defend the indefensible: sylvia plath

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

like pink sprouts of truth
through the brittle winter snow:
the challops in bloom

do challops dream of
electric sheeple in the
panty vlog fuck world

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

nah KBP that's an unpopular fact

I will say I prefer Ted's work to Sylvia's. I have no idea of the currency of that opinion.

^^ u have a penis

how's ur 800m time hoos

they call me usain

Hughes' body of work is about 20 times bigger than Sylv's so there is an unfair advantage there but yeah Hawk in the Rain to Wodwo is still better and I say that having plenty of love for SP.

usain, usain,
ur just insane,
in the membrane.

my favorite plath anyway has always been "morning song" - I think the big problem with plath is she's the only poet of the modern age whose bio intersects so aggressively with the poetry. it's true too of lowell, and berryman, and the other (lesser imo) confessionals, but plath is like wilde to both her supporters & detractors: separating the poetry from the person, the content from the story, is something she has made very difficult. maybe as part of her poetic project but if I were going to make a semester of it I would argue not: that her focus in on craft, that content is almost an afterthought for her BUT like any (egocentric, reflection-obsessed) poet she leans toward content that will impress others. and "this is what it feels like to crave death with your eyes open"/"this is how the world looks from down here in my own personal pit" is/was stuff that people found riveting, and in which see found inspiration. but it's all afterthought, that bit - it's about the actual writing that people went gaga. "And now you try/your handful of notes/the clear vowels rise like balloons"? Anyone who's spent a few minutes in the company of a babbling infant, much more an infant for whom one has some personal feeling, feels the heft of that, the beauty. That sort of poetry is why people love her writing: the ability to communicate something with such almost aggressive clarity. imo obv

I will say I prefer Ted's work to Sylvia's. I have no idea of the currency of that opinion.

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Saturday, August 22, 2009 9:47 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

oh, hoos

maybe I should just go write a shitty indie song about it tho

there was a young (wo)man name caster
who's genes made her (possibly) faster
at the end of the race
she had finished first place
and the other competitors hinted that (s)he had a cock

damn if people's are actually still using this thread i'm sorry, thought it had degenerated beyond use. where else can we party drunk tonite imo?

do challops dream of
electric sheeple in the
panty vlog fuck world

sadhu! sadhu!

I don't think she's the only one ... Anne Sexton is in the same camp, and to my knowledge are on the same level, reputation-wise.

AFAIK Sexton is way more firmly tied to the confessional thing by poetry critics than SP, and her rep is consequently a lot lower.

do people still dig sexton? last time my opinions on poetry had any currency she was in serious decline

oh, hoos

― horseshoe, Sunday, August 23, 2009 1:53 AM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

what i'm right here man

lol sorry! i think hughes is mediocre and plath is great, but i don't know how "current" that view is tbh.

i mean i've only read "selected" of either tbh so take my opinion as one will

more twitter plz

"And now you try/your handful of notes/the clear vowels rise like balloons"? Anyone who's spent a few minutes in the company of a babbling infant, much more an infant for whom one has some personal feeling, feels the heft of that, the beauty.

Yes this. "Your clear eye is the one absolutely beautiful thing/I want to fill it with color and ducks"... I'm not even a mother but she evokes that love of newness and awe of the child so beautifully. When she was still and comtemplative her poems were really very lovely.

the ability to communicate something with such almost aggressive clarity

yes, love this way of putting it

Apparently the suicide wasn't really meant to happen. I am not sure where I found the link to the article but it analysed the suicide was merely a cry for attention.

Wd have more chance of being heard crying for attention with yr head outside the oven imo

Roffle. Probably.

wtf @ please ban me (although that "go write a shitty indie song about it" did made me think bug was maybe fishing for a timeout)

wtf are you people doing talking about Plath? Go read Elizabeth Bishop.

I checked, no-one appears to have suggest banned anyone as a result of this thread. Well, not yet anyway.

prophetic

wtf are you people doing talking about Plath? Go read Elizabeth Bishop.

― post-contrarian meta-challop 2009 (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, August 23, 2009 10:03 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

post/screenname

<3 Bishop

When I was in secondary school I was obsessed with the few Plath poems that were in our English Reader, Mirror, Finisterre, The Arrival of the Bee Box, Elm, Pheasant and Poppies in July. They felt sharp and flinty and yowling with a goth-girl mania that made sense to me. In the middle of Patrick Kavanagh and Seamus Heaney, she felt a lot more relatable to angsty me, and the hard, right angled rhythms of her poems called out to me. You know that "I know the bottom." I don't pretend to be any particular poetry buff. I'm one of those ppl who wonders what it is they're supposed to be looking at wrt poetry most of the time. But a lot of her phrasing seems clumsy and grasping to me now. Maybe that's part of her appeal but "I want to fill it with ducks"? psshht. Still, fourteen year old me was definitely a prime example of the college girl mentality that misinterpreted her suicide as romantic, and I reread the brief bio over and over.

what the hell kind of goof gets butthurt and self-bans over a sylvia plath thread?

<3 bishop

defend the indefensible: ted hughes I really could have got w/ tho.

sorry for being a jerk, bug. rip

the kind of goof who thinks "ok shit just got so heated i called a dude out by his ACTUAL DAYJOB on a sylvia plath thread maybe i need an ilx time out"? idk that seems of... sensible.

xposts

this thread needs to be summarized in a series of photos