Thanks are due to Kathryn Esplin and Nancy L. for reminding us that it is Sylvia Plath's birthday today (October 27th, as I write this). Kathryn described her life, and Nancy imbedded a youtube clip of her reading her poem, "Daddy." Like many others who came of age in the 1970's, I became interested in Sylvia's work when I was in college. I took an evening college class on her poetry (that's how popular she became), made a pilgrimage to the house she lived in in London, and have followed her writing as it has been published over the years. I found her to be an incredible wordsmith. As well, she expressed so acutely the problems many creative women faced in the repressive years of the fifties and later.
I write only because there is a voice within me that will not be still.
--from a poem written when she was 15 or 16
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“The blood jet is poetry,
There is no stopping it.”
--from her poem "Kindness"
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Let me live, love and say it well in good sentences.
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I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in life. And I am horribly limited.
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Remember, remember, this is now, and now, and now. Live it, feel it, cling to it. I want to become acutely aware of all I've taken for granted.
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It is a feeling that no matter what the ideas or conduct of others, there is a unique rightness and beauty to life which can be shared in openness, in wind and sunlight, with a fellow human being who believes in the same basic principles.
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There must be quite a few things a hot bath won't cure, but I don't know many of them.
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There's a very interesting, purported-to-be "after-death" interview with Sylvia Plath in the book Talking with Twentieth-Century Women, compiled by Peter Watson Jenkins, channeled by Toni Ann Winninger. Here is an excerpt:
"In my work I was attempting to allow others to feel what I was feeling--the good parts, I hoped, of what I was feeling. I now see that I had planned this as my Earth's work, so that I could act as a catalyst for those who read my work. My audience was varied, and my poetry was like a field of wildflowers, not of one variety but of every possible and imaginable species and variety, so that in my work, if there were only one poem that resonated with a person, that someone could identify with and therefore get a heightened experience of life or a needed change in direction, that was my ultimate goal. In my incarnate life, however, I did not have that view of it. I was writing for myself. I was pouring out the aspects of where I was at, where I would have like to have been, and a happy medium."
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Sylvia Plath (1932-1963) published a book of poetry during her life, as well as stories, articles, and a novel. After her death, more poetry was published, as were children's books, journals, a play, and a book of her drawings and paintings.
You can find other poetry quotes at <a href=”http://poetryquotes.gather.com/”>Poetry Quotes</a>
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Comments: 35
Wednesday Writing Essentials: Sylvia Plath lives on
Had she been born in a later age, she would have received much better treatment. Also, I don't know if the sexual abuse she suffered has been discussed thoroughly or not. I do have several books of or about her I bought last year.
Featured in the Triple Name Club.
TEN 4 U
Remember, remember, this is now, and now, and now. Live it, feel it, cling to it. I want to become acutely aware of all I've taken for granted.
I appreciate your comments and wanted to let you know that sometimes I see things with different eyes and my poems do not always reflect my own personal experiences but maybe it is my eyes seeing anothers suffering or pain. Some say all writers are tortured souls.....I believe we all have a little bit of that in us.....thanks dear friend!
How are your office clouds coming btw?
As it turned out, my poems also wanted to live.
We've worked it out.
Ah, yes, there was one quote I especially liked.
'Let me live, love and say it well in good sentences.'
All the family and marital troubles, depression and suicide are out there for everyone to read about. No one seems to remember that Plath has other facets than just dark ones. Except maybe her mother, who got a lot of flack for trying to remind people.