defend the indefensible: sylvia plath

The woman is perfected.
Her dead

Body wears the smile of accomplishment,
The illusion of a Greek necessity

Flows in the scrolls of her toga,
Her bare

Feet seem to be saying:
We have come so far, it is over.

Each dead child coiled, a white serpent,
One at each little

Pitcher of milk, now empty.
She has folded

Them back into her body as petals
Of a rose close when the garden

Stiffens and odors bleed
From the sweet, deep throats of the night flower.

The moon has nothing to be sad about,
Staring from her hood of bone.

She is used to this sort of thing.
Her blacks crackle and drag.

for some reason i imagine mark e smith reciting this

^^^^YES

I can imagine mark e smith reading the instructions on the back of a package of crepe mix ...

true but there's something about the enjambements which is VERY MES

after the Blixa Bargeld hardware catalog video, I frequently imagine musicians with distinctive vocal styles reading other things.

Also, the starkly didactic imaging is extremely Smith-esque

how do you define didactic?

Each image doesn't leave any room for interpretation; it is a discrete but absolute item. Aspect and emotion are assigned by the poet. We are being told not just things but of things and how they are. Happenings are instructed.

hmm ... I always think of didactic as meaning - lecturing; presenting an arguable viewpoint or opinion in a stark manner, without much room to negotiate/read nuance ... like the thread title.

it only bugs people cause she was a rich pretty girl

yeah, i hate gwyneth paltrow

see!!

seen

Have never read Plath, but I thought her deal was that she validated depression among those who had no outward reason to be depressed, having had pretty much every other advantage? Thot she gave the rallying cry of a certain kind of female depression/searching-for-self of "nothing practical is wrong but no one understands me" which is either "UGH not again" or "my soul has found its harbor" depending on who you ask.

thing is, historically it seems like there are plenty of male poets and writers that did this well before her time.

But for women? My impression was that there was something specifically feminine about SP's writing, voice, message, whatever.

marketing

exactly - it's the combination of validating depression for the upper classes and her gender, and that she focused on it

irl, i don't think i know a single poet who enjoys thinking about or reading Sylvia Plath at this point in time. same with ginsberg.

i do admire her line, and her assonance is admirable, but the content of her poems bores the living hell out of me.

also, just a note to MR D4rnielle: You are so fucking wrong about Lowell and Berryman being lesser poets. So incredibly wrong, it almost hurts me inside that someone could be so wrong.

Bishop >> Merrill >>>>> Lowell > Berryman >> Plath

oh alfred I think we're in telepathic agreement there

def. agree that Lowell > Plath, but I do know poets who think about and read Plath, for what that is worth

If anything, the 'contemporary' culture of death-romanticization is so inextricably tied to her work, it can be ignored by anyone who finds such sentiments unappealing, if not downright irresponsible and selfish.

no frakn way, alfred.

Lowell>Berryman>Bishop>Merrill>Plath .

i mean, there are tons that beat all of these to a pulp, but i won't get into that here.

maybe if more poets read and thought about plath more people would read poetry!!!!

Have you watched Annie Hall, tabes?

I find Lowell mostly unreadable after 1968.

maybe if people would turn off their fucking televisions, they would read more. that ain't gonna fucking happen, so let us poets wallow in academia and free-lance criticism circles of masturbation plz thx.

i think internet is bigger barrier to reading of poetry than television tbh, although at least the one can be incorporated into the other

Sonnet: Typical Bishop, not a word wasted. She would often pin up poems in front of her desk, a line or so short of completion; some might stay there for ten years before there were finished. You'd think she could have just made it up...

<3 bishop

i have seen annie hall. many times.

Lowell's best poem is "New York 1962: Fragment." hands-down one of my favorite poems ever written.

what's weldon kees place in academia? forgotten?

LJ, do you have any idea how many internet-only poetry journals there are? or the number of blogs discussing contemporary poetry on the internet? not trying to be an asshole, but i don't think you do-- the internet is full of poetry. i would say that television has some poetry in it, but it also is a much more passive activity than spending time on the internet.

anyway.

Yeah I meant in my own case. I know there's poetry on the internet, hence the last clause of my post. If you could link some of the better blogs, that'd be nice.

"I got poetry in me."

http://www.popmatters.com/images/features_art/1/100-male-film-beatty.jpg

www.ohhla.com

man i am a total philistine when it comes to poetry. don't get it, don't read it, don't enjoy it, don't really care.

not that this is the right thread to air that out but w/e.

^^ TELEVISION-WATCHER

don't watch tv either!!

^^ INTERNET-USER

gotcha

bzang

LJ, look up Tarpaulin Sky and Jacket Magazine . these are two of the best.

grooviness

Best Internet-specific poetry I've seen (turn your sound on): http://www.yhchang.com/DAKOTA.html

do you like FENCE, table?

All sorts of conflicted about Plath. Loved her at 15, hated by 18, and on through my early 20s. Now I admire & sometimes really like stretches of her: the line is great, but I think she can pack in too much of that clickety click alliteration and pack-the-stresses long-vowel assonance - feels a bit of cheap way to get the suffocation effects, but it does often come off.

Maybe related: she seems to have big anxiety/ambition about being a serious poet - I feel like the poems are gritted-teeth working towards that, maybe too self-conscious about it. I mean it's a stupid criticism in a way - isn't that part of how a poet works towards a traditional sort of greatness? - but when it isn't coming together it looks a bit like a set of learned effects.

Great eye I think - arresting images. I especially like the Bee poems, a few others from before the Ariel extremities, that middle period of strong craft. She's quite an odd British/American hybrid.

I tried to re-read The Bell Jar recently, but didn't get that far. I was going back and forth between being impressed at her knack for intense & precise description/images and getting annoyed at what felt like attempts to impress by extended passages of this.

I've had a steadier enjoyment of Lowell and Berryman over the years, but I'd certainly take Plath at her best over the later Dream Songs or most of the Notebook/Dolphin poems. Bishop over any of them, though.

http://www.poemsthatgo.com/gallery/summer2000/redlily/eliet.html

cool site but long abandoned

FENCE is pretty good— I haven't seen an issue since the Spring of 08, but I remember an essay from an issue a year before that totally blew me away: Brad Cran's "Cinéma Vérité and the Collected Works of
Ronald Reagan: A History of Propaganda in Motion Pictures." totally excellent reading.

woofx3, some of the middle-late Dream Songs are among the best. like 191:

"The autumn breeze was light & bright. A small bird
flew in the back door and the beagle got it
(half-beagle) on the second try.
My wife kills fleas and feeds them to the dog,
five last night, plus one Rufus snapped herself.
This is a house of death

and one of Henry's oldest friends was killed,
It came on a friend's radio, this week,
whereat Henry wept.
All those deaths keep Henry pale & ill
and unable to sail through the autumn world & weak,
a disadvantage of surviving.

The leaves fall, lives fall, every little while
you can count with stirring love on a new loss
& an emptier place.
The style is black jade at all seasons, the style
is burning leaves and a shelving of moss
over each planted face."

if that last stanze doesn't leave you breathless, then...damn.

i mean, whenever i die, that is going on the funeral program. that last stanza. no question.

obviously, hope not to think about such things for a while, duh.

table, ty for reprinting that dreamsong, it isn't in my copy of berryman's SELECTED POEMS 1938-1968

my fave might be no 69, which begins

Love her he doesn't but the thought he puts
into that young woman
would launch a national prodcut
complete with TV spots & skywriting
outlets in Bonn & Tokyo
I mean it

product

i think ilx posts are some of the best poems ever written