of female domesticity through the entirety of the poem." The author is being prescriptive with their analysis, rather than descriptive.

Images and Media: There's only one image in the article, and it's of Sylvia Plath's tombstone. It slightly helps illustrate the importance of Plath as it pertains to the reception., however, the use of this image is emblematic of how the article is very focused on the biographical nature Plath and tangential that of Sexon.

Talk page and discussions: Wikipedia rated the article a C for its quality, citing the use of much irrelevant material and the need for more reliable sources/more sources in general. lt also rated a C for its importance, citing that it's not very important to the WikiPoetry Project, but falls into a "obscure piece of trivia or highly specific area knowledge". This was a surprising rating, as we have not discussed the notoriety of a poem/poet as an element of classification and I would actual argue that as it pertains to American female poets of the 20th century, this should be rated higher in importance.

Overall Impression: To conclude, the article is interesting if one was looking for the background of Sylvia's Death. There was some information about how Sexton and Plath met, that I would never know had I not read this article. It also does a good job of painting the way their alleged personal rivalry translated into their work and the perception of their work (though I think that angle deserves some revisions, as it suspiciously rings of media framing and misogynistic undertones). I think where the article falls short is that it's a slightly deceptive source for find information about the poem itself, without having someone else's interpretation obscure your first contact with the poem.

comment-np
You make acute comments about the tone of the article and the writing quality, and you provide convincing examples. In particular, you mention the subjectivity of the writing about the poem and the lack of supporting citations. As I read the article I wondered whether the subjective passages might be based on sources cited elsewhere in the article. But the article concludes with this quite surprising comment: “’Sylvia's Death’ did not receive much literary attention, with little to nothing being written on the work.”  So it may be that some of these passages really are original research.

You’re right about the shift of focus away from Sexton and towards Plath. Your comment about the image of Plath’s gravestone is a good example.

You raise a significant question about the notability of a poem as a criterion for inclusion as a separate article, and we should address it in class.

Your final comments about the biographical background perhaps obscuring the poem itself may be related to the question of notability. If there has not been much scholarly attention to the poem itself, the justification for the Wikipedia article may have been the notability of the two poets, both individually and in the context of their professional and personal relationship.

It may be of interest that the creator of the article was a student in a Wikipedia course. You can find this information if you go to the end of the article history (go to the bottom of the View history page and click on 500; then click on the username of the first contributor).