defend the indefensible: sylvia plath

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

xpost

Yeah, well what they want is: facts.

here comes big hoos
aka the steendriver
mind completely blown

rockin accidental freeform there

a challop is just an unpopular fact, sheeple

here comes big hoos

John bringing the Finnegans Wake quotes.

do sheeples challop thru the fields i wonders

a challop is just
an unpopular fact, sheeple
or so you say, dude

Sheeples may safely graze.

For a thread of defending some of you sure seem to not nderstand the meaning of the word.

I have never met a single "goth teenage plath fan" type. In fact no one I knew was much into poetry at all.

I appreciated the visceralness of her lster work, and I find intrigue in the raked-over coals of her life, I admit. I most certainly don't adhere to the "omg ted was a bastard" line - in fact I'm a little the other way, I think Plath would have been pretty unbearable to live with, as was her way with the problems she had.

In "Birthday Letters" Hughes writes a poem about her I rather like called "Fever", which has a section that turns her whole vigorous drama on its head:

As I paused
Between your mouthful, I stared at the readings
On your dials. Your cry jammed so hard
Over into the red of catastrophe
Left no space for worse. And I thought
How sick is she? Is she exaggerating?
And I recoiled, just a little,
Just for balance, just for symmetry,
Into skeptical patience, a little.

Sorry for my typos, this computer's screwy and keeps freezing.

"a challop is just an unpopular fact" is a challop