defend the indefensible: sylvia plath

bug, who are your favourite poets just out of interest

"If I pay the roots of the heather /Too close attention, they will invite me /To whiten my bones among them." she can't even write about landscape without it coming back to ME ME ME.

don't read this as being about her at all, much more about the lure.

i like george oppen, mark doty, russell edson, erin belieu, michael s harper, robert creeley, li-young lee... i'm more into fiction, though.

http://www.bugoutwf.com/images/truck-bug-out.jpg

<3 russell edson

her poetry drips with ego and smug self-satisfaction. i read her work and think, no one cares about you or your family or your suicide fetishism. just shut up and fuck off.

― Yeah, well, jazz isn't exactly in love with Johnny either. (bug), Saturday, August 22, 2009 2:58 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

why the fuck are u reading her poetry if u dont care abt her family bro

i mean, fuck: "If I pay the roots of the heather /Too close attention, they will invite me /To whiten my bones among them." she can't even write about landscape without it coming back to ME ME ME. get the fuck OVER yourself, lady.

― Yeah, well, jazz isn't exactly in love with Johnny either. (bug), Saturday, August 22, 2009 3:01 PM (58 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

my dude what is the second word in that quote--this isnt a set of lines about landscapes

lol @ me for taking this seriously tho

lol save-a-plaths

lol at expecting lyric poetry not to be about the speaker

get the fuck OVER yourself, lady.

Of course she's got an ego and was self-obsessed: she suffered from depression. Anyone suffering from a depression only thinks about him/herself. One could argue that if Bug hatehatehates Sylvia Plath's socalled bloated ego,Bug (he? she?) should just stop reading it. That's a fair point, but I still disagree. What you should do, Bug, is argue why we're silly for loving her egotistic writings. But in a more... coherent and intelligent way.

Anyway, I never read her poetry, but count TheBellJar as one of my favourite books. Mostly because I read it at the right (or probably wrong) moment: I was suffering from a depression. But then I lack the right words. She didn't. My best friend of course hated it because 1 it was written by a woman and 2 the woman was also depressed. I wanted to throw the same words at her: if you hate it, convince me why I should stop loving it. But as of now I have yet to stop liking her book.

She also had an ego because she knew very well that she had talent.

this thread makes me wonder what bug thinks of teenage/young adult goth girls ... sylvia plath is definitely part of the teenage goth girl canon.

i've read her stuff because i was an english major and have read my share of poetry anthologies and been subjected to recitations of "daddy" and "lady lazarus." it's one thing that she was an egotistical asshole, but it's another for other people to validate her egotism and say she was correct in thinking so highly of herself.

lol at expecting lyric poetry not to be about the speaker

― horseshoe, Saturday, August 22, 2009 3:29 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

plenty of poetry is about the person speaking/writing it, sure, but plath, to me, is about nothing but plath. it irritates me that i'm expected to care about this person.

i don't know, she says a lot of retarded things like "zoo of the new" and "flap like a hat" that bothers me

my dude what is the second word in that quote--this isnt a set of lines about landscapes
― fleetwood (max), Saturday, August 22, 2009 9:00 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

is about landscape tho

i like george oppen, mark doty, russell edson, erin belieu, michael s harper, robert creeley, li-young lee... i'm more into fiction, though.

6/7 of those writers have something in common.

a penis

6/7 of those writers have something in common.

― Melissa W, Saturday, August 22, 2009 8:07 PM

o no u got me

a penis

^not a duplicate message

sure, there are lots of self-absorbed male writers. take your pick from any of the beats, say. but no one takes those fuckers seriously anymore, do they?

pretty sure ginsberg is still taken srsly

show me a poet who is not self obsessed btw

The main figures and early writers of the Beats were Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Neal Cassady, Gregory Corso, Herbert Huncke, Peter Orlovsky, and John Clellon Holmes. Certain poets the core Beats encountered in San Francisco were associated with the San Francisco Renaissance such as Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen, Lew Welch, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Harold Norse, Kirby Doyle, Michael McClure. The poets associated with the Black Mountain College were also associated with the Beat Generation, such as Robert Creeley, Denise Levertov, Robert Duncan (though Duncan was one of the most vocal early critics of the "Beat Generation" label). As well, there were the New York School poets such as Frank O'Hara, Kenneth Koch; surrealist poets Philip Lamantia and Ted Joans; and, poets who are occasionally called the "second wave" of the Beat Generation such as LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka, Diane DiPrima, Anne Waldman.

still pretty big deals

anyway, plath's poetry is great peace out motherfuckers

xpost

i mean, fuck: "If I pay the roots of the heather /Too close attention, they will invite me /To whiten my bones among them." she can't even write about landscape without it coming back to ME ME ME. get the fuck OVER yourself, lady.

― Yeah, well, jazz isn't exactly in love with Johnny either. (bug), Saturday, August 22, 2009 3:01 PM (58 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

The thing you're complaining about here is straight down the line in not just English poetry but the Western tradition. To ask a rhetorical question, what do Virgil's Eclogues, the anonymous "O Western Wind", Sir Philip Sidney's "Ye Goat-Herd Gods", Spenser's "Prothalamion" and Wordsworth's "Prelude" have in common if not a recursive affective feedback loop between landscape and (often suffering) lyric self? Not all poetry that makes that move is good, and lots of good poetry doesn't make that move- but *disliking that move as such* seems like a very odd way to separate good poetry from bad. And, if I may, quite a *presentist* gesture. It seems like precisely the sort of move that contemporary MFA programs might encourage young writers to titter at, but perhaps the problem is that it's a demanding move if it's too escape the charge of solipsism.

to escape, obviously

<3 f o'h because he says awesome things like:

I spill your whiskey: you are
beautiful! When my back is

turned you still love me.
Mirrors go blind in our flame.

still pretty big deals

I feel like among poets only O'Hara and to a lesser extent Koch and maybe, maybe Ginsberg is anything like a "big deal."

The thing you're complaining about here is straight down the line in not just English poetry but the Western tradition. To ask a rhetorical question, what do Virgil's Eclogues, the anonymous "O Western Wind", Sir Philip Sidney's "Ye Goat-Herd Gods", Spenser's "Prothalamion" and Wordsworth's "Prelude" have in common if not a recursive affective feedback loop between landscape and (often suffering) lyric self? Not all poetry that makes that move is good, and lots of good poetry doesn't make that move- but *disliking that move as such* seems like a very odd way to separate good poetry from bad. And, if I may, quite a *presentist* gesture. It seems like precisely the sort of move that contemporary MFA programs might encourage young writers to titter at, but perhaps the problem is that it's a demanding move if it's too escape the charge of solipsism.

― Neotropical pygmy squirrel, Saturday, August 22, 2009 8:18 PM

well, sure, there's nothing wrong with the feedback loop of observer and landscape. it just annoys me that, yet again, we can't get away from this overbearing plath ego.

bug, what poets do you consider good?

oh wait you answered this, a lot of poets who aren't as good as sylvia plath was

srsly though dude if "ego" in poetry is your complaint, then you need to avoid poetry altogether

btw u all forgot that TED HUGHES KILLED SYLVIA (WITH HIS RAPIST'S PENIS)

oh wait you answered this, a lot of poets who aren't as good as sylvia plath was

― Man Is Nairf! (J0hn D.), Saturday, August 22, 2009 8:23 PM

O SNAPZ U GOT ME

ted hughes was at least free of the prison of lol ego

go write a shitty indie song about it

john d i said all this already

o snapz u got sylvia plath

On a side-track, Clellon Holmes' Go is a great book worthy of yr attention, as far as I can tell. He reminds me a lot of Nelson Algren's best stuff.

Most of Plath's writing is way too technically adept to get into arguments about her ego. You might as well say that all first person lyrics are bloggeresque - that's bollocks.

go write a shitty indie song about it

OH SNAPZ YOU GOT ME

got any more challops while you're here? we could make this "bug's thread of extremely challenging opinions"

we cd make it his defend the indefensible

fuck you people

pretty much how this is gonna break down: 1) people who know something about poetry think her craft is pretty f'in impressive 2) people who're trying to flex a very edgy pose think she SUCKS

She's totally self-obsessed...but it's the way she expresses herself that I love. She doesn't just tell you. She draws you a picture. I get that as a reader you're basically trapped in her head, seeing what she sees...but her use of language, symbolism, and the cadence of her poems...that's the appeal for me. I'm not in love with the fact that she was depressed.

and ego shmego. William Blake wrote his own bible. If poets just wanted to tell stories they'd write novels. There's almost an implicit 'me me' quality in writing poetry, because the form itself draws attention to the author as much to the subject matter.

I don't know what I'm trying to say. Carry on.

THE_BELL_JAR ok guys i'm going to stick my head in the oven and see why its not working 2 hours ago from web

THE_BELL_JAR @tedhughes i know u dont give a shit asshole but the oven isnt working anymore!! 2 hours ago from web

oh hai guys wanna know wat i think about sylvia plath btw?

go for it dude

nah fuck it

I think that might have been the funniest KBP post I've seen so far.

Also, for Alfred:

Bitchy little spinster I know, I know, it's serious...

The peanut-crunching crowd
Shoves in to see

Them unwrap me hand and foot-
The big strip tease.

I've nearly finished the Clark biography, Red Comet. I don't see what else one could ask from a biography. It's meticulous, clear-eyed, compassionate; Clark has no framing narrative to follow, so - this far at least (October 1962) - there's no apportioning of blame, no sense that everything is heading for the vortex of her suicide (even if, well). Clark is a good critic, too - especially of Plath's short fiction and the later poems.

It's clear that 1950s New England was perfect in some ways but a hellscape of gender norms and expectations in others. The central event of her life was her post-New York depression and the disgraceful treatment at McLean. The suicide attempt and her subsequent internment are superbly recreated. It's a brutal and maddening indictment of patriarchy and institutional care.

Hughes doesn't come out of it well. How could he? I have a full sense of why Plath was so obsessed with him and a better understanding of the power of his early poetry; also, that he was an utter shithead but he's a believable shithead if that counts for anything. I don't think the punishment fits the crime but that's an ugly, glib and probably stupid way to frame it.

There's something, as ever, to be said about the limits of biography. Cleaving so close to the journals and the letters gives an illusion of an inner life but who of us is ourselves in our private journals and letters? Even if Plath more than anyone *seemed* to be building a version of herself in her private communication.

Obviously, the premise of the thread is bollocks. The price she paid is indefensible, but The Bell Jar and the later poetry are fucking astonishing.

yeah i loved Red Comet

the only thing i didn’t love was the critical analysis of her childhood poems: that felt like a bridge too far for me.

Good posts.

I can see the logic of looking at the juvenilia though. Clark doesn't have a project, as such, but one thing she is trying to do is to give Plath complete integrity. The through line from her early poems is clear inasmuch as she inhabits and inscribes landscape with meaning from the very start.

yeah i can see that, it just feels unnecessarily invasive. like, just as a human being? like once you embark on a career publishing poetry that’s one thing, but to treat her childhood output with the same kind of critical rigor is a bit much. at least to me. i just kept thinking “if Sylvia read this part she’d be rightfully annoyed or upset by it” idk

I finished the book. It's great. A couple of things.

1) The chapter on the 'afterlife of a poet' is a bit workmanlike after the immense rigour of the rest of the text. It's outside the scope of the book but it felt a bit loose after everything else. I guess after 8 years (!) of working on it, Clark wanted rid.

2) Al Alvarez doesn't come out of it well. Another 'how could he?' I suppose, but god, what a self-serving arsehole.

3) Olwyn. Christ, Olwyn.

4) There's a critical thread running through the text positing that Plath stood 'too close to the fire'. It goes something like the following. There's a well of poetic inspiration, Yeats had access to it, Lawrence too, Nietzsche, some of the Romantics. Freud and Jung mapped it, to some extent. Plath, who'd come up under a New Critical framework, was also drawn to it and knew it in her bones. When she met Hughes, he embodied the essence of it, was poetic inspiration made flesh - he, and the darkness they summoned together, were the missing pieces of the puzzle that enabled her to fall through her own trapdoors fully into that dark thought-cave, or word-hoard or whatever Romantic bullshit you want to call it. And, being a woman, she wasn't able to handle it. After her death, Alvarez wondered 'if all our rash chatter about art and risk and courage, and the way we turned rashness and despair into a literary principle, hadn't egged her on'.

5) Might as well call it the 'Lady Macbeth Gambit'.

The Janet Malcolm bio is so good about those matters.

I need to go back to it. Having engaged so closely with the poetry, it'll be like a new book.

I've got Jacqueline Rose's book too. Have you read that Alfred? Anyone else?

I just read Red Comet thanks to seeing this thread come up.

3/4 of the way through it, my bf walks past me one afternoon and says "HAS SHE STUCK HER HEAD IN THE OVEN YET".

But no, this book was good - I'm actually very suprised how comprehensive its sources were. Was she only able to do this because most of the people involved are dead now?

ETA: it certainly is a contrast to Bitter Fame, which I regret even bothering to read, since I found more out about its biases (esp Dido Merwin's rank essay).

I think about how I'd hate it if certain ppl I knew for 10 minutes in my youth jumped on the bandwagon to wax vicious about me. Olwyn and Dido hardly knew her, and yet.

100%! i think about that a lot, like some bitchface who’d shove me into a locker as soon as look at me saying “mm yes VegGrrl was very troubled, we were worried about her”

LOL exactly, and I can think of a specific person I know who would do exactly that.

I have some sympathy for Stevenson after reading The Silent Woman, and I remember liking her bio when I read it in 1994 (!); but that was a lifetime ago.

Y'all should check out Three-Martini Afternoons at the Ritz.

great piece on Plath by Tricia Lockwood & the new Plath Collected Prose in the London Review of Books - excellent read

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/n12/patricia-lockwood/arrayed-in-shining-scales