We shall by morning/Inherit the earth/Our foot’s in the door.

Tears Don’t Write Poems January 30, 2007

Posted by amanda in : Uncategorized , trackback

Whereas Ariel is most commonly considered Plath’s greatest poetry, it is also usually associated with a strong desire for revenge. It is impossible not to see some obvious anger in a number of her poems, but I once again think it is too pejorative to categorize Ariel as vengeful poems feuled by rage. In a sense it undercuts her contribution as a skilled poet to asses her greatest poetry as only great because she was so manic. So, yes, I agree that among her best poems (or at least some of my favorites) “Lady Lazarus,” “Lesbos,” and “The Applicant” there is an undeniable sense of urgency and anger, but these poems are incredibly intense and the skill should not be overshadowed by her emotional state.
This is a tricky line in poetry; at what point do you separate the poet (especially the confessional poet) from his or her emotion in relation to their skill as a poet and the product (poem) they produce? That’s confusing, but what I mean to ask, is how much of the credit for great poetry do we give to the poet versus how much do we imply that the greatness is simply a carefully harnessed emotional release? I’m idealistic, but I want to give the credit back to the poet.
Just as you cannot fully separate Plath’s poetry from her biography, you similarly cannot separate said poetry from her emotional awareness, but I think in some backwards sense that to give her poetical credit to her emotional outbursts or manic depressive nature is giving credit to Hughes for feuling that rage. I won’t give him anymore credit than he already gave himself for creating Sylvia Plath the poet. Unless of course he meant that he gave her a lot of material to work with.
But I digress….
I read the first twenty poems in Ariel this week and they are truly remarkable (I’m having a great time reading them in order like this)! Whereas The Colossus seemed to grapple with an insistence on being noticed, Ariel seems to handle falsities or deceptive illusions. It is almost as if she takes the benign subjects from The Colossus and shows how they have become overly indulged and even (in some cases) villainous, but nevertheless, nothing is what it seems.
In regards to her awesome skill, I tried to scan several of the poems including “The Rabbit Catcher” (7) and found that the attention to form is undeniable. The poem is six stanzas of five lines each and I believe (if i scanned correctly) that the Trochee is the dominant meter. While the meter and line legnths are not regular, there are lines that are so dominated by stress that you really have to read them out loud.
“I felt hands round a tea mug, dull, blunt.”(22)
She packs so much into each short line, that you truly feel claustrophobic by the end of the poem which makes the final line resonate even deeper:
“The constriction kiling me also.” (30)
No matter what her emotional state was when she crafted this poem, it is obvious that she put a ton of time and effort and thought into writing it. Her emotions might have helped her articulate some of her ideas or given her ideas to articulate, but Plath truly makes you share in the emotion of her poems and I think that someone writing simply out of revenge or with some sort of alterior motive would be less concerned with how we (the reader) shares in the experience and more concerned with their own emotional satisfaction, which would probably result in some sloppy poetry.

Fun Tidbits (aka: things I didn’t know)
* Thalidomide is a non-barbituate sedative or hypnotic that caused deformation in fetuses when taken in the early stages of pregnancy
*”Tulips” was written when Plath was in the hospital for an apendectomy
*Susan O’ Neill Roe-the woman who “Cut” is dedicated to, was Plath’s children’s babysitter in the last few months of her life
*Ruth Fainlight-the woman who “Elm” is dedicated to, is a poet born in 1931 in New York who has since lived in London. She and Plath were friends and you can see their correspondence at: http://www.poetrysociety.org/journal/art… (it’s really interesting, check it out)

also for even more Sylvia Plath information I found this website called neuroticpoets.com, i’m not sure how credible it is but it’s kind of amusing.