defend the indefensible: sylvia plath

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.

i've even reconsidered my dickens challops since yesterday, tbh

real life lol king boy pato

its really hard to know what the real challop is on a thread like this u no?

Hard Times is plenty fun darragh, I'm still a bit baffled at yr allergic reaction to it.

real life lol king boy pato
^middle line of my most recent KBP-related haiku btw

what are the first and third?

Thread has blown my mind.

we stealin this thread? my allergic reaction to hard times got me full marks in the leaving cert, cos i studied like gospel every challopy criticism of it. i guess that's what hating something with 'a passion' is.

plath twitter updates
real life lol king boy pato
challops remedy

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