Sylvia Plath wrote this poem in October 1962, four months before her suicide. The father she addresses died when she was eight; the poem conflates him with Nazis, vampires, her husband, and an oppressive male principle she must finally destroy. The nursery-rhyme rhythms make the violence more disturbing. The accusations are extravagant, unfair, perhaps unforgivable. And yet the poem is not therapy or confession but art, shaped by the same precision Plath brought to every line she wrote. It is impossible to look away from.