Favourite Plath Poem...

[Aurora Ariel]

Your favourite poem by Sylvia Plath:

I'm curious to know what is your favourite Sylvia Plath poem? I was rereading quite a few recently and remembered the first poem I had read in an English class, which was actually Mirror , but then tried to select a few favourites. Which do you count as favourites?

[blp]

The obvious ones I'm afraid, 'Lady Lazarus' and 'Daddy'. I also love the first line of 'Child': 'Your clear eye is the one absolutely beautiful thing'

[ponynikki]

"Mirror" for sure. It was the first poem by her I read and instantly fell in love.

[Aurora Ariel]

These were the first two Plath poems I read in an english class:


Mirror-By Sylvia Plath

I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
What ever you see I swallow immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
I am not cruel, only truthful---
The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.
Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.


Mushrooms-By Sylvia Plath

"Overnight, very
Whitely, discreetly,
Very quietly

Our toes, our noses
Take hold on the loam,
Acquire the air.

Nobody sees us,
Stops us, betrays us;
The small grains make room.

Soft fists insist on
Heaving the needles,
The leafy bedding,

Even the paving.
Our hammers, our rams,
Earless and eyeless,

Perfectly voiceless,
Widen the crannies,
Shoulder through holes. We

Diet on water,
On crumbs of shadow,
Bland-mannered, asking

Little or nothing.
So many of us!
So many of us!

We are shelves, we are
Tables, we are meek,
We are edible,

Nudgers and shovers
In spite of ourselves.
Our kind multiplies:

We shall by morning
Inherit the earth.
Our foot's in the door."


Apart from your favourites over the years-do you remember the first Plath poem you actually read?

[Aurora Ariel]

*****************************************

[Aurora Ariel]

This was another one of the first poems of hers which I read; and find to be quite powerful as well:


The Applicant-By Slylvia Plath

First, are you our sort of a person?
Do you wear
A glass eye, false teeth or a crutch,
A brace or a hook,
Rubber breasts or a rubber crotch,

Stitches to show something's missing? No, no? Then
How can we give you a thing?
Stop crying.
Open your hand.
Empty? Empty. Here is a hand

To fill it and willing
To bring teacups and roll away headaches
And do whatever you tell it.
Will you marry it?
It is guaranteed

To thumb shut your eyes at the end
And dissolve of sorrow.
We make new stock from the salt.
I notice you are stark naked.
How about this suit -

Black and stiff, but not a bad fit.
Will you marry it?
It is waterproof, shatterproof, proof
Against fire and bombs through the roof.
Believe me, they'll bury you in it.

Now your head, excuse me, is empty.
I have the ticket for that.
Come here, sweetie, out of the closet.
Well, what do you think of that?
Naked as paper to start

But in twenty-five years she'll be silver,
In fifty, gold.
A living doll, everywhere you look.
It can sew, it can cook,
It can talk, talk, talk.

It works, there is nothing wrong with it.
You have a hole, it's a poultice.
You have an eye, it's an image.
My boy, it's your last resort.
Will you marry it, marry it, marry it.

[blp]

Thanks for posting 'The Applicant'. Hadn't read it before and it's great.

The thing I like in all of them is the way she sounds like a brilliant amateur. I think with her it's something to do with being quite direct and declarative about what she wants to say, but mixing that up with incredibly striking imagery. Also, she doesn't seem to care too much if the rhythm gets lost.

[Aurora Ariel]

**************************************

[Aurora Ariel]

*****************************

[blp]

Hi blp!It's great to read that you liked the poems.Plath is one of the poets who can show that traditional rhyme and forms is not necessarily an indication of a good poem.By experimenting with free verse, or mixed rhyme, one is still capable of composing a powerful poem.I think it's good to remember to not let the fixed rhyme rule you and always be open to new ideas and styles.

Yes, I agree. What I particularly like in Plath though is that there is often a sense of structure, but it's half falling apart and that matches the meaning and also the mix of casual sounding language with really striking imagery.

[Phaedra]

That is my favorite, for sure.

I Am Vertical
But I would rather be horizontal.
I am not a tree with my root in the soil
Sucking up minerals and motherly love
So that each March I may gleam into leaf,
Nor am I the beauty of a garden bed
Attracting my share of Ahs and spectacularly painted,
Unknowing I must soon unpetal.
Compared with me, a tree is immortal
And a flower-head not tall, but more startling,
And I want the one's longevity and the other's daring.

Tonight, in the infinitesimal light of the stars,
The trees and flowers have been strewing their cool odors.
I walk among them, but none of them are noticing.
Sometimes I think that when I am sleeping
I must most perfectly resemble them--
Thoughts gone dim.
It is more natural to me, lying down.
Then the sky and I are in open conversation,
And I shall be useful when I lie down finally:
The the trees may touch me for once, and the flowers have time for me.

[starrwriter]

My favorite is about Plath:

Poor Sylvia sank so low
She put her head in an oven
And tried to bake it
Like a po-tat-o.

[Aurora Ariel]

*************************

[mono]

Forever my favorite by Plath, which you already posted, Aurora Ariel:

THE MOON AND THE YEW TREE

This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary.
The trees of the mind are black. The light is blue.
The grasses unload their griefs on my feet as if I were God,
Prickling my ankles and murmuring of their humility.
Fumy, spiritous mists inhabit this place
Separated from my house by a row of headstones.
I simply cannot see where there is to get to.

The moon is no door. It is a face in its own right,
White as a knuckle and terribly upset.
It drags the sea after it like a dark crime; it is quiet
With the O-gape of complete despair. I live here.
Twice on Sunday, the bells startle the sky
Eight great tongues affirming the Resurrection.
At the end, they soberly bong out their names.

The yew tree points up. It has a Gothic shape.
The eyes lift after it and find the moon.
The moon is my mother. She is not sweet like Mary.
Her blue garments unloose small bats and owls.
How I would like to believe in tenderness
The face of the effigy, gentled by candles,
Bending, on me in particular, its mild eyes.

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 the 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.

So much dichotomy that one can twist in so many directions seems present in the poem that I discover more and more depth to its subject and possible origin every time I read it. No Plath poem reads with ease, but I believe she emphasizes certain ambiguous words that require multiple reads to, at least, partially absorb, though obviously colors and other such seemingly mundane and easily-manipulated concepts, I think, can get easily altered depending on the reader.

[Aurora Ariel]

*****************************