Sylvia Plath appreciation thread

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As some of you may know, Sylvia Plath committed suicide on Feb 11, that is 45 years ago today. Since her death, her work has steadily grown in popularity and inspired many people.
So if you have any Plath poems, peices of prose, quotes, etc that have inspired you, post them here.

When I was 20, it was the darkest time of my life. I was extremely depressed and thinking about suicide on a daily basis. Sitting in a quiet corner of the library, reading through a volume of Plath, was one thing that I could cling to at this time.

**********

The Hanging Man

By the roots of my hair some god got hold of me.
I sizzled in his blue volts like a desert prophet.

The nights snapped out of sight like a lizard’s eyelid :
A world of bald white days in a shadeless socket.

A vulturous boredom pinned me in this tree.
If he were I, he would do what I did.

27 June 1960
**********************

Ouija

It is a chilly god, a god of shades,
Rises to the glass from his black fathoms.
At the window, those unborn, those undone
Assemble with the frail paleness of moths,
An envious phosphorescence in their wings.
Vermillions, bronzes, colors of the sun
In the coal fire will not wholly console them.
Imagine their deep hunger, deep as the dark
For the blood-heat that would ruddle or reclaim.
The glass mouth sucks blood-heat from my forefinger.
The old god dribbles, in return, his words...

1957
************

Totem

The engine is killing the track, the track is silver,
It stretches into the distance. It will be eaten nevertheless.

Its running is useless.
At nightfall there is the beauty of drowned fields,

Dawn gilds the farmers like pigs,
Swaying slightly in their thick suits,

White towers of Smithfield ahead,
Fat haunches and blood on their minds.

There is no mercy in the glitter of cleavers,
The butcher's guillotine that whispers: 'How's this, how's this?'

In the bowl the hare is aborted,
Its baby head out of the way, embalmed in spice,

Flayed of fur and humanity.
Let us eat it like Plato's afterbirth,

Let us eat it like Christ.
These are the people that were important ----

Their round eyes, their teeth, their grimaces
On a stick that rattles and clicks, a counterfeit snake.

Shall the hood of the cobra appall me ----
The loneliness of its eye, the eye of the mountains

Through which the sky eternally threads itself?
The world is blood-hot and personal

Dawn says, with its blood-flush.
There is no terminus, only suitcases

Out of which the same self unfolds like a suit
Bald and shiny, with pockets of wishes,

Notions and tickets, short circuits and folding mirrors.
I am mad, calls the spider, waving its many arms.

And in truth it is terrible,
Multiplied in the eyes of the flies.

They buzz like blue children
In nets of the infinite,

Roped in at the end by the one
Death with its many sticks.

28 January 1963

I was in my fifties before I read "The Bell Jar" and I was astounded and astonished on how she wrote from where I saw, how she saw what I saw and her incredible unknowing arrogance ( that I understood so well) of being high and mighty while wrapped in a dirty blanket in the day room.

Blessings on her memory! We might never know if she and Virginia Woolfe were right, will we?


Merle

I love Sylvia Plath. I have a collection of her poems and the Bell Jar. My favourite poem of hers at the moment is 'The Munich Mannequins'.

Poem for a winter's day topic

Winter Trees

The wet dawn inks are doing their blue dissolve.
On their blotter of fog the trees
Seem a botanical drawing.
Memories growing, ring on ring,
A series of weddings.

Knowing neither abortions nor bitchery,
Truer than women,
They seed so effortlessly!
Tasting the winds, that are footless,
Waist-deep in history.

Full of wings, otherworldliness.
In this, they are Ledas.
O mother of leaves and sweetness
Who are these pietas?
The shadows of ringdoves chanting, but chasing nothing.

by Sylvia Plath

Plath is my all-inspiring muse. She is the uber poet for all Aspies. Very few women writers (with the exceptions of Alice Munroe, Joyce Carol Oates, Simone de Beauvoir and the like) sear my soul as does this one.

Thank you Zee, for remembering her. I last mentioned this great poet in my diary on February 11, 2003, the fortieith anniversary of her suicide. I have always had misgivings about that wretched husband of hers, Ted Hughes. Surprisingly, I have never seen the biopic starring Gwyneth Paltrow.
The Bell Jar, her only novel, is still one of my favourites.


I hope this thread continues, unlike Plath's short-lived existence.

yes, The Bell Jar was v important to me. That someone else knew about not seeing any point in getting washed or dressed. Because will have to do it all over again tomorrow.
and her poetry but less, too pretty. Lovely words. Aesthetically pleasing. Adore the feel, look and sound of them. But don't connect with anything emotional for me, unlike bell jar.

I haven't read Virginia Woolfe... yet.

There is a new film version of the Bell Jar on the horizon which could be quite interesting, although apparently it involves Julia Stiles.

That's one of my favorites too!



The Munich Mannequins


Perfection is terrible, it cannot have children.
Cold as snow breath, it tamps the womb

Where the yew trees blow like hydras,
The tree of life and the tree of life

Unloosing their moons, month after month, to no purpose.
The blood flood is the flood of love,

The absolute sacrifice.
It means: no more idols but me,

Me and you.
So, in their sulfur loveliness, in their smiles

These mannequins lean tonight
In Munich, morgue between Paris and Rome,

Naked and bald in their furs,
Orange lollies on silver sticks,

Intolerable, without minds.
The snow drops its pieces of darkness,

Nobody's about. In the hotels
Hands will be opening doors and setting

Down shoes for a polish of carbon
Into which broad toes will go tomorrow.

O the domesticity of these windows,
The baby lace, the green-leaved confectionery,

The thick Germans slumbering in their bottomless Stolz.
And the black phones on hooks

Glittering
Glittering and digesting

Voicelessness. The snow has no voice

I agree, she does have an amazing attention to detail that Aspies should appreciate.

The Paltrow biopic is terrible! I wouldn't even bother watching it, and if you know the details of her life, it won't add anything. It's just a bunch of random clips, with attention focused on reproducing the accuracy of the era rather than any real exploration of her life. And of course, Paltrow is miscast. But I am looking forward to the new film version of the Bell Jar.

Hmm, some of her early serious poetry (1957-60ish) is perhaps a bit wordy and confined, but have you given a good look at her later stuff? It's much more emotional. Some interesting experimentation in the juvenilia section as well. I would give it another chance, if you can get a copy of the collected poems.

Appreciation of all things Plath topic

The Munich Mannequins gets the spine tingling! Thanks, Zee, for posting a copy of her poem.

Plath really knew how to write. It just must have exhausted her. She needed a break from all relationships in order to do some inner healing that may have saved her life. It is difficult being a great artist and a mother. That ex-husband of hers was no help.

Edge (Plath's last poem)

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 odours 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.

February 5, 1963

Last edited by sartresue on 13 Feb 2008, 6:25 pm, edited 3 times in total.

Some of her writing really makes one wonder about how much of her work was inspired by the electro shock therapy she had endured.... and what sort of affect the excessive stimulation of her frontal lobe had. She writes as though she has been to a state of mind that is typically inspired by those who have had extensive use of psychedelics..... It has been shown that frontal lobe stimulation can cause one to go through "near death experiences" or even meet God.

example:
The Hanging Man

By the roots of my hair some god got hold of me.
I sizzled in his blue volts like a desert prophet.

The nights snapped out of sight like a lizard’s eyelid :
A world of bald white days in a shadeless socket.

A vulturous boredom pinned me in this tree.
If he were I, he would do what I did.

27 June 1960

Funny you mention plath. I just got done learning about her poem "metaphors" about her being pregnant.

Plathology topic

Very insightful comment made by McGuinness regarding electroshock stimulation of the frontal lobes. I have never had such an experience as shock treatments. I hear they are brutal. Only once I ingested a psychedelic substance at the age of 15 in order to experience it. What I experienced was typical of schizophrenia, and very terrifying.

This might be another venue for research of information on frontal lobes, lobotomies and electroshock. I have a hunch such therapy is brain damaging. I believe Plath wrote about her experience with such a therapy.

Plathways topic

I just found out there is a new book written about Sylvia Plath to be published around March 8, 2008. I cannot remember the author's name and I have been unable to discover the author's name, even when looking on the Internet.. When I find it I will post it.

Yes, I think she was realy exhausted with everything in her life. Near the end, she would get up around 4 or 5 am, and write for a few hours, before the kids woke up. Someone called it "The blue hour". I think of that whenever I'm working late through the night, it's inspiring, because that's when she wrote her best poetry.
Here are some clips (I've memorized most of her later poems)


Stasis in darkness
then the substanceless blue
pour of tor and distances

(Ariel)


The hooves will not have it,
In blue distance the pistons hiss.

(Years)



This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary.
The trees of the mind are black. The light is blue.
.......
I have fallen a long way. Clouds are flowering
blue and mystical over the face of the stars
Inside the church, the saints will be all blue,
Floating on their delicate feet over cold pews,
Their hands and faces stiff with holiness.
The moon sees nothing of this. She is bald and wild.
And the message of the yew tree is blackness - blackness and silence.

(The moon and the yew tree)

Yes, I think that poem is definately a reference to that. Also I remember in The Bell Jar she keeps thinking about the Rosenbergs and how they were executed in the electric chair, how it must feel to have all that electricity going through your body. That was in the beginning of the book, before Esther had ECT.