Ariel

[dedalus]

Being dead doesn't bother me, it's the dying part,
she said of a sudden straight from her heart
and I replied all free and easy,
light, ironic, breezy,
Darling, should I help you along?

'S'alright, love, I can manage myself,
I can perch, resigned, at the back of the shelf
and care for the children, let you go your way,
and let you fuck your latest little tart.
I frowned. There was little I could say.

On a bone-cold freezing winter day
she placed milk and biscuits on a tray,
brought them to the kids in the room above;
and without a word of reproach, nor even of love,
she placed a cloth in the oven and her head upon it

and died.

I have tried, tried so many many times
to discover some sense of meaning
in this careful act of cold finality:

Did she hate me? or was she a lone fatality
of a self-scourging sense of futility,
seeking recompense, hovering, leaning
over the blank utility of the grave?

I have lived since then, huddled down in the nave
of a shattered cathedral, her own and mine,
and nothing I have written, however fine,
can recover any lightness in my soul.

Even my innocent children survive on a dole
of pained and measured kindness. Her poems,
published and praised, still carry a sting
that assails me now, waking and sleeping.

I ignore the amazonic american hordes
who excavate this incident, this ... this thing,
women who hold me strenuously to account:
at the fount of non-knowledge, there is only weeping.

[Raine]

I find my tent pitched among the unforgivers when it comes to Plath but personal feelings aside I quite like this piece. I'm guessing the change of pace half way through is deliberate and it works well I think, however, if the intent behind the poem was to evoke sympathy for Sylvia then it failed at the point where the milk and cookies were coldly delivered and if it's poetry just for the sake of poetry then I don't really see the point.

[David]

I actually really like this. It is, of course, enormously presumptuous, and raises all sorts of questions about where we should or shouldn't be rushing in, but purely as a poem I enjoyed it a lot. I found it touching, even.

You could easily finish at "upon it", but the rest was still a pleasure to read.

Cheers

David

[dedalus]

Raine writes: ... if the intent behind the poem was to evoke sympathy for Sylvia then it failed at the point where the milk and cookies were coldly delivered and if it's poetry just for the sake of poetry then I don't really see the point.
Neither attitude or POV was intended. In the first half of the poem (see comments below) I used dialogue to set the scene of a marriage between two people (both, incidentally, if not mentioned, poets) that wasn't working out very well, probably because of gender roles kicking in after the birth of two children. This combined the husband's philandering ways and the sheer frustration felt by the wife left at home with the kiddies, a role she hardly could have anticipated or looked forward to with anything approaching enthusiasm. Unstated, but generally known, is that Sylvia Plath had had pyschological difficulties prior to her marriage and was on some sort of medication that left her particularly vulnerable in the period when the last pills wore off and the new pills hadn't kicked in yet. There is a theory going around that she was in this depressed and vulnerable state when she took the steps she did, leaving no farewell note but a slip of paper with her doctor's telephone number on it: it's quite conceivable that she was hoping to be discovered and saved before the suicide attempt succeeded. Through bad luck (the downstairs neighbour was also overcome by the gas and could not come to the rescue: he survived) she was not discovered. Lord knows what the poor children were doing in the room above with their milk and cookies. There is no judgement in this part of the poem. The second part of the poem goes off on a different tangent altogether.

David writes: It is, of course, enormously presumptuous, and raises all sorts of questions about where we should or shouldn't be rushing in, ... You could easily finish at "upon it",

I can accept "presumptuous" but baulk a little at "enormously": I dare say what you really mean is "intrusive", as if looking into the private agonies of others is a paparazzi pursuit. Yes and No ... or Nes and Yo as JJ quite sensibly concluded. There are indeed two poems here as the shift in gears makes abundantly clear. The simple explanation for this is that when I got through the opening stanzas I didn't want to stop. I started to think how Ted would feel when he got home and found his wife dead on the floor and the kids bawling upstairs among spilt milk and cookie crumbs. Fairly gutted, I'd say. On top of that the Plath legend soon begins in America and the feminists start to come down on him -- we are, after all, in the 1960s when a great deal of anger comes out of the closet. I think he must have felt guilt (who wouldn't?) but dealt with it as well as he could, and not by blocking things out. By all accounts, he took great care of his kids and got on well with them. He also -- unforgivably, in some eyes -- grew in stature as a poet until his death in 1998. As a young man he had always been a Bit of a Lad, craggy and good-looking, a magnet to females, and SP had been consumed with jealousy. Even the late Queen Mother had a soft spot for Ted, and she was a well-known judge of horses and maleflesh. There is tragedy here, of course, but I don't come after it like a blowfly (they have something like a 3-mile range for smelling blood: that can't be true!) but because the situation was so awful. I mean, what would you do?

Bren

[Ros]

I've been puzzling over what I think about this one, Bren. I think it's clever and well written, especially the first section, but I think the overall feeling I get from it is 'cold and detached'. This works well for part I which is indeed quite sparse and down to earth. I think it works less well for part II. I think it's the quite 'literate' phrases that give that effect -

lightness in my soul.
pained and measured kindness
excavate this incident

etc and it doesn't make me feel that you've got into the heart of the man, it's too cold. And I felt presumption too, esp in phrases such as

nothing I have written, however fine,
can recover any lightness in my soul.

- feels odd to be declaring this on behalf of a stranger.

An interesting work, though.

Ros

[dedalus]

That's a good and fair analysis, Ros ... there is "presumption", after all, in trying to pretend to be inside the man's head. David picked up on it. I write a number of imaginative pieces from time to time where I put myself into people's thoughts like a 19th century novelist ... but these are imaginary people, characters I have created for the purpose of telling a story. Ted Hughes was a real person, with his own inner strengths and weaknesses, and it's no business of mine to pretend to know what he was thinking and feeling. I think it was more a projection of what I might think and feel in (God forbid!!) similar circumstances, as comes out in the final part of the reply to David above.

Fair do's. I need to be stopped in my gallop from time to time!

Incidentally, when and by whom was I nominated for the February IBPC for the "Timor Mortis" poem? I most definitely do NOT want this poem put forward (should it even get that far) since I have already refused the nomination for the same poem on another list.

Best wishes,
Bren

[Ros]

Incidentally, when and by whom was I nominated for the February IBPC for the "Timor Mortis" poem? I most definitely do NOT want this poem put forward (should it even get that far) since I have already refused the nomination for the same poem on another list.

Sorry, Bren, you can shout at David about that one. I always check before sending them. I'm not sure I can alter the voting form but I'll add a message.

[David]

Incidentally, when and by whom was I nominated for the February IBPC for the "Timor Mortis" poem? I most definitely do NOT want this poem put forward (should it even get that far) since I have already refused the nomination for the same poem on another list.

Sorry, Bren, you can shout at David about that one. I always check before sending them. I'm not sure I can alter the voting form but I'll add a message.

Yep, that was me. Should have checked first. Mea culpa.

[dedalus]

No major problem, now that it's been caught in time ... but ... could you imagine if I'd come up with an Also Ran (or horrors, unlikely as it seems, a Prize!!) on the notifications sent out to all the poetry fora after specifically telling this crowd I had refused their nomination? Where would I begin with my explanations? Who would listen, who would believe me?

There's a reason for asking people if they WANT to be nominated. I'll say no more.

All else aside, it was a benevolent gesture, David. You could have had no idea of these other considerations, but it was ... you'll wince, I know, but accept the irony ... a presumption!

Affectionately,
Bren

[David]

All else aside, it was a benevolent gesture, David. You could have had no idea of these other considerations, but it was ... you'll wince, I know, but accept the irony ... a presumption!

Yay!