Sylvia Plath: Literary Dragon

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Sylvia Plath: Literary Dragon Sylvia Plath: 1932 1963 And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise.

By the time she took her life at the age of 31, Plath already had a following in the literary community.

In the New York Times Book Review, Joyce Carol Oates described Plath as one of the most celebrated and controversial of postwar poets writing in English.

1 Sylvia Plath: Literary Dragon Sylvia Plath: And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The Worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt. - Sylvia Plath Sylvia Plath was one of the most dynamic and admired poets of the 20th century. By the time she took her life at the age of 31, Plath already had a following in the literary community. In the ensuing years her work attracted the attention of a multitude of readers, who saw in her singular verse an attempt to catalogue despair, violent emotion, and obsession with death. In the New York Times Book Review, Joyce Carol Oates described Plath as one of the most celebrated and controversial of postwar poets writing in English. Intensely autobiographical, Plath s confessional-style poems explore her own mental anguish, her troubled marriage to fellow poet Ted Hughes, her unresolved conflicts with her parents, and her own vision of herself. Oates said that Plath s best-known poems, many of them written during the final, turbulent weeks of her life, read as if they ve been chiseled, with a fine surgical instrument, out of arctic ice. Confessional poetry is the poetry of the personal or I. This style of writing emerged in the late 1950s and early 1960s and is associated with poets such as Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, and Anne Sexton The confessional poetry of the mid-twentieth century dealt with subject matter that previously had not been openly discussed in American poetry. Private experiences with and feelings about death, trauma, depression and relationships were addressed in this type of poetry, often in an autobiographical manner. Out of the ash I rise with my red hair And I eat men Like air. With Plath s death in 1963, scores of young writers took up the style, and it has played a huge role in shaping modern poetry today. Also today, many look upon Plath as a champion for the feminist movements which came about soon after her death. However she is viewed, what cannot be denied is her influence, which has carried on long after her death. Q. How does the above quote by Plath relate to what you know about writing your own poetry?

2 Monologue at 3 a.m. (1956) Better that every fiber crack And fury make head, Blood drenching vivid Couch, carpet, floor And the snake-figured almanac Vouching you are A million green counties from here, Than to sit mute, twitching so Under prickling stars, With stare, with curse Blackening the time Goodbyes were said, trains let go, And I, great magnanimous fool, Thus wrenched from My one kingdom Spinster 1956 Now this particular girl During a ceremonious April walk With her latest suitor Found herself, of a sudden, intolerably struck By the birds irregular babel And the leaves litter. By this tumult afflicted, she Observed her lover s gestures unbalance the air, His gait stray uneven Through a rank wilderness of fern and flower. She judged petals in disarray, The whole season, sloven. How she longed for winter then! Scrupulously austere in its order Of white and black Ice and rock, each sentiment within border, Exact as a snowflake. But here a burgeoning Unruly enough to pitch her five queenly wits Into vulgar motley A treason not to be borne. Let idiots Reel giddy in bedlam spring: She withdrew neatly. Edge (February 5, 1963) 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 And round her house she set Such a barricade of barb and check Against mutinous weather As no mere insurgent man could hope to break With curse, fist, threat Or love, either. 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 odors 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 Sylvia Plath

In a review of Plath s final book of poetry, Ariel, Time magazine wrote that the poem Daddy was merely the first jet of flame from a literary dragon who in the last months of her life breathed a

3 In a review of Plath s final book of poetry, Ariel, Time magazine wrote that the poem Daddy was merely the first jet of flame from a literary dragon who in the last months of her life breathed a burning river of bale across the literary landscape. Daddy (October 12, 1962) You do not do, you do not do I have always been scared of you, Any more, black shoe With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo. In which I have lived like a foot And your neat mustache For thirty years, poor and white, And your Aryan eye, bright blue. Barely daring to breathe or Achoo. Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You---- Not God but a swastika Daddy, I have had to kill you. So black no sky could squeak through. You died before I had time--- Every woman adores a Fascist, Marble-heavy, a bag full of God, The boot in the face, the brute Ghastly statue with one gray toe Brute heart of a brute like you. Big as a Frisco seal You stand at the blackboard, daddy, And a head in the freakish Atlantic In the picture I have of you, Where it pours bean green over blue A cleft in your chin instead of your foot In the waters off the beautiful Nauset. But no less a devil for that, no not I used to pray to recover you. Any less the black man who Ach, du. Bit my pretty red heart in two. In the German tongue, in the Polish town I was ten when they buried you. Scraped flat by the roller At twenty I tried to die Of wars, wars, wars. And get back, back, back to you. But the name of the town is common. I thought even the bones would do. My Polack friend But they pulled me out of the sack, Says there are a dozen or two. And they stuck me together with glue. So I never could tell where you And then I knew what to do. Put your foot, your root, I made a model of you, I never could talk to you. A man in black with a Meinkampf look The tongue stuck in my jaw. And a love of the rack and the screw. It stuck in a barb wire snare. And I said I do, I do. Ich, ich, ich, ich, So daddy, I'm finally through. I could hardly speak. The black telephone's off at the root, I thought every German was you. The voices just can't worm through. And the language obscene If I've killed one man, I've killed two--- An engine, an engine, The vampire who said he was you Chuffing me off like a Jew. And drank my blood for a year, A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen. Seven years, if you want to know. I began to talk like a Jew. Daddy, you can lie back now. I think I may well be a Jew. There's a stake in your fat black heart The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of And the villagers never liked you. Vienna They are dancing and stamping on you. Are not very pure or true. They always knew it was you. With my gypsy ancestress and my weird Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through. luck And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack I may be a bit of a Jew. Caption describing picture or graphic. Sylvia Pla Is there no way out of the mind? - Plath

4 Fever 103 Pure? What does it mean? The tongues of hell Are dull, dull as the triple Tongues of dull, fat Cerberus Who wheezes at the gate. Incapable Of licking clean The aguey tendon, the sin, the sin. The tinder cries. The indelible smell Of a snuffed candle! Love, love, the low smokes roll From me like Isadora s scarves, I m in a fright One scarf will catch and anchor in the wheel, Such yellow sullen smokes Make their own element. They will not rise, But trundle round the globe Choking the aged and the meek, The weak Hothouse baby in its crib, The ghastly orchid Hanging its hanging garden in the air, Devilish leopard! Radiation turned it white And killed it in an hour. Greasing the bodies of adulterers Like Hiroshima ash and eating in. The sin. The sin. Sheep in Fog The hills step off into whiteness. People or stars Regard me sadly, I disappoint them. The train leaves a line of breath. O slow Horse the color of rust, Hooves, dolorous bells All morning the Morning has been blackening, A flower left out. My bones hold a stillness, the far Fields melt my heart. They threaten To let me through to a heaven Starless and fatherless, a dark water. (December 2, 1962 January 28, 1963) Darling, all night I have been flickering, off, on, off, on. The sheets grow heavy as a lecher s kiss. Three days. Three nights. Lemon water, chicken Water, water make me retch. I am too pure for you or anyone. Your body Hurts me as the world hurts God. I am a lantern My head a moon Of Japanese paper, my gold beaten skin Infinitely delicate and infinitely expensive. Does not my heat astound you! And my light! All by myself I am a huge camellia Glowing and coming and going, flush on flush. I think I am going up, I think I may rise The beads of hot metal fly, and I love, I Am a pure acetylene Virgin Attended by roses, By kisses, by cherubim, By whatever these pink things mean! Not you, nor him Nor him, nor him (My selves dissolving, old whore petticoats) To Paradise (October 20, 1962)

5 The End In July of 1962, Sylvia Plath discovered that her husband was having an affair with the wife of a mutual friend. Shortly afterwards, Ted Hughes moved out, leaving Sylvia with her two children, both under 2 years of age, living alone in London. With the departure of her husband, Plath found new energy (and source material) for a new book of poetry, which she would call Ariel. Between September and December of 1962, Plath would write most of the poetry which would eventually make her famous. Early criticisms, though, of her new book of poetry were mixed, and combined with the finality of her relationship with her former husband, she fell into a deep depression. 10 years earlier, she had been hospitalized for depression and anxiety, and in February of 1963, she appeared to be headed in that direction once again. Plath had attempted suicide several times in her life, starting with when she was a teenager, but on the morning of February 11 th, 1963, she would succeed. In the years after her death, Ariel, as well as her auto-biographical fictional novel The Bell Jar became successes, and cemented her fame for generations to come. Hughes would receive much of the blame for her death, and still to this day, Plath s headstone is often defaced, with people scratching the name Hughes off of it. Lady Lazarus I have done it again. One year in every ten I manage it---- A sort of walking miracle, my skin Bright as a Nazi lampshade, My right foot A paperweight, My face a featureless, fine Jew linen. Peel off the napkin O my enemy. Do I terrify?---- The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth? The sour breath Will vanish in a day. Soon, soon the flesh The grave cave ate will be At home on me And I a smiling woman. I am only thirty. And like the cat I have nine times to die. This is Number Three. What a trash To annihilate each decade. What a million filaments. The peanut-crunching crowd Shoves in to see Them unwrap me hand and foot The big strip tease. Gentlemen, ladies These are my hands My knees. I may be skin and bone, Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman. The first time it happened I was ten. It was an accident. The second time I meant To last it out and not come back at all. I rocked shut As a seashell. They had to call and call And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls. Dying Is an art, like everything else, I do it exceptionally well. I do it so it feels like hell. I do it so it feels real. I guess you could say I've a call. It's easy enough to do it in a cell. It's easy enough to do it and stay put. It's the theatrical Comeback in broad day To the same place, the same face, the same brute Amused shout: 'A miracle!' That knocks me out. There is a charge For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge For the hearing of my heart---- It really goes. And there is a charge, a very large charge For a word or a touch Or a bit of blood Or a piece of my hair or my clothes. So, so, Herr Doktor. So, Herr Enemy. I am your opus, I am your valuable, The pure gold baby That melts to a shriek. I turn and burn. Do not think I underestimate your great concern. Ash, ash --- You poke and stir. Flesh, bone, there is nothing there---- A cake of soap, A wedding ring, A gold filling. Herr God, Herr Lucifer Beware Beware. Out of the ash I rise with my red hair And I eat men like air. (October 23 29, 1962) Sylvia Plath

good for you be here again down at work have been good with his cat

good for you be here again down at work have been good with his cat Fryʼs Phrases This list of 600 words compiled by Edward Fry contain the most used words in reading and writing. The words on the list make up almost half of the words met in any reading task. The words