The Serious World is a collection of epistolary poems written to Sylvia Plath about depression, therapy, friendship, family, and the struggling life of an artist. With humor, sensitivity, and deep reflection, Laura Read explores many themes including mental health, suicide, loss, feminism, motherhood, and aging, offering a fresh view of the world as seen through the feminist poet's searching spyglass.

Reaching back into history to talk with Plath and other historical figures who have suffered and wrote about their suffering, Read tries to make sense of what it's like to be alive and suffering now. These deeply felt poems include language from Plath's The Bell Jar and poems about Marguerite Duras and Simone de Beauvoir. Other strange bedfellows from pop culture also make appearances, among them Kenny Rogers, Dr. Seuss, Kurt Cobain, and Courtney Love.