{"id":624,"date":"2007-05-11T00:08:37","date_gmt":"2007-05-11T06:08:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/?p=624"},"modified":"2007-05-11T08:30:13","modified_gmt":"2007-05-11T14:30:13","slug":"poetry-friday-sylvia-plath","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/?p=624","title":{"rendered":"Poetry Friday: Sylvia Plath"},"content":{"rendered":"

{Note: Vivian at HipWriterMama<\/a><\/strong> is on top of things and already rounding-up the Poetry Friday entries for today. Here’s<\/a><\/strong> the link} . . .<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Sylvia,<\/a>A little Sylvia Plath<\/a><\/strong> seemed the natural choice for today, after Jules’s review<\/a><\/strong> of Your Own, Sylvia<\/a><\/strong><\/em> by Stephanie Hemphill.<\/p>\n

Sometimes I feel compelled to defend poor Sylvia against those who think of her as the patron poet of semi-suicidal goth girls. I mean, okay… yeah, she is. But I think people tend to get hung up on Plath’s life story and forget what an awesome poet she really was. It’s easy to do – her\u00a0bio works as a parable for a lot of motifs: the angsty misunderstood girl who couldn’t live up to her own expectations, much less everyone else’s; the talented artist who sacrificed her own ambitions to support her husband and raise his children, only to lose him to another woman; the poster child for the questionable diagnoses and barbaric treatments of mid-century psychiatry… But really, if you can get past all the prefab persona\u00a0and\u00a0just look at her body of work, you’ll find\u00a0some seriously good poems. Her images come at you like kidney punches, one after the other; and they’re rendered in so precise a\u00a0meter it’s as though she\u00a0painstakingly pared away any excess syllables with an X-acto knife.<\/p>\n

Here’s an example. It’s one of her later poems, “Balloons,”<\/strong><\/a> from her posthumous collection Ariel<\/a><\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Since Christmas they have lived with us,
\nGuileless and clear,
\nOval soul-animals,
\nTaking up half the space,
\nMoving and rubbing on the silk<\/p>\n

Invisible air drifts,
\nGiving a shriek and pop
\nWhen attacked, then scooting to rest, barely trembling.
\nYellow cathead, blue fish—
\nSuch queer moons we live with…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

See? “Oval soul-animals” – simple and perfect. And not the least bit angsty. Read the rest here<\/a><\/strong>. And also check out this nifty site<\/a><\/strong> for an English class<\/a><\/strong> at Stanford, with links to most of her poems in either chronological or alphabetical order. Go on, you know you want to… go get your Plath on!<\/p>\n

Oh, fine… you can light a candle or two, if it’ll help set the mood.<\/p>\n

My black nail polish? Oh, geez, I think it’s over in that box of makeup I only use for Halloween… um, yeah, go ahead.<\/p>\n

A Cure<\/a><\/strong> CD? No. Well… maybe Head on the Door<\/a><\/strong>… I mean, NO, I’m sorry, no. Just read the poems already.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

{Note: Vivian at HipWriterMama is on top of things and already rounding-up the Poetry Friday entries for today. Here’s the link} . . . A little Sylvia Plath seemed the natural choice for today, after Jules’s review of Your Own, Sylvia by Stephanie Hemphill. Sometimes I feel compelled to defend poor Sylvia against those who […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry-friday"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=624"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}