Poetry Bookclub 2

[Petrarch's Love]

Just to add my own opinion on the Plath discussion, I'll first admit I haven't read a great deal by her, so there may be great stuff I'm missing; I just don't know. What I have read by her didn't impress me much at all, and I completely agree with JBI's assessment of her allusions to the holocaust in "Daddy." Comparing having personal issues with her father to being a victim of the holocaust strikes me as grossly disproportionate, inappropriate and immature.

First of all lots of people were using the Jew in a concentration camp as a metaphor post WWII. Lots. In poetry and fiction. If she's a product of her age than what's wrong with that? It's like saying Shakespeare shouldn't be using Renaissance metaphors or Dante using Christian metaphors.

Yes, there were a lot of references to the holocaust post WWII, but generally I think poets of integrity treat such references in a serious way, with respect for the extent of the horror they are invoking in referring to concentration camps. By comparing her pain at a father's distance to being a jew suffering at the hands of a Nazi, she diminishes the reality of the horror the latter would have suffered. The two are deeply disproportionate forms of suffering. Though there are some problems with the analogy you bring up between Dante using Christian metaphors and modern poets alluding to the Holocaust (one is a positive belief that is a part of a culture, while another is an unimaginably brutal event that tried to destroy a whole people and to rend a culture apart, which are two very different things), I think there's a possible way to use that to illustrate the way in which I see this to be inappropriate. If a poet in Dante or Shakespeare's Christian world were to pen a poem in which he were seriously, and in great detail, saying that he suffered just the way Christ did on the cross because his lady didn't show him favor--actually said right out that he is the suffering Lord and she is pounding nails into his hands, I'm not sure that would fly too well either. This is not to say that poets of that time don't sometimes incorporate religious vocabulary or themes into love poetry, but they wouldn't directly suggest that they have suffered as much as Christ suffered in the same manner that Plath suggests that she has suffered just as much as victims of the Holocaust suffered. Again, these are actually quite different cultural influences in many ways, but I don't think it's a good defense of Plath's use of these metaphors to simply say it's part of her culture. What you do with cultural reference makes a huge difference. Incidentally, I disagree that Plath should not be allowed to refer to the holocaust at all simply because she didn't experience an event that horrific, but I do think the manner in which she refers to it in that poem is objectionable. When it comes to great suffering, some respect for the enormity of that suffering is in order.

[Virgil]

A poet is allowed to feel what she may feel. She did commit suicide afterall. Critics don't determine a poet's subject matter. It's like saying that TS Eliot is silly for comparing the sexuality of the 1920's as evidence of a wasteland. Or Yeats about his cyclic thoeoies of history. The poet has his ideas; it's what he does with it. Or William Faulkner comparing Benjy to Christ in The Sound and the Fury. I see nothing wrong with the Plath's halocaust metaphor because she creates with it (when you look at the total context of her work) a larger vision of humanity. Nonetheless I see everyone's points and I've noted them. I have never seen such negativity of her work before.

[Petrarch's Love]

Petrarch: I enjoy your arguments for Roethke much more than I enjoy the samples of his work presented to me, with the possible exception of "The Shape of Fire"; the best way I can say why, in the moment, is because I sense Roethke uses formalism much like a straight jacket is used to control the disruption and the danger in the delusional patient.

And for myself, I ask, why not take the risk? Why not leap and see what kind of brush fire your manic state leaves behind? You want to, and have the appreciation of Yeats and Eliot in the fumes of your aspiration, and yet, you hold yourself in.

And thus far, that is my argument with him, which remains unanswered. Do I have to square this with my argument that Plath's biography is too tied to her output? Hehe!

Hi Jozy--Well, seldom has a critic been told her argument is more engaging than the poetry being argued over. I found your above response interesting because it showed me that I think we fundamentally agree about what's going on in Roethke's "Four for Sir John Davies." I completely agree that the formalism and the nostalgia for the poem is partly a direct reaction to his mania. While you see this as a "straightjacket," however, I was seeing it as a comfort. We're both pointing to the same thing: he's reigning in his manic tendencies here, but we two were reacting in different ways to that. I do agree with you that it can sometimes be a good thing for a poet to let go completely, to embrace disorder and see where it takes him, but I had the sense in this case of a person who had experienced more than his fair share of mania, and there was something moving about this sense of balance he was exploring in this poem. Sometimes trying to find order can be just as daring as trying to find disorder. Now, I don't really think this is a daring poem, indeed I'm not trying to argue that it's a poem of particular genius, but I do think it affords some pleasure. Obviously it's ultimately a matter of personal taste, and in this case you obviously would like him to let loose some more, while I find some things appealing in this more staid vein. I personally wasn't as fond of the "The Shape of Fire" because, much as I saw some interesting potential in there, I felt it was too much a product of his mania, to the point where it ceased to be able to speak to the reader and to convey thought and emotion in an effective way. Honestly, probably a poem better than either of those would be one displaying more of a balance or, better yet, a tension between the two modes. A poet needs to be able to do either extreme--let go and spill things out in passion, even mania, and work within formal structures and modes--because writing requires familiarity with both.

[JBI]

I admit she has resonated into a cult of personality, but I think that unlike Bukowski there is a there there. I don't understand what you mean by "modality of her poetic tropes." every poet uses poetic tropes.


First of all lots of people were using the Jew in a concentration camp as a metaphor post WWII. Lots. In poetry and fiction. If she's a product of her age than what's wrong with that? It's like saying Shakespeare shouldn't be using Renaissance metaphors or Dante using Christian metaphors. I studied Plath in college with that same professor I quoted above with a Roethke poem, Karl Malkoff. And he was Jewish and felt no insult and he thought her poetyr of quality, enough to include in a class of Stevens, Wiliiams, Lowell, and the other great American second half 20th century poets .


No I'm not familiar with the collection but I guess I have a deal of her poems and I can find iton the internet. I bet it woould be a fiesty discussion. But if people don't want to I understand.

Here's a poem:

[Snip]
http://www.famouspoetsandpoems.com/p...th/poems/18927

I find this a solid poem by a world class poet.

I too have studied her, and read her collected poems from cover to cover. She does nothing, in my opinion, but writes pseudo hysterics. I'm not alone in my criticism - other critics have said similar things. It just happens that she wrote in a time where people were looking for this sort of thing - in the post-Freud era, where this sort of junk was popular (just look at the generation of poets she was writing in, all depressive, and most alcoholics). I just don't think she does what ever she does really well, and instead jumps to the controversial, or the outrageous.

Critically, her first book has been dismissed, everything published in her life time pretty much has - it is her later works that receive all the attention, and of all of them, Ariel in particular. I don't find her a very strong poet. She imagines herself some sort of victim of some world scheme, when really she had none of it. She grew up during the war, but wasn't a Jew, or even a European, and has no right. It's like me going out and comparing myself to someone in the killing fields in Cambodia. It's not normal, or justified. Sure, one could argue this has nothing to do with her poetry, but I find her work just over dramatizing an already privileged life, in which she had all the opportunities in the world.


Or better yet, why don't I write a poem about my personal suffering, portraying myself as a child-rape victim, who in the end is brutally murdered? Would that go over very well? Where is the line? How much is one aloud to take.

This isn't the only instance she uses Holocaust imagery and references, she seems to do so throughout the entire body of her works. Of course, I'm not a fan of censorship, and I try to keep personal views out of my reading, but something like this can't be ignored, as it is probably her most anthologized, and well known poem.

[Dark Muse]

It's not normal, or justified. Sure, one could argue this has nothing to do with her poetry, but I find her work just over dramatizing an already privileged life, in which she had all the opportunities in the world.

That does not seem to be a very intelligent argument. That because she had opportunities, or group up with a certain upbringing or family background means she does not have the right to have certain personal feelings, or express emotions that are not filled with puppy dogs and sunshine.

Just because a person comes from a well to do family, or has had opportunities does not be default mean they must be happy, or have had positive life experiences.

A person is entitled to feel what they feel, as Virgil pointed out in one of his above post, not matter how they are raised, and as an artist they are permitted to express those feelings in the way of their own choosing.

It does not mean everyone has to enjoy the work. But to say, she had no right to even have those feelings because of her upbringing, that is just ludicrous.

[JBI]

That does not seem to be a very intelligent argument. That because she had opportunities, or group up with a certain upbringing or family background means she does not have the right to have certain personal feelings, or express emotions that are not filled with puppy dogs and sunshine.

Just because a person comes from a well to do family, or has had opportunities does not be default mean they must be happy, or have had positive life experiences.

A person is entitled to feel what they feel, as Virgil pointed out in one of his above post, not matter how they are raised, and as an artist they are permitted to express those feelings in the way of their own choosing.

It does not mean everyone has to enjoy the work. But to say, she had no right to even have those feelings because of her upbringing, that is just ludicrous.

Of course, and I must be drawn back to Robinson's Richard Cory,

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
"Good-morning," and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich, richer than a king—
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.

Yet Cory's death isn't the same - him killing himself is justified by himself, but are we supposed to feel sorry for him? Is Robinson really saying everyone has problems, or is he being ironic and saying people are never happy. Either way though, as it applies to Plath, she had the privileges Jews in concentration camps didn't have. She went to school, had a life, whereas 6million other people didn't. She may have been depressed, but she wasn't targeted for extermination. It is alright for her to try to convey her depression, as Lowell did before her, but where is the line. Are we supposed to feel sorry for her, or is she merely acting childish, and saying, "oh I have such a bad life." Personally, I think she just has an inability to be happy, which makes her not a profound individual, but a mentally ill one, and that has no justification for over dramatization, and overdoing it with making herself seem as if she has had the most terrible existence, when the fact that she has her life is proof enough that she is not actually "a Jew".

[Virgil]

Yes, JBI, you're constant insertion of her "privildged life" reflects your personal reaction to her the person rather than her poetry. What her real life was has nothing to do with her work. What she felt, whether honest or not, is irrelevant. I personally take it as honest, like I said she did commit suicide. It's the work. After perusing her work I can see a young poet in there. She died at 31 so most of her work is of a youth. But her good work, perhaps posthumous in Ariel, seems solid to me. That's my assessment. Let the critics debate it out.

[JBI]

I don't know if she would have even been given a second glance had she not killed herself. The question hovers over her work, I find. As a person, her life has become a media best seller. From the movie, to the cult following, which seems to be perpetually supporting her work. As it is, I don't know if her work can be read without her biography in the mix, and I personally doubt she would be successful as a poet without a biography.

[Virgil]

Here's another solid poem by Plath.

Balloons
by Sylvia Plath

Since Christmas they have lived with us,
Guileless and clear,
Oval soul-animals,
Taking up half the space,
Moving and rubbing on the silk

Invisible air drifts,
Giving a shriek and pop
When attacked, then scooting to rest, barely trembling.
Yellow cathead, blue fish ----
Such queer moons we live with

Instead of dead furniture!
Straw mats, white walls
And these traveling
Globes of thin air, red, green,
Delighting

The heart like wishes or free
Peacocks blessing
Old ground with a feather
Beaten in starry metals.

[Snip]
http://www.famouspoetsandpoems.com/p...th/poems/18932

Read the whole poem. And frankly this is prior to the Confessional movement took off. So give her credit for pushing the form.

[Epistemophile]

It's not normal, or justified. Sure, one could argue this has nothing to do with her poetry, but I find her work just over dramatizing an already privileged life, in which she had all the opportunities in the world.

how do you ever justify what you write and why you write? why should there be any justification at all? a poet chooses his/her subject matter and he or she chooses to write in a particular way. we can either like it or dislike it, but can we really say that the poet does not have sanction to write about something he/she personally never experienced?
and, what would be art without dramatization!
we usually brand off poets like anne sexton and sylvia plath as 'confessionals' but sometimes fail to notice that in several cases irony forms the lynchpin around which many of their poems turn.
for me the very complexity in plath's poetry arises from a (perhaps deliberate) confusion between confessional and ironic utterances. i mean, how many of us have tried to read her poems as dramatic monologue of sorts?

[Virgil]

And another:

Sow
by Sylvia Plath

God knows how our neighbor managed to breed
His great sow:
Whatever his shrewd secret, he kept it hid

In the same way
He kept the sow--impounded from public stare,
Prize ribbon and pig show.

But one dusk our questions commended us to a tour
Through his lantern-lit
Maze of barns to the lintel of the sunk sty door

To gape at it:
This was no rose-and-larkspurred china suckling
With a penny slot

For thrift children, nor dolt pig ripe for heckling,
About to be
Glorified for prime flesh and golden crackling

In a parsley halo;
Nor even one of the common barnyard sows,
Mire-smirched, blowzy,

Maunching thistle and knotweed on her snout-
cruise--
Bloat tun of milk
On the move, hedged by a litter of feat-foot ninnies

Shrilling her hulk
To halt for a swig at the pink teats. No. This vast
Brobdingnag bulk

[Snip]
http://www.famouspoetsandpoems.com/p...th/poems/18945

What marvelous language in this one.

[Epistemophile]

Of course, and I must be drawn back to Robinson's Richard Cory

And I must be drawn back to Chekov's The Death of a Government Clerk:
http://www.online-literature.com/anton_chekhov/1107/

[Dark Muse]

I don't know if her work can be read without her biography in the mix, and I personally doubt she would be successful as a poet without a biography.

I think that can be said by a lot of Contemporary poets. I know it has been my personal experience reading the works of many Contemporary poets, where reading just their work alone, just left me confused and baffled and their work felt rather meaningless to me, and I had to go and look up information about the poet himself to try and make greater sense of what I was reading.

[Petrarch's Love]

A poet is allowed to feel what she may feel. She did commit suicide afterall. Critics don't determine a poet's subject matter. It's like saying that TS Eliot is silly for comparing the sexuality of the 1920's as evidence of a wasteland. Or Yeats about his cyclic thoeoies of history. The poet has his ideas; it's what he does with it. Or William Faulkner comparing Benjy to Christ in The Sound and the Fury. I see nothing wrong with the Plath's halocaust metaphor because she creates with it (when you look at the total context of her work) a larger vision of humanity. Nonetheless I see everyone's points and I've noted them. I have never seen such negativity of her work before.

Of course a poet is allowed to feel what she feels. Everyone is allowed to feel whatever they like. This doesn't mean it can't be offensive to others as her use of this metaphor clearly was to JBI. I agree that we need to respect the ability of artists to express their own ideas and world views in art, but to say that we can't judge those ideas when we find them wrong or offensive would do the art just as much a disservice in the sense that it renders the ideas expressed impotent and unimportant. Yes, well written poetry can express bad ideas and still be well written, but to talk about the form of the creation and not hold a dialogue with the ideas as well would be to miss part of the purpose of a poem. Part of that purpose is, after all, to convey ideas and emotions.

As I think about the latter, about the emotions of Plath's "Daddy" I realize that I should say that I do see the way this inflated, apparently outrageously disproportionate use of the holocaust metaphor could possibly be slightly less egregious than it seems. That is, I do recognize that this was clearly someone suffering from extreme mental illness, which can be a horrendously painful and hellish experience. I do recognize that we aren't really talking about someone who lived a spotlessly happy life and is complaining about a slight problem in an otherwise fine existence. People with mental illness often talk about their problems in their relationships with others (a parent, a boyfriend or girlfriend etc.) with disproportionate intensity because it's a normalizing channel in which to express the inexplicable emotional anguish that they experience. It's pretty clear to me that Plath is transferring anguish from elsewhere into her troubled relationship with her father, which is why the metaphor comes out so extreme.

This said, I still find the use of the holocaust metaphor inappropriate in this poem. I think if the core of the poem was set up differently to suggest the way that her mental torture was heavy to bear like the physical torture that others have undergone--if it somehow suggested a fuller recognition of how unbearibly horrifying an event like the holocaust was, and made a deeper, more nuanced explanation of the way she sees some small echo of that level of horror in her own life--then I could possibly see some effective potential for the metaphor. At it is written, however, the way she uses the holocaust remains highly problematic to me, especially in the stanzas JBI quoted earlier:

An engine, an engine
Chuffing me off like a Jew.
A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.
I began to talk like a Jew.
I think I may well be a Jew.

The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna
Are not very pure or true.
With my gipsy ancestress and my weird luck
And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack
I may be a bit of a Jew.

This isn't empathizing with people who are like her, who have suffered like her, it is saying that she has become this other, a Jew, a group associated (fairly stereotypically) with taro cards and undesirable ancestry. I don't think this passage suggests that she's an anti-semite, but it doesn't suggest that she's fully thought through what it would be to be a victim of holocaust, what it is that she is invoking here. She seems to be using the holocaust metaphor because it's the most dramatic thing she can think of rather than because she is thinking about the actual parallels (or lack of parallel) between herself and the suffering of others. Generally speaking, too, I maintain that the comparison of her suffering and that of holocaust victims is disproportionate.

P.S.--I was called away and there have been several posts added since I started this post, and which I haven't had a chance to read. I'll now go back and consider the dialogue in those posts, and the Plath poems Virgil offers in them.

[stlukesguild]

I agree that we must allow the artist to convey what he or she feels or thinks without censorship. I would never want an art that conveys only what the artist feels is the right or correct thing to say. I have no problem with an artist being shocking or outrageous at times... although quite often if this is the central issue of the work it is a good sign of an immature artist. On the other hand, I don't see that the mantra of self-expression means that we cannot criticize what the artist has said... nor do I buy the notion that a work cannot simply be bad... even crap... because it is somehow expressive of the artist view of reality. I may be more negative about Plath because I have had her work hoisted upon me by many who would have me believe that she must be admired... recognized... worshiped as a poet simply because she "suffered".

If I wish to read writing by the mentally ill I'll stick with Nerval... or John Clare... or a good many others.