"Full Fathom Five" (linked through Plath's picture above) is the first poem that Sylvia Plath wrote that hints at the paradigm-shattering voice she would develop later, particularly in connection to specific psychological themes. Prior to this poem, Plath's urge to deal with her "daddy" issues expressed itself only through reworkings of fairytale archetypes and, as we saw with "Sonnet to Satan," ironic jabs at authority.

This is the poem where everything changed. It is, in effect, Plath's baptism into Confessionalism, although Confessionalism had not yet been invented, and the poem stops well short of being authentically confessional. The opening lines of this Shakespearian titled poem make it clear that Plath, like Hamlet, is no stranger to her father's ghost:

Old man, you surface seldom,
Then you come in with then tide's coming

The connection between memories of her father, the sea, and the moon (tides)  is foundational to Plath's poetry. You can't fully understand Plath's work if you are blind to this essential starting point. Plath has received a wound (her father's death) and she turns back to childhood memories of the sea to console her. But instead of lolling around on the sands turning angelic bronze under the Boston sun, the sea is calling her to not only get wet, but to drown.

As Plath sinks into the sea in the poem, she falls through the ghost of her father who seems to dissolve before her as she drowns. The sea, the psyche, and poetry are fused in this space where all solid things start to show cracks, and -- in fact, threaten to become nothing more than ghosts.

Of great interest here is that "Full Fathom Five" is only one of two poems she wrote that day. The other "Lorelei" describes her complete drowning as she  suicides into the sea to escape the patriarchal world of solids.

In "Full Fathom Five" Plath cries out for her father's "shelled bed" and in "Lorelei" she begs the sirens to "ferry" her to her death. These poems, written back to back while Plath read a book by Jacques Cousteau, express violent, contradictory desires for life, for death, for love, for masculinity, femininity, for God, for nature. 

The key thing to take away from this is that these are starting points for Plath.  She is just barely creaking the door open to her genius. The dissolving power of the imagination is a starting point, not an end. The next stage, a la alchemy, is to fuse things back into new forms. 

Another important poem, "Mussel Hunter at Rock Harbor" was written by Plath the next day and this poem became her first New Yorker poem.  This one is the "capstone" of Plath's juvenilia. It's the poem all the others were building to and it's also her forever goodbye to the "Ocean 12-12W " world of her childhood. A successful fusion of the past.

Or should have been. As we'll see later, Plath's paradisal past continued to haunt her to the very end.

So a trilogy of sea-poems written in two days that foreshadow a lot of what would later form into Plath's mature work. All three are well worth reading and show all of the classic Plath riffs with diction, figurative language, and archetypes. I'd talk about them more but the blog would get too long.

Next Monday, we'll talk about Plath's poem "Medallion" one of the first poems that shows the fracturing of her relationship with and marriage to the poet Ted Hughes.

Tally
Poems Written: 314
Submissions: 51
Rejections:  23 (13 tiered)  
Acceptances: 0
Poem written today: "Cherry Finder"

If you need a hand revising and polishing: 
1) Have me do it for you! Click the "Poem Polisher" button below. I've helped lots of poets.
2) Use my 7 Secrets of Poetry pdf as a guide for revision.

Poems have natural elements that stay the same no matter what you do. The words move from left to right and the lines go from top to bottom. Of course you can change this and make any kind of poem you want, one that goes backward, forward, or makes alphabet soup on the page or screen.  But, for the most part, the basic elements of a poem stay the same each time you start to create a new work.

Everyone knows that the last word of each line gets special emphasis by the reader, no matter what enjambment you use. Everyone also knows that first lines and last lines enjoy a greater punch just by being there. These are basic elements that every poet learns to use, almost by instinct.

But what about other "elemental" elements of a poem? Are there aspects that get less attention than first words and last lines, but are just as powerful?

In fact, there are quite a number of these basic elements that you can use to empower your poems.

I'm only going to talk about one in this post and that's the downward motion of a poem. Virtually every poem in English moves from the top to bottom and you can (and should) use this natural motion to you advantage.

One perfect example of this is the poem I talked about in yesterday's post, Plath's "Black Rook in Rainy Weather."  The poem starts with the speaker looking up in a hopeful way, and then, as the lines fall down, the speaker looks inward to doubt and hesitation, sweeping back up (slightly) at the close to find a sprig of hope.

Another really short poem that uses the downward motion of a poem well is: "We Real Cool" by Gwendolyn Brooks, with the lines literally burying the guys in the poem and leaving a tombstone to them.

Another great example is "Apple Picking" by Robert Frost -- where the poem becomes a ladder to memory and dreams. And yet another , rather spectacular, example is Hart Crane's "Atlantis." That one's dynamiter though so be very careful!

And last, but certainly not least, I'd like to mention Anne Sexton's poem, "The Ambition Bird" which is about the struggle to contain and release artistic ambition. You can see how she uses the downward climb of the poem yourself -- it's heart wrenching.

The point is: the downward climb of a poem is there whether you like it or not; it's part of your poem's expression whether you want it or not. So your best bet is to let the natural gravity of a poem, it's innate fall from imagination to "paper" be your inspiration and your guide.

Meanwhile, if you'd like some help with editing or polishing your poems, or you just want some feedback for them, reach out to me @ pitchblackpoet@yahoo.com writerdan@mail.com or use one of the buttons below.

Also, check out my 7 Secrets of Poetry guide available now! 

Plath's "Black Rook in Rainy Weather" is a brilliant poem that marks the beginning of her inward journey. It's one of her finest early poems and, like "Sonnet to Satan," which we looked at in the last post, this poem is deeply psychological. There's a lot I could say about this poem's relationship to Poe's "The Raven," to Shakespeare, to Ted Hughes's fascination with crows, and to Plath's superstitiously scientific view of  nature. 

But instead, I'm going to confine myself to just three thoughts about the poem.

The first is that, from the opening lines, Plath looks "out" in order to gaze "in."  I use the quotes there because the whole point of the poem is that there is no separation between the inner world of emotion and the outer world of nature, but that the illusion of separation is what causes emptiness and mortal fear.

On the stiff twig up there
Hunches a wet black rook

The word "up" establishes a searching, religious feeling. As the speaker looks up, the poem turns inward at the same time to contemplation of existence. This brings us to the second insight I want to share, which is that Plath introduces nature first and then steps, full of questions, into the scene. This is a very subtle detail, but the whole energy of the  poem turns on it. Had Plath introduced "I" before she described the upward gaze to the rook,  the poem would have been only half as successful.

By stepping upward into nature full of questions -- the poem soars from its opening, while the bird itself refuses to move, a la Poe's raven. The bird is still, but the speaker of the poem is a whirl of psychological energy.

This brings me to the final insight I want to offer: that the image of the bird, still and at peace in the tree is the answer to the speaker's mental and emotional angst. The speaker is looking for a fiery omen, but nature's message is simply to be in harmony.

This same potential connection with nature continues through all of Plath's work.

You can read the full poem by clicking Plath's picture above. I hope you'll read or reread it, and then come back and tell me what you think.

Next Monday we'll talk about Plath's incredible poem, "Full Fathom Five" which is an early poem that tackles her father issues square on.

Meanwhile, if you'd like some help editing or polishing your poetry, contact me @ writerdan@mail.com or pitchblackpoet@yahoo.com or click one of the button-links below. 
  

Plath's early work, prior to 1956, gives very little indication of the dynamic poetic genius she would later unleash on the world. That said, there's one poem, "Sonnet to Satan," that really stands out and shows just about all of the elements that Plath would ultimately use to construct masterpieces.

There's a lot going on in this poem, but the first and most obvious element is, of course: surprise. A general rule of thumb with Plath is, if the poem doesn't start with a surprise, it probably won't be a very good Plath poem. Most, if not all, of her best poems like "Daddy," "Ariel," "Lady Lazarus," "Candles," and the like are based on hitting the reader where they least expect it.

Here, in her college years, Plath decided to shock the grown-ups by writing a poem to Lucifer. What's even more shocking is she chose to do so in a sonnet. A demanding, exacting form that moves fast and demands facing contradictions, and immersing in often violently contrasting emotions.

In other words, the definition of a Plath poem.

Note two additional fingerprints: an almost-rigid attention to meter and a bold identification with myth. These are elements that Plath uses in all of her best work. Later, when she learns to fuse myth with the elements of her personal life, we'll see how and why her contribution to Confessionalism is different (and more important) than Sexton's or Lowell's though they also combined myth with personal experience.

The first lines of the poem are bangers and show us a lot about Plath's poetic identity:

In darkroom of your eye the moonly mind
somersaults to counterfeit eclipse

These are probably the best lines of the poem and also the lines that most clearly foreshadow the poet she would become. Strong verbs, bold metaphor, and an intense focus on psychological landscapes help Plath go straight inside Satan's head here, not to fix what ails him, but to see what's in there. The word "moonly" is brilliant and shows the witchy side of Plath that, like her mathematical mind,  is more inborn than learned.

Plath had a burning desire to see behind the veils of everything, including the devil. That's the most important thing to take away from this early gem. The thrill of the poem is not that she dared to write about the devil, but that she dared to go inside Lucifer's imagination. What she finds is order and pride.

No-one, not even Dante or Milton, had gone quite that far, at least not while dressed in a schoolgirl's uniform, half-waiting to be a doctor's wife. 

Click the pic above and read the poem for yourself. See what you think of it and let me know.

Next Monday, we'll take a look at "Black Rook in Rainy Weather" which is a poem that surprised Plath when she wrote it and changed the way she looked at poetry, and the world, for good.  

Meanwhile enjoy the full moon and consider listening to one of my new songs, linked below. I've been blowing off steam from writing by making music. Have a listen and leave a like or even subscribe to my YouTube channel!

​I recommend "Tornado Jam" which is a song I wrote about the tornado that ripped through our area a couple days ago. I made a cool video for it.

Also,  if you need a hand revising and /or polishing your poems. I've helped lots of poets. If you order in July, you'll get a free copy of my 7 Secrets of Poetry pdf!!!

Each time you write,  submit, or publish a poem, you risk rejection. Believe it or not, rejection from editors is not the worst kind of rejection. It's rejection from readers (and critics) that stings the most. When an editor rejects your poetry, you can at least comfort yourself by submitting the same poems elsewhere.

If a poem is published or posted and people slam or ignore it, getting a mulligan can be problematic. Not impossible, just challenging...

Another thing is: you're going to get rejected no matter who you are. You could be Shakespeare and you'd still get your fair share of rejections. 

So what do you do?

Well, I've had hundreds if not thousands of rejections and I can offer the following insights:

1) Expect to get them. Just like you accept getting sand in your stuff when you go to the beach.

2) Never answer them. Not privately by messaging the editor, or publicly, by whining to your social media circle. You can post an update as in "I was rejected today..." But resist the urge to defend yourself or criticize.

3)  Take a close look at your bio and cover letter. Can you make improvements? If you have a dull bio (I do!) or  a rambling (or sloppy) cover letter, it will likely influence editors' decisions. 

4) If a poem has been rejected by more than 5 venues, see if it may need improving. Sometimes it's just a single line or even a single word that's putting people  off.

5) Move on. Resubmit.

6) Only submit your best, most fully polished work.

When an editor asks to see more work from you, they really mean it. If they don't make that specific request, you shouldn't read much else into the rejection.

It's important to guard against the hurt of rejection because you can really get sidetracked by the glums. I'll talk about how to deal with online rejection, social media hate, and critics in a future post.
 
Tally
Poems Written: 311
Submissions: 51
Rejections:  21 (13 tiered)  
Acceptances: 0
Poem written today: "N/A"  Still mixing song, "Coming Home."

If you need a hand revising and polishing: 
1) Have me do it for you! Click the "Poem Polisher" button below. I've helped lots of poets.
2) Use my 7 Secrets of Poetry pdf as a guide for revision.

Here's a quick tip to help you overcome procrastination.  It really works if you give it a chance, but there's a catch. You have to write in a notebook, or keep a continuous doc or series of docs somewhere. If you're a poet who likes to really write on the fly, like without any schedule, tools, or method, this may not work so well.

For me, getting started is always the toughest part of writing. Whether I'm writing a poetry or prose, it's writing the first line or sentence that holds me up. There are various well-known tricks to get around this, such as starting off your work day by editing rather than writing, "free writing" in a journal or some other platform, and -- everyone's favorite -- guzzling gallons of strong coffee.

But I've found, for poetry, what works best is just leaving a "hanging title." This means, when I finish a poem in my journal, I sometimes jot down a title for the next poem. I just dream up a cool title, note it down, then start my next writing session by filling in the blank part. That is -- the poem!

Even if you only wind up with a few lines for a particular "hanging" title, this little trick will get you writing quickly each day.

A couple caveats:

1) It's not usually best to jot down multiple titles. If you do that, you'll overwhelm yourself even if you don't think you're doing so and kill the spirit of the whole thing. That said, sometimes, you get a lot of ideas for titles, so what are you going to do? 

2) If the poem starts coming right there as you're jotting down the title -- if you hear a first line or something -- go for it. If not, refrain  from jotting down too many notes etc. Just get the title down and let the Muses work on the poem when you're not looking.

3) Don't write down a title unless you feel a spark. If you start writing "Cat Poem 55," "Cat Poem 56," etc., the tip probably  won't work as well.

That's about it. As always, your mileage is sure to vary. If you're the kind of poet who comes up with titles last, you may not like this technique. I don't use it every day, but I've found it really works to get me going in some  cases, and it's resulted in a quite a few good poems.   

Tally
Poems Written: 309
Submissions: 51
Rejections:  20 (13 tiered)  
Acceptances: 0
Poem written today: "Talk Candle"  

Should you ever just give up on a poem?

Some poems come out almost fully formed, just perfect straight out of the fire, like a gift from  from the gods. Others have to be wrangled, sawed, sanded, polished and, in some cases, given a full body-transplant. What makes it worse is, a poem can be this close to brilliance and then it takes months and sometimes years to actually get it right. 

So you have a decision to make as a poet. Luckily, you get the chance to make the decision over and over. Basically, what you have to decide with each poem is:  how much can revision help? Usually the answer is: a lot. Even if you only make small changes or a small change to a given poem, the results can be dramatic.

There are times, though, when you just have to let go.

Some poems just fail.

Unfortunately, there's no rule when it comes to making this judgment call. And it's liable to be different, in any case, for each poem. Given, these vagaries, here's a few points that I've found helpful over the years:

• It's way easier, like 200% easier, to revise a poem you haven't looked at in a while. This is hard to do because we all get attached to and exacted about our latest work, but this is the single most effective revision strategy I know. 
• Making revisions after you've published or posted the poem is permissible but it looks really bad and you can avoid it by simply following the first point above.
• Sometimes the needed revision takes your poem in a surprising direction, maybe even away from what you originally intended.  Just let it happen. 
• It's much more common to need to take things out of a draft than add them.
• Revision is fun and rewarding if you can accept it as part of the process.
• If you've tried a few times to revise a poem and it's not going anywhere, set it aside. You don't have to throw it away, just use it to harvest lines and words and ideas for other poems and other revisions. It's legal to steal from yourself.

​I also have a thought on not revising or refusing to revise your poems: that's why your poems aren't working for anyone else but you.

So do your poems a favor and shine them as best you can.

If you hate revising and polishing, consider two options (best used together!):

1) Have me do it for you! Click the "Poem Polisher" button below. I've helped lots of poets.
2) Use my 7 Secrets of Poetry pdf as a guide for revision.

Tally
Poems Written: 307
Submissions: 51
Rejections:  20 (13 tiered)  
Acceptances: 0
Poem written today: "Street Steel"   

 I want you to consider two things right now: plane crashes and poetry. 

Some of us might think it would be a grand gesture to write one last poem on a plunging plane -- moments before death.  

Some of us might think it would be cool if we could write a poem  that  predicted  the future. 

Lee Campbell may have come close to do doing both.

On February 25th,1989, United Airlines flight 811 experienced and emergency when a cargo door blew open, ripping a hole in its fuselage that sucked nine passengers out into the sky above the Pacific ocean.  A four minute fall to the sea waited for all of them, including the twenty-four-year-old Campbell. 

Of course it goes without saying that Campbell and the others all plunged to their deaths.  Many questions surrounded the disaster; Campbell's family remained persistent in trying to find answers. 

 One eerily interesting thing  that Campbell's parents found after their son's death  was the following poem that he'd written not long before the disaster:

`Was That Me?''
​
Waves hypnotizing me with green, beckoning fingers
A dream of space flight weightlessness
Air rushes past to fill a vacuum,
Progressive holes which must be filled

That's all there is to the poem, unfortunately.   However this little poem  says a lot, does it not?  What I'd like you to do is simply imagine that the poem was written by someone who didn't die in a plane crash. 

Is it still an interesting poem ?   

What do you make of the title ?

I have my own  thoughts as always, but for now, I'll simply say that this little fragment-poem can teach us all a lot -- it's up to us  to extract all we can from it and from Campbell's unfortunate death.

You might say that any poem can teach us a lot -- and that's true, but I still think this one's special.  I hope you do too.  Please leave a comment or send me an email or a message to let me know how you feel about it. 

Also if you'd like a set of fresh eyes for your poetic endeavors, I offer a poem polishing service. I think you'll be happy with the results, so check it out my clicking the link below. 

 You can also order my Seven Secrets of Poetry PDF by clicking the button below.

Read Lee's full story by clicking on the plane crash picture above. 

A lot of poets, including myself, use secret weapons in their poems. These are better than tips and secrets; they're like super powerful, but largely unseen, strategies to really make a poem sing.

You can do it, too, but you won't have a lot of luck getting other poets to tell you their super secret weapons. You'll see the results when you read their work, count their readers, and find their poems being published, winning contest, awards and so forth.

In today's post I'm going to give you two really powerful secret weapons that many successful poets use, but pretty much don't broadcast. 

Here we go.

Poetry Secret Weapon #1:  Find a first-reader that honestly responds. It can be anyone. It doesn't have to be another writer. It doesn't have to be the same person every time; in fact it's better if it's not. Just find any person that you can bounce your first draft off of and really listen to their reaction. Don't assume you're right. If they offer an edit, or a line, or even a new title seriously consider their input. 

Poetry Secret Weapon #2:  Find an editor. Get someone to fine-tune your poems. It's virtually impossible to do it yourself. You can spend months trying to spot tiny flaws and imperfections, or you can find someone who's willing to look over your poems and see all the things you're bound to miss.  Again, it doesn't have to be the same person each time, but do yourself a favor and find one or more people willing to serve as extra eyes before you release your work to the world.

Don't use the same person as your first-reader and editor. if possible, get more than one of each.

These two tools are basically what takes place in a poetry workshop or writer's group. For many of us, this isn't an option for whatever reason, but we should still find ways to get feedback, editing, and polishing for our work.

As it happens, I offer services form interested poets. Consider getting feedback, or a quick polish (or both) through one of the buttons below.

Or simply send an inquiry to pitchblackpoet@yahoo.com

I've also posted a lot of poetry tips, ideas, and exclusive access to my own poems over at my Patreon page. There's also unique pictures and  access to my flash-fiction and occult writings. Please help me out by supporting me at Patreon!!! 

​ Thanks so much!! 
​@BlackstonDan

In my last post I mentioned some reasons why I think it's still a good idea for poets to submit poems for publication. In this post, I'm going to list three big perils of publishing. Of course, there are more than three!  But these will get us started.

1) Long response times. It's worse for poetry than in any other sector. I know because I submit (or have submitted) everything from flash fiction to novels. Go back and read that first sentence again. Underline it. Bold it. I can't overstate this. I've waited years to hear from journals. It's not unusual to wait six to eight months just to get a form letter. In fact, this is what happens most of the time for most people who submit.

2) Rejections.  No  matter how talented you are, or how thorough, expect to get far more rejections than acceptances. Also, don't try to read anything into your rejections. We all get the same notices. If an editor specifically requests you to send again, that means something, but if it's a generic "feel free to try again" that's not the same thing. You can increase your chances by sending your best, most fully polished poems, and targeting them to the right places.

3)  Ambivalence. It can be tough to  fight your way through long response times, grueling competition, and long lead times before publication only to find out no-one really cares that your poem's in a journal. How many people do you know who've even read a single poetry journal in their lives? You may find that even your closest friends and family just can't work up much excitement for your triumph. It's not like you won a sports trophy or got a bunch of money.

With these perils in mind, it's still definitely worth your time and energy to submit your poems. I'll get back to talking about why in a future post. 

And remember: the best way to avoid rejection is to send your best, fully polished work to journals you want to publish in with a simple, short cover letter (or email).

If you'd like some feedback on your poems, or want to get an edge in submitting to publications or contests, consider getting feedback, or a quick polish (or both) through one of the buttons below.

Or simply send an inquiry to pitchblackpoet@yahoo.com

I've also posted a lot of poetry tips, ideas, and exclusive access to my own poems over at my Patreon page. There's also unique pictures and  access to my flash-fiction and occult writings. Please help me out by supporting me at Patreon!!! 

​ Thanks so much!! 
​@BlackstonDan