“Sylvia’s Death” is not linked to one particular location, but is instead presented as a stream of consciousness as the speaker shuffles through their memories of their lost friend. However, each moment is informed by its era and generation, told from the perspective of two ambitious women in the 1950s and 1960s. The opening stanzas of the poem establish Sylvia as a mother and housewife, bound by the social restrictions of her time. The speaker reflects on their time together in Boston, drinking martinis and sharing cab rides — autobiographical details from Anne Sexton’s own friendship with Sylvia Plath. In many ways, it is the constriction of these decades, and the limitations imposed on people like these two poets, that led to the death that inspired this poem. Whether it is read as an autobiographical confession or a work of fiction, the imposing era of...