![]() ![]() The way Plath perceived the obligation that is motherhood, her thoughts on existence and death. Not every poem in this collection captured my attention, but it did give me a glimpse into her life. No longer do I listen for the scrape of a keel The sun rises under the pillar of your tongue. It would take more than a lightning-strokeĬounting the red stars and those of plum. In their old anarchy to the horizon-line. I open my lunch on a hill of black cypress. You are pithy and historical as the Roman To mend the immense skull plates and clearĪrches above us. Scaling little ladders with glue pots and pails Mouthpiece of the dead, or of some god or I shall never get you put together entirely, Perhaps that’s why, at the time, I only read some of her most famous poems, such as “Daddy.” I’m glad enough time has passed that I can read and appreciate these. Back in university, long ago, Plath’s recently-publish posthumous collection, Ariel, was the lodestone for more than one aspiring poetess in my acquaintance. Had she resisted the urge to end her life, the reader might take equal note of the will to live that is also present. ![]() It’s all too easy to read these poems in the wake of the author’s suicide death does indeed haunt many of them. or in England, the seacoast is a recurrent source of inspiration. There are also some beautiful neologisms, such as “lapsing” in “The Lorelei” to describe the sound of waves at the shore (in “The Winter Ship,” the speaker tells us “the water slips and gossips in its loose vernacular”). In only one case, the latinate “palustral” in “Frog Autumn,” did I feel she was trying too hard for enriched vocabulary. It seems there was one word I needed to look up in nearly every poem. A surprising number of otherwise excellent writers evoke the moon, but inaccurately. Picky, you might think bear with me on a pet peeve. In “The Ghost’s Leavetaking,” a powerful description of the departure of a dream upon waking, she speaks of the “new moon’s curve,” but that is visible in the west just after sunset, not in the east just before dawn. “Water Colour of Grandchester Meadows,” for instance, updates Tennyson’s “red in tooth and claw.” However, the poet’s observation of nature is faulty in one case. Many of the poems record observations from nature, juxtaposing life and death. Yet it contains the oppressive line: “My heart under your feet, sister of a stone.”įamily relations also turn up in poems that treat the ambivalent experience of pregnancy, such as the poem that opens the collection, “The Manor Garden.” The third is “The Beekeeper’s Daughter.” Her father was an entomologist, and Plath herself tried her hand at beekeeping. The mermaid imagery turns up again in the collection. In “Full Fathom Five,” he is the old man of the sea, Neptune the speaker, his daughter, is a mermaid, choking on air she would rather breathe water. In it, he is depicted as a ruined statue that his daughter is heroically but unsuccessfully trying to preserve. It’s also the title of one of three poems in the volume that deal with the early loss of her father. The Colossus was the only collection of poems published in Sylvia Plath’s lifetime. How nature, sensing this, compounds her bitters. Green, also, the grapes on the green vine The figs in the fig tree in the yard are green Here are the first two verses from “Departure”: She also writes about nature, though perhaps the following poem is more about leave-taking: He hands her the cut-out heart like a crooked heirloom. ![]() ![]() In their jars the snail-nosed babies moon and glow, In that rubble of skull plates and old leather.Ī sallow piece of string held it together. They had four men laid out, black as burnt turkey, Here is the first verse of her poem entitled ”Two views of Cadaver Room”: Perhaps if I knew more about Plath’s life I would better comprehend her poems. She killed herself at the age of 30 following the break-up of her marriage to Ted Hughes. She avails herself of an extensive vocabulary, and I have never previously encountered many of the words she uses. I have given it four stars because Plath’s poems are obviously what I would call ”rich” and perhaps brilliant but on the other hand I have, as stated, difficulty in comprehending them. But I thought I would give this collection of hers a try. I confess I have difficulty in understanding poetry, particularly the work of specific poets, Sylvia Plath being one of them. ![]()
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