Before taking this class, when I thought of contemporary American poetry, Sylvia Plath was one of, if not the first, poet to come to mind as embodying the genre. It has always saddened me that as celebrated as she is, she struggled so much in her life, and that comes through both in her poetry and also the negativity recalled when people think of her. The thread of mental illness that connects so many of the poets this week has been interesting to trace because of the similarities but also the difference in the way their experiences present themselves as poetry. The time in institutions, battles with depression, and manic episodes are all obviously extremely personal, and I will always find it comforting that writers can express difficult experiences and emotions through writing in ways that help and are healing for them.
For Plath, her suicide attempts and the actions themselves are plainly on the page, such as in “Lady Lazarus” and “Daddy”, referencing different times she made attempts on her life. She states “Dying/Is an art, like everything else./ I do it exceptionally well.” (lines 44-46). Plath is directly referencing a defining traumatic event in her life, and is making fun of herself while doing it (obviously she doesn’t do it exceptionally well – she had several failed attempts). But I admire the way she describes her personal feelings and her internal struggles with what she recognizes to be imperfect, or broken.
I was mainly inspired by Sylvia Plath’s poem “Elm”. I liked how her writing is specific enough to conjure certain images (“Are those the faces of love, those pale irretrievables?”) but also mysterious enough where we are left wondering about the dark feeling she has created, and exactly where it has come from.
I specifically modeled my own poem after the last 6 stanzas, as I felt the shift halfway through the poem where she is letting go of the moon after it scathes her and discusses love and her faults. I was also inspired by Robert Lowell’s essay on “Ariel” we read for class, borrowing his line where he described Plath as “a brilliant tense presence embarrassed by restraint” (124). As Lowell said, “nothing is too much for the macabre gaiety of her control”, and I found that a succinct way to describe Plath’s edgy darkness that is centered in her control over every line and situation (123). It also describes her control over her life itself – her struggles with depression and suicidal ideation were a large part of her writing and her identity, and it is something she acknowledges and engages darkly but effectively.
For my own poem, I tried to stick to the line lengths and stanza groupings to keep thoughts together. I tried to use a lot of demonstratives, too, as I saw Plath doing that helped lend to the curiosity in the lack of specificity for certain areas. My goal was to describe uncertainty. About the future, about what happens in the day to day, and about life in general. I tried to touch on my own struggles with the not-knowing – I am the kind of person who likes to have a plan and know what is going to happen next. When I don’t, I get uncomfortable, my mind starts to race, and I become agitated until I have control over my situation. Hopefully that came through in the poem, but I’m interested to see if anyone else modeled Plath this week and if they did, how we differed!
Restraint? How embarrassing.
You’re supposed to know that already
How to polish and create this
Perfectly ingrained without trying.
I am closed off by these quakes
Tremors bound outwards, looking for something to catch, trip
Or hold onto
What am I supposed to be doing?
No, you’re supposed to know that already.
How embarrassing! Is this your first rodeo?
Not really. I place first in this rodeo every day.
So why the restraint?
You’ve done this before, and yet you’re still behind the gate.
I look outward at the mountains, that aren’t really mountains
Just some gray blobs
But I was told there would be mountains, so that’s probably right
At least that’s not my future I see. I’m more metropolitan
Unless it is my future?! Again, I can’t tell if they’re mountains or not
But they certainly seem to be acting like them.
Some clouds are moving across this monotone landscape
And I think I see the figure in the distance.
I’m just not sure it’s a good one.
I love the feeling you create in this poem–there’s a sort of lightness and humor created by the self-interrogation and asides and the uncertainty of vision. At the same time, one gets a strong sense of this portentous looming figure in the distance, something about to happen that is unpredictable. You capture that so well–the lightness and seriousness that we see in a poet like Plath. Well done!