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!!!
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Sylvia Plath is probably most well known for dying. That's no small trick in a universe where, so far as we know, everyone and everything eventually dies. If you can manage to die in a way people remember over a half-century later, that's certainly some kind of an accomplishment. In Plath's case, poetic fame and death are so closely wedded that it's a test to all of us, from literary critics, to casual readers to see if we're willing to follow her, not into death, but into the depth and richness of life that poetry celebrates and, in some cases, reveals. We can get so caught up in her death, that we forget her artistry. But this artistry is the true essence of Plath as a person. That's what many people fail to see. As it is the true essence of any worthwhile poet, and that's what I'll be digging into in the upcoming series of blog-posts on her work. I want to show you not only why she's one of the most important artists of the twentieth century, but how she was able to give voice to the poems we all know and love. Along the way you may find new elements in her work, and you may also find great inspiration for your own work and life. Monday held profound significance for Plath, and I'll point out that Monday is "moon day" and, also, that Plath died on Monday, February 11th, 1963. Her last poem "Edge" features the moon prominently, and the last four lines she ever wrote are intently focused on the moon. So, we'll kick things off on Monday by taking a look at "Sonnet to Satan," written when Plath was a student at Smith college. This early poem brims with inventiveness, daring, and rebellion. It also stands as a convenient model to spotlight some of Plath's "tricks" and techniques that created a foundation for her poetic genius. Be ready to meet the devil on Monday, but don't sweat it because even Satan himself envies and admires this incredible poet! No "tally" today because I've been working on music. Please have a listen to my latest song, "Freedom (Le Chime)" which is a ballad with a poetic video. At least I hope it's poetic, you tell me! If you prefer something you can dance to, check out my song "Funk the Princess"-- it's a lot of fun. Categories All I talk a lot about emotion in these blog-posts and the reason is because all good art, particularly poetry, is made of emotion. If you aren't willing to express emotion intensely, there's really not much point in trying to be a poet. The same is true if you just want to express one emotion over and over. If your poems are always happy or always sad, people will get bored with your work fast. The best thing you can do is to use a lot of different emotions, even in a single poem. I could cite hundreds of examples here, but let's just focus on two really famous poems. The first is "The Raven" by Edgar Allen Poe and the second is "Lady Lazarus" by Sylvia Plath. Sure, "The Raven" is famous for being synonymous for mourning, and rightly so, but if you look at the poem carefully you'll see it actually runs a gamut of emotions from boredom, to hope, to anger, and terror. Unrelenting grief is only one emotion, and it's profound, centuries strong sadness would not ring as fully as it does without a compliment of contrasting colors. Plath's poem is even more dynamic. It starts with submissive emotions of fear and self-loathing and rises to emotions that are best described as "godly." Along the way, Plath uses sarcasm, honesty, pity, anger, joy, and nostalgia to fuel her transformation from victim to avenging Goddess. That's what you want to do with emotion in a poem. You want to use it as both color and tempo simultaneously and you want to color with more than one crayon and keep time on more than a single drum. Tally Poems Written: 308 Submissions: 51 Rejections: 20 (13 tiered) Acceptances: 0 Poem written today: "Sisters" Categories All As a poet, it's sometimes good to not know how you feel. "Nameless" emotions are often where great poems begin. Famous poems like "Kubla Khan," "The Chariot," or "The Road Not Taken" continue to defy emotional straightjacketing and -- without sacrificing meaning -- continue to lead readers to fresh emotional experiences for which there are no simple quantitative terms, but rather libraries full of analysis.
One of my favorite poets, Hart Crane, wrote a powerful essay on the theory of poetry called "General Aims and Theories." Crane was only in his twenties when he wrote the essay and it was in response to criticisms by Harriet Monroe. Basically, what Crane said was: a great poem can create a new word. Or, more specifically, it is as if a (successful) poem created a new word. A "word" that only that poem can capture, because it represents an emotional state for which we have no literal word. Two things I'd like you to take away from this. The first is that some poems, not all, are best off in creating a new "words", while others are best off celebrating existing "words." The second is that, yes, human beings have that many emotions. More than there are grains of sand in the world, or stars in the sky. We may fixate on the 6-8 basic colors, but we have an entire crayon box (the size of the universe) to color with. If you want to read a great series of poems that deal square-on with he search for a new poetic word, try reading Plath's "Bee Sequence" (click her picture above). What you'll see here is a poet using everything she has to try to understand who she is as an artist. Because Plath was a mystic, it was extremely difficult to find words, or even imagery to convey what she was going through. Like Nina, in Black Swan, she is transforming; she is becoming the Bee Queen. Poetry can lead you to the deepest parts of yourself and the deepest emotions that can be experienced. You have to be careful with intense emotions, but you can't write truly remarkable poetry without going into emotional places past existing "words." Tally Poems Written: 295 Submission Tally: 47 Rejections: 17 (10 tiered) Acceptances: 0 Poem written today: "Plain Poem" If you click the picture above and go to timestamp: 13:33 you'll hear Sylvia Plath talk about the experience of writing a poem and of being "a poet in rest."
I'll come right out and say: I dislike being a poet in rest and do my best to avoid being one. Even when I'm not actively writing, I'm thinking about poetry a lot, reading poetry, and trying to experience life and my emotions as deeply as possible -- with the aim of not only living to the fullest, but also of writing to the fullest. There's nothing wrong with this. In fact, if you want to reach your potential as a poet, it's probably necessary. In all other pursuits in life, from sports to music, engineering, or just running a small business, those who excel are often those who put themselves 100% into their passion and ambitions. Sylvia Plath died at the age of thirty. Before she perished, she wrote and published two volumes of poetry, a novel, and dozens of individual poems. She, along with Robert Lowell and Anne Sexton gave birth to the Confessional movement in American poetry, but this is the least her accomplishments. If you listen to the interview, you'll hear Plath's contagious joy for poetry and for creation. This is the point of it all, and as a poet, you should as much as you can and you should push as hard as you can to reach your fullest artistic potential. Plath pushed hard every day, so hard, in fact, that she heroically carved out a poetic genius that many falsely assume was her gift from birth. Face it, at some level, none of us really likes being a poet in rest, we're always just waiting for the next breath of inspiration. So be ready and willing to take flight whenever it comes, no matter who tells you otherwise. Poems Written Tally: 292 Submission Tally: 47 Rejections: 17 (10 tiered) Acceptances: 0 Poem written today: "Sea Bee" The title's a bit misleading, since what I actually want to talk about is not so much a conflict between prose and poetry as the differences in imagination that are involved. What started me thinking about this was a recent poem I wrote called "Walking to Church" which involved some deep and quite personal memories. As I was writing the first draft of the poem, I realized I might be able to write effectively about the same memory in prose. I didn't think it would be better in prose, but I wondered what kind of images the imagination might choose for a prose piece, and how the same memories might be expressed in totally different ways, almost as if by different people. Plath's "Ocean 1212w" is a spectacular example of a poet doing a better job in prose some of the trademark poetic imagery. In this case, Plath's childhood memories of the Massachusetts coast, so vital to her poetry, find a fuller expression of lost innocence than even the best of her poems. Personally, I've never tried to consciously engage with the same theme in both prose and poetry, but I think I'm going to try it. Maybe you should too and if you find out anything interesting et me know. Also, if you've already experimented with doing this, please let me know. Nothing makes me happier than growing and learning as an artist. Which brings me to my last bit for this post: why this blog is so seldom updated. Well, the good news is it's because I'm writing! I've been on fire creatively and eager to cover as much ground as possible. As such it's been tough to keep up with poetry tips and reviews of other poets, though I'm still reading a lot every day online and elsewhere. I'm aware of the work you're all doing and posting and it's inspiring. So, the blog may take a bit of a turn and I'll yack about my writing and submitting experiences until the creative fires inevitably dip back down and I'll go back to more reviews and tips. I'm still open for polishing, critiquing, and editing -- just click a button below or email me at writerdan@mail.com or pitchblackpoet@yahoo.com Categories All Next time you're getting ready to write a poem, think about who's actually writing it. It doesn't have to be you. Any number of famous poets, from Shakespeare to Sylvia Plath, (and virtually everyone in between) experiment with poetic personas, masks, disguises, and characters. Shakespeare is the most obvious example, given that most of his work is overtly written for the stage. But If we learn anything from Shakespeare, it's that everything (and everywhere) is a stage. And that holds true for a poem. Imagine if Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Robert Frost, or Emily Dickinson didn't use poetic disguises. Or consider your favorite rapper or hip-hop artist. For the most part, the art they create reflects a persona, or a variety of personas, and this is a good thing. In his youth, James Dickey was a middling poet, average running back, and all around unremarkable guy at Clemson University. That is until one of his writing professors told him it was OK to lie when writing poetry. In Dickey's words this realization caused "the dam to break," after which, book after book of daring original poetry (and prose) poured out of him. In fact , Dickey's use of personas was so successful that he fooled critics as wise has Robert Bly into mistaking poems such as "Slave Quarters" or "The Firebombing" as works of authentic imperialism. What I'm saying is: when you write a poem, choose to be anyone, including yourself, but not limited to yourself. If you'd like a bit of secret friendly help for your poems contact me through the Poem Polisher button below, or email me at pitchblackpoet@yahoo.com Categories All Sylvia Plath's “Black Rook in Rainy Weather” stands out for its mystical allusion and its deep naturalistic imagery. Plath uses an encounter with nature as a point of departure for self-discovery. The rook in the poem functions as a portent of the process of self-examination and flight (individuation) that will take place throughout the later stages of Plath’s life and career. Plath brings her steely gaze of realism to this mystical encounter. Instead of yielding passionately to the animistic inspiration of the scene, she remains skeptical throughout, refusing to be moved by anything less than ultimate truth and revelation. The poem begins with the lines: “One the stiff twig up there / Hunches a wet black rook”. This description is important because it fuses imagery of the natural world with archetypal imagery of the unconscious. The black rook is a symbol for the unconscious, just as its “wet” feathers show that it is freshly arrived from a point of inspiration. Perhaps the wetness of the rook even corresponds to Plath’s deep sea-childhood memories. In any case, the poem opens with the vision of the wet, black bird above the poet's head in an obvious symbol of inspiration. What follows is the poet’s logical dissection of the experience in an attempt to strip away all psychological and emotional pretenses in order to find ultimate reality. The speaker states that she no longer looks for order or meaning in the natural landscape, but instead lets “spotted leaves fall as they fall / Without ceremony, or portent”. This is a direct refutation of the portentous tone of the scene and the poem's plot. The most dramatic shift in the poem takes place when the speaker states: “I only know that a rook / Ordering its black feathers can so shine / As to seize my senses”. At this point, the speaker surrenders to the revelation and portent that was obvious to the reader all along. But Plath's phrasing of the realization uses the words “ordering” and “senses.” These are indications that, for her, there is a correspondence between order and meaning, and this order and meaning can be actualized through the senses. The poet’s early guarded approach toward the revelatory experience is the means by which the senses can actualize the order and meaning that exists in nature. Only by insisting on the most honest and direct perception of nature, free of delusion or wish-fulfillment, can the deeper (hidden) harmony and meaning of nature be experienced. The meaning of nature is not readily divulged to just any observer; the observer must be made “pure" enough to receive the “rare, random descent” of revelation. The poem obviously describes a mystical experience, but it does so in a way that is best read as initiatory. The poet now knows that there is a meaning and order to nature that can be grasped through the senses, so it is now the poet’s task to perceive all things as honestly as nature. In the poems that form her first two published collections, Plath continues the journey that was initiated in “Black Rook in Rainy Weather.” The next stage of her development is very complicated and prolonged with poems scattered throughout that document her progress. Throughout this stage of her poetic development, Plath brings the same unrelenting eye of honesty to her own inner-nature that she previously brought to bear on nature itself. It is as though her first encounters with nature as a child, then as a poet, initiated her into a process of self-realization. However, in order for the process to be real to her satisfaction, Plath felt compelled to strip away all artifice or pretense from her art and her life. Categories All Sylvia Plath is one of the most famous, best-selling, widely anthologized, and universally recognized poets of the twentieth century. Her poems, electric with figurative language and flights of mythic imagination, have thrilled millions of readers and continue to top lists of the most popular and artistically significant poems in American history. Her poetry has earned tens of millions of dollars and continues to sell while most modern poets, even the most celebrated, are read by only a handful of literati.
Plath’s life and work have spawned scores of biographies, plays, critical works, and films. She is widely regarded, along with Anne Sexton and Robert Lowell, as being a founder of the Confessional movement. Her reputation as a feminist, ecologist, novelist, poet, and even mystic is assured in history. How is it possible that this poet, dead by the age of thirty by her own hand, was able to attain such a magnitude of influence and mastery? I’m about to show you... I consider Sylvia Plath to be one of the greatest American poets of the twentieth century and I promise, if you continue to read this blog, you'll hear a lot more about why. So this post might seem a little weird because I'm going to bash all over one of her poems. No, it's not a pre-Colossus hiccup, or a thesaurus-driven villanelle from her Smith College days. It's a Confessional poem, straight out of her prime, from July 1962. And its a howler. The poem, "Words heard, by accident, over the phone," is an important poem for Plath addicts and specialists because it describes a crucial life-event and the beginning of the dissolution of her marriage to Ted Hughes. Other than that, the poem has a literary value approaching zero. Anyone can have a bad day, that's true. But that's not what happened here. I think the answer's much simpler. Plath developed a method over the years for writing poems and this is an example of her writing without her bag of tricks. She was apoplectic about Hughes's cheating and dashed the poem off like an angry letter. Here's the first lines: O mud mud, how fluid!---- Thick as foreign coffee, and with a sluggy pulse Speak, speak ! Who is it? Gone is the usual Plath inventiveness with conceits, diction, and figurative language. All that survives is the "confessional" theme of adultery, which she dully compares to mud, foreign coffee and ... "the bowel-pulse." The poem goes on to talk about mud for six more lines, then briefly compares the old land-line telephone to a tentacle (as in her poem "Medusa") before returning to images of mud: "Muck funnel, muck funnel". Repeating the drab phrase is another glimpse into how impotent Plath was without her method. I'm not saying Plath was anything less than a genius or that this one poem proves my point. There are others. But blog-time goes quickly. So tune in later for more. What I'm saying is Plath created a métier, a method for writing powerful poetry. This is her not using it. Click Plath's picture above to read the full text of "Words heard, by accident, over the phone." Hit the talk button above or below to let me know what you think of this or any other Plath poem. Categories All |