View of Feininger’s
Painting Pale Fire
Painting Pale Fire
Sunday, March 25, 2012
Pale Fire
Pale Fire—for Vladimir Nabokov
__________________
How easily I got diverted then—
By Nabokov’s Jack-in-the-Box puzzle
How many emails did I get to send
The NYTimes Book Discussion tussle.
A strange poem inside a weird novel
A Zembla commentary so tres gay
So full of lies you needed a shovel
An exiled old queen so fickle & fey.
After Lolita caused such a big flap
Keeping church & critics busy all day
Mary McCarthy more charmed this new way:
Preface, poem, notes, index so seductive.
After that I was addicted I suppose
To the rest of his Novels more or less…
__________________
How easily I got diverted then—
By Nabokov’s Jack-in-the-Box puzzle
How many emails did I get to send
The NYTimes Book Discussion tussle.
A strange poem inside a weird novel
A Zembla commentary so tres gay
So full of lies you needed a shovel
An exiled old queen so fickle & fey.
After Lolita caused such a big flap
Keeping church & critics busy all day
Mary McCarthy more charmed this new way:
Preface, poem, notes, index so seductive.
After that I was addicted I suppose
To the rest of his Novels more or less…
Thursday, March 8, 2012
Faber and Faber
Faber and Faber
__________________
“I drown in the
drumming ploughland
—Ted Hughes
“The Hawk in the Rain”
The Hawk in the Rain
Grizzled lizardy wrinkled—
Auden bending down over his drink
There in the Faber & Faber
Stairwell toasting Miss Eliot
What am I doing here—
Mincing words with these
Queer Queenly Old Poets so
Wasted by The Waste Land?
_________________________
Gesticulating weak wrists—
Old male whores in the Attic
Prissy Prostitutes cruising
Like hard-up Concubines?
“Lechery I simply despise”—
I told Sylvia, “But getting my
Book published by Faber, well,
I’ll do anything, baby.”
____________________
Sylvia got jealous as usual—
The Faber Queens putting the
Make on me, her Yorkshire
Gigolo poet husband
Valerie felt me up—
The swank party in Eliot’s flat
Blathering away about how
Prufrock couldn’t get it up
Cambridge
“swallowing of
the earth’s mouth”
—Ted Hughes
“The Hawk in the Rain”
The Hawk in the Rain
Drowning in the dreary remains—
All the graves of long-dead Poets
I waited for the weightless Dead
Their stubborn closets to disgorge
A definite downer at Cambridge—
Down to the bone-dazed Earth’s
Masturbating English Departments
Where diamond dice were thrown
____________________________
Sylvia grabbed me, wanted me—
Hurled herself down in my arms
Typing me into the Mytholmroyd
Monster, the jaded Beast I became
In her desperation to have me—
Incestuously like Big Bad Daddy
She resorted to Black Cat Magic
I became the Jaguar eating her up
Nightingales
“Apeneck Sweeny
spreads his knees”
—T. S. Eliot
“Sweeny Among the
Nightingales”
Apeneck Auden spreads—
His cheeks down on his knees
His tight puckered asshole
Only to ready to please
The young sailor in the park—
Slides it sideways then up
Deep into the River Platte
Thru the Poet’s horny gate
____________________
Miss Auden isn’t ready—
Her xylophone vertebrae
Doing the Rumba down to Rio
But finally something splits
The Wisteria weeps—
The sacred fissure bleeds
The surgeon has to sew and
Stitch the gnash back up
Love Song
“In the room
the women come
and go talking of
Michelangelo”
—T. S. Eliot
“The Love Song of
J. Alfred Prufrock”
Let us go then, prowling—
When the evening slinks
About, the tricks etherized
On half-deserted streets
The muttering queens—
Restless one-night stands
In cheap motels sucking
Oysters and faux-pearls
_______________________
The faggy fog rubs—
The back of your neck
Licking its tongue and
Lingering in your loins
Knowing you should—
Be curled up in bed
With your wife back
Home safe and sound
______________________
But there isn’t time—
For a hundred indecisions
The days are murdered
By lies and deceits
Not time to come and go—
Swishing like Michelangelo
Beneath the Sistine Chapel
Scaffolding high above
___________________
No time to turn back—
To peel a peach-fuzz angel
To measure out one’s life
With coy coffee spoons
Far be it for me—
To presume catty
Badboy butt-ends for
My days to come
_________________
Down the nightly—
Narrow streets ending up
Ragged crab claws scuttling
Across bathroom floors
I’ve wept and feasted—
Prayed and preyed until
I was old and bald-headed
Mealy-mouthed & toothless
__________________________
Was it really worth it—
All that marmalade & tea
Squeezing young unicorns dry
Doing those centaurs on the sly?
Hoping against coming back—
Like Lazarus from the Dead
Only for another dreary
Rerun of the same old thing?
__________________
“I drown in the
drumming ploughland
—Ted Hughes
“The Hawk in the Rain”
The Hawk in the Rain
Grizzled lizardy wrinkled—
Auden bending down over his drink
There in the Faber & Faber
Stairwell toasting Miss Eliot
What am I doing here—
Mincing words with these
Queer Queenly Old Poets so
Wasted by The Waste Land?
_________________________
Gesticulating weak wrists—
Old male whores in the Attic
Prissy Prostitutes cruising
Like hard-up Concubines?
“Lechery I simply despise”—
I told Sylvia, “But getting my
Book published by Faber, well,
I’ll do anything, baby.”
____________________
Sylvia got jealous as usual—
The Faber Queens putting the
Make on me, her Yorkshire
Gigolo poet husband
Valerie felt me up—
The swank party in Eliot’s flat
Blathering away about how
Prufrock couldn’t get it up
Cambridge
“swallowing of
the earth’s mouth”
—Ted Hughes
“The Hawk in the Rain”
The Hawk in the Rain
Drowning in the dreary remains—
All the graves of long-dead Poets
I waited for the weightless Dead
Their stubborn closets to disgorge
A definite downer at Cambridge—
Down to the bone-dazed Earth’s
Masturbating English Departments
Where diamond dice were thrown
____________________________
Sylvia grabbed me, wanted me—
Hurled herself down in my arms
Typing me into the Mytholmroyd
Monster, the jaded Beast I became
In her desperation to have me—
Incestuously like Big Bad Daddy
She resorted to Black Cat Magic
I became the Jaguar eating her up
Nightingales
“Apeneck Sweeny
spreads his knees”
—T. S. Eliot
“Sweeny Among the
Nightingales”
Apeneck Auden spreads—
His cheeks down on his knees
His tight puckered asshole
Only to ready to please
The young sailor in the park—
Slides it sideways then up
Deep into the River Platte
Thru the Poet’s horny gate
____________________
Miss Auden isn’t ready—
Her xylophone vertebrae
Doing the Rumba down to Rio
But finally something splits
The Wisteria weeps—
The sacred fissure bleeds
The surgeon has to sew and
Stitch the gnash back up
Love Song
“In the room
the women come
and go talking of
Michelangelo”
—T. S. Eliot
“The Love Song of
J. Alfred Prufrock”
Let us go then, prowling—
When the evening slinks
About, the tricks etherized
On half-deserted streets
The muttering queens—
Restless one-night stands
In cheap motels sucking
Oysters and faux-pearls
_______________________
The faggy fog rubs—
The back of your neck
Licking its tongue and
Lingering in your loins
Knowing you should—
Be curled up in bed
With your wife back
Home safe and sound
______________________
But there isn’t time—
For a hundred indecisions
The days are murdered
By lies and deceits
Not time to come and go—
Swishing like Michelangelo
Beneath the Sistine Chapel
Scaffolding high above
___________________
No time to turn back—
To peel a peach-fuzz angel
To measure out one’s life
With coy coffee spoons
Far be it for me—
To presume catty
Badboy butt-ends for
My days to come
_________________
Down the nightly—
Narrow streets ending up
Ragged crab claws scuttling
Across bathroom floors
I’ve wept and feasted—
Prayed and preyed until
I was old and bald-headed
Mealy-mouthed & toothless
__________________________
Was it really worth it—
All that marmalade & tea
Squeezing young unicorns dry
Doing those centaurs on the sly?
Hoping against coming back—
Like Lazarus from the Dead
Only for another dreary
Rerun of the same old thing?
Mytholmroyd Male
Mytholmroyd Male
__________________
“darkness beneath
night’s darkness”
—Ted Hughes
“Pike,” Lupercal
The old stone Temple—
The monolithic tombstone
Standing straight & tall
Moody manly erect
Shape-shifting Stonehenge—
Cemetery of the Dead
Thousands of years old
Encrusted with Kinsmen
_______________
Ugly phallic shaft—
In today’s cold drizzle rain
The last flickering light
Across the sullen moors
He leans against it—
Burning young Yorkshire
Youth with burning crotch
Turning into an ash-heap
______________
Sylvia gets him off—
Her lips buried in his
Dark black moody pubes
Deep down her throat
__________________
“darkness beneath
night’s darkness”
—Ted Hughes
“Pike,” Lupercal
The old stone Temple—
The monolithic tombstone
Standing straight & tall
Moody manly erect
Shape-shifting Stonehenge—
Cemetery of the Dead
Thousands of years old
Encrusted with Kinsmen
_______________
Ugly phallic shaft—
In today’s cold drizzle rain
The last flickering light
Across the sullen moors
He leans against it—
Burning young Yorkshire
Youth with burning crotch
Turning into an ash-heap
______________
Sylvia gets him off—
Her lips buried in his
Dark black moody pubes
Deep down her throat
Ouija Board Story
Ouija Board Story
—for Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath
Daniel Huws, Richard Hollis,
Colin Wilcockson, Carol Hughes
___________________
“a parasitical orgy”
—Daniel Huws,
“Conversation with Hughes'
Contemporaries,” Ted Hughes
Conference, Pembroke College,
Cambridge University
“Daniel Huws has recently
owned up to being PAN
on the occasion recounted”
—Terry Gifford, “Hughes’s
Social Ecology,” The Cambridge
Companion To Ted Hughes
__________________________________
A parasitical orgy—
A good way to begin a
Séance of Admirers
Huddled around an—
Antique Ouija board
Here deep in midnight
___________
“Are you there?”—
asks Miss Auden and
ghostly W. B. Yeats
“Yes, we’re here—
and more than willing
to commune,” we say
____________
All of us hushed—
One could hear a pin drop
The séance begins…
Daniel Huws moves—
The Planchette around
The Board, warming it up
_______________
“I’m certainly ready—
for an orgy of words,
my dear,” Auden says
“I’m more than ready—
to slouch to Bethlehem,”
Yeats jokes laughingly
______________
Suddenly the Planchette—
Starts scribbling across
The Ouija Board frantically
And Ted Hughes’ voice—
Drifts into the room from
A faraway place somewhere
______________
“Brian O’Lynn to his house had no door,
He’d the sky for a ceiling, the earth for a floor,
He’d a way to jump out and a way to jump in,
“Tis a fine habitation”, says Brian O’Lynn.
_____________________
Brian O’Lynn went a courting one night,
But he set both mother and daughter to fight,
To fight for his hand they both stripped to the skin,
“Ach I’ll marry ye both,” says Brian O’Lynn.
_________________________
Brian O'Lynn and his wife and wife's mother,
They all went over the bridge together,
The bridge broke down and they all tumbled in,
“Ach I’ll go home by water,” says Brian O'Lynn.
_________________
Oh Brian O'Lynn was an Orangeman born,
But he married a Papist from this side of Mourne,
“Ach I will wear Orange and she will wear Green,
And we’ll keep out of trouble,” says Brian O’Lynn.
______________________
Brian O’Lynn went to Chapel one day,
But he had no beads so he’d damn all to say,
The priest comes up to him, says, “What is your Sin?”
“Ach I have no apparatus,” says Brian O’Lynn.
__________________
Suddenly Olwyn storms in—
Demanding the Séance cease
And Desist Immediately or else!!!
Olwyn screeches that the—
Estate forbids any type
Of Occult Communication!!!
_________
“We own Everything!!!—
Including all Communiqués
With the Living Dead!!!”
“The Hughes Estate—
Possess Copyrights on
All Ouija Board Discussions!”
_________________
The Planchette pauses—
Then the next message
Is quite to the point:
“Mind your own business—
Fuck off, you Old Witch!!!”
This is Sylvia speaking!!!”
_________________
The audience gasps—
Not since “Birthday Letters”
Have people been so shocked!
The smell of gas oozes—
Into the Parlor and then
The sound of Ariel hoofs!
______________
The Planchette came—
Back to life, it was the
Voice of Ted Hughes:
“Poetry isn’t just for—
England and other people’s
Poetry is also ours”
____________________
The Planchette seemed—
To be running out of psychic
Energy, slowly last words:
“Your past is really—
Valueless except for the
Stories, and so the stories…”
—for Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath
Daniel Huws, Richard Hollis,
Colin Wilcockson, Carol Hughes
___________________
“a parasitical orgy”
—Daniel Huws,
“Conversation with Hughes'
Contemporaries,” Ted Hughes
Conference, Pembroke College,
Cambridge University
“Daniel Huws has recently
owned up to being PAN
on the occasion recounted”
—Terry Gifford, “Hughes’s
Social Ecology,” The Cambridge
Companion To Ted Hughes
__________________________________
A parasitical orgy—
A good way to begin a
Séance of Admirers
Huddled around an—
Antique Ouija board
Here deep in midnight
___________
“Are you there?”—
asks Miss Auden and
ghostly W. B. Yeats
“Yes, we’re here—
and more than willing
to commune,” we say
____________
All of us hushed—
One could hear a pin drop
The séance begins…
Daniel Huws moves—
The Planchette around
The Board, warming it up
_______________
“I’m certainly ready—
for an orgy of words,
my dear,” Auden says
“I’m more than ready—
to slouch to Bethlehem,”
Yeats jokes laughingly
______________
Suddenly the Planchette—
Starts scribbling across
The Ouija Board frantically
And Ted Hughes’ voice—
Drifts into the room from
A faraway place somewhere
______________
“Brian O’Lynn to his house had no door,
He’d the sky for a ceiling, the earth for a floor,
He’d a way to jump out and a way to jump in,
“Tis a fine habitation”, says Brian O’Lynn.
_____________________
Brian O’Lynn went a courting one night,
But he set both mother and daughter to fight,
To fight for his hand they both stripped to the skin,
“Ach I’ll marry ye both,” says Brian O’Lynn.
_________________________
Brian O'Lynn and his wife and wife's mother,
They all went over the bridge together,
The bridge broke down and they all tumbled in,
“Ach I’ll go home by water,” says Brian O'Lynn.
_________________
Oh Brian O'Lynn was an Orangeman born,
But he married a Papist from this side of Mourne,
“Ach I will wear Orange and she will wear Green,
And we’ll keep out of trouble,” says Brian O’Lynn.
______________________
Brian O’Lynn went to Chapel one day,
But he had no beads so he’d damn all to say,
The priest comes up to him, says, “What is your Sin?”
“Ach I have no apparatus,” says Brian O’Lynn.
__________________
Suddenly Olwyn storms in—
Demanding the Séance cease
And Desist Immediately or else!!!
Olwyn screeches that the—
Estate forbids any type
Of Occult Communication!!!
_________
“We own Everything!!!—
Including all Communiqués
With the Living Dead!!!”
“The Hughes Estate—
Possess Copyrights on
All Ouija Board Discussions!”
_________________
The Planchette pauses—
Then the next message
Is quite to the point:
“Mind your own business—
Fuck off, you Old Witch!!!”
This is Sylvia speaking!!!”
_________________
The audience gasps—
Not since “Birthday Letters”
Have people been so shocked!
The smell of gas oozes—
Into the Parlor and then
The sound of Ariel hoofs!
______________
The Planchette came—
Back to life, it was the
Voice of Ted Hughes:
“Poetry isn’t just for—
England and other people’s
Poetry is also ours”
____________________
The Planchette seemed—
To be running out of psychic
Energy, slowly last words:
“Your past is really—
Valueless except for the
Stories, and so the stories…”
Monday, March 5, 2012
The Jaguar
Jaguar Sculpture by Ted Hughes
The Jaguar
__________________
"There is a panther
stalks me down
One day I'll have
my death of him"
—Sylvia Plath
Dark moody—
Sexual preditory
He stalks his women
He strides into bed—
My Yorkshire Jaguar man
Going for my jugular
My world tilts—
Excited with the long
Thrust of his catty loins
He’s a slinky Panther—
Many other women will
Likewise be doomed
No simple Moors—
Rabbit-killer hunter
He kills women instead
__________________
"There is a panther
stalks me down
One day I'll have
my death of him"
—Sylvia Plath
Dark moody—
Sexual preditory
He stalks his women
He strides into bed—
My Yorkshire Jaguar man
Going for my jugular
My world tilts—
Excited with the long
Thrust of his catty loins
He’s a slinky Panther—
Many other women will
Likewise be doomed
No simple Moors—
Rabbit-killer hunter
He kills women instead
Zen-Jaguar
Jaguar Sculpture by Ted Hughes
Zen-Jaguar
__________________
“Even in your
Zen heaven
we shan't meet."
—Sylvia Plath
"Lesbos," Ariel
No Zen-Fox instinct—
To guide him, only
Underworld instinctual
Soundless Hunter
Hurrying through—
Dark Faber & Faber
Wastelands, English
Lit Carnivore Poet
The Big Bad Wolf—
And the 3 Little Pigs:
Assia Wevill, Jill Barber
And Claudia Wright
Plus Emma Tennant—
Sister of Princess Margaret’s
Close friend Lord Glenconner
Styling herself "Submistress”
__________________
“Even in your
Zen heaven
we shan't meet."
—Sylvia Plath
"Lesbos," Ariel
No Zen-Fox instinct—
To guide him, only
Underworld instinctual
Soundless Hunter
Hurrying through—
Dark Faber & Faber
Wastelands, English
Lit Carnivore Poet
The Big Bad Wolf—
And the 3 Little Pigs:
Assia Wevill, Jill Barber
And Claudia Wright
Plus Emma Tennant—
Sister of Princess Margaret’s
Close friend Lord Glenconner
Styling herself "Submistress”
Killer Jaguar
Jaguar Sculpture by Ted Hughes
Killer Jaguar
__________________
“Hurrying through
the underworld”
—Ted Hughes,
“Second Glance
at a Jaguar,” Wodwo
Skinning it back—
Ted isn’t bashful
His hip going in &
Out of joint
Dropping his—
Spine with the
Urgency of a
Tomcat in heat
Back-alley poet—
Glancing sideways
Undercover behind
The garbage cans
__________________
An Aztec—
Disemboweller
Sockets tense
Between his hips
The women—
Soon got to know
His stump-legged
Terrible waddle
His sharp incisors—
Biting their raw
Earlobes into new
Earrings of pain
_________________
He smirks—
Swiveling on the
Ball of his heel
As he leaves them
An engorged look—
Mouth hanging open
Graceful gangster
Groin of a killer
The weight of his—
Fangs so heavy he
Can barely raise his
Head up off the floor
_____________________
Shoving himself—
Forward after the
Kill with her still
Lying in bed
He mutters—
Monster mantras
To himself hating
The moon above
Mark of Cain—
Branded, tattooed
Driven by Prick’s
Prayer-wheel
__________________
“Hurrying through
the underworld”
—Ted Hughes,
“Second Glance
at a Jaguar,” Wodwo
Skinning it back—
Ted isn’t bashful
His hip going in &
Out of joint
Dropping his—
Spine with the
Urgency of a
Tomcat in heat
Back-alley poet—
Glancing sideways
Undercover behind
The garbage cans
__________________
An Aztec—
Disemboweller
Sockets tense
Between his hips
The women—
Soon got to know
His stump-legged
Terrible waddle
His sharp incisors—
Biting their raw
Earlobes into new
Earrings of pain
_________________
He smirks—
Swiveling on the
Ball of his heel
As he leaves them
An engorged look—
Mouth hanging open
Graceful gangster
Groin of a killer
The weight of his—
Fangs so heavy he
Can barely raise his
Head up off the floor
_____________________
Shoving himself—
Forward after the
Kill with her still
Lying in bed
He mutters—
Monster mantras
To himself hating
The moon above
Mark of Cain—
Branded, tattooed
Driven by Prick’s
Prayer-wheel
The Thought Jaguar
Jaguar Sculpture by Ted Hughes
The Thought Jaguar
__________________
“Something else
is alive”
—Ted Hughes
“The Thought Fox,”
The Hawk in the Rain
I imagine him there—
In the London Zoo
Midnight loneliness
His blank eyes
Through the bars—
He sees even deeper
Into me than I could
Possible gaze
Cold, delicate cat—
The Jaguar’s nose is
Wary like mine as he
Sniffs me out
We’re both caged—
Creatures here in the
Vast city wilderness
If only we could kill
Neat prints left—
In the snow like mine
Both of us lame in
The hollow of death
We want widening—
Deepening greenness
That’s our business
Not a hole in the head
The clock ticks—
The bars don’t bend
If only I could get back
Out there in the Moors
__________________
“Something else
is alive”
—Ted Hughes
“The Thought Fox,”
The Hawk in the Rain
I imagine him there—
In the London Zoo
Midnight loneliness
His blank eyes
Through the bars—
He sees even deeper
Into me than I could
Possible gaze
Cold, delicate cat—
The Jaguar’s nose is
Wary like mine as he
Sniffs me out
We’re both caged—
Creatures here in the
Vast city wilderness
If only we could kill
Neat prints left—
In the snow like mine
Both of us lame in
The hollow of death
We want widening—
Deepening greenness
That’s our business
Not a hole in the head
The clock ticks—
The bars don’t bend
If only I could get back
Out there in the Moors
Sunday, March 4, 2012
Jaguar Poet
Jaguar Sculpture by Ted Hughes
Jaguar Poet
__________________
“Stare at the
monster”
—Ted Hughes
“Famous Poet,”
The Hawk in the Rain
Stare at the monster—
How difficult to put into
Words this monstrosity
Slinking before you
You’re nothing but—
An apprentice to the
Wizard monster who
Turns into a Jaguar
_________________
How can you know—
With your demeanor
Of a mouse what a
Monster really seeks
Word-hoards that—
Hide Monsters of the Id
That only Beowulf once
Knew a long time ago
________________
Before Poets went—
Haggard before their
Assemblies of hurt
Dreg-boozed warriors
Anglo-Saxon males—
Once tankarding their
Youth thru obscurity
Into Sword-effulgence
__________________
Nothingness gaped—
Stegosaurus monsters
Gigantic dragons still
Cast their burning eye
And here am I—
Seduced by money
Tenure and praise
From my own Tongue
__________________
“Stare at the
monster”
—Ted Hughes
“Famous Poet,”
The Hawk in the Rain
Stare at the monster—
How difficult to put into
Words this monstrosity
Slinking before you
You’re nothing but—
An apprentice to the
Wizard monster who
Turns into a Jaguar
_________________
How can you know—
With your demeanor
Of a mouse what a
Monster really seeks
Word-hoards that—
Hide Monsters of the Id
That only Beowulf once
Knew a long time ago
________________
Before Poets went—
Haggard before their
Assemblies of hurt
Dreg-boozed warriors
Anglo-Saxon males—
Once tankarding their
Youth thru obscurity
Into Sword-effulgence
__________________
Nothingness gaped—
Stegosaurus monsters
Gigantic dragons still
Cast their burning eye
And here am I—
Seduced by money
Tenure and praise
From my own Tongue
Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath
__________________
Stasis of Britain—
Substanceless old empire
Pour of tor and distances
Godless banksters—
The English oinklettes
Skulk of snout & hoof
Kings and Queens—
Black sweet bloody
Mouthfuls of shadows
__________________________
Haunting thru air—
Thighs, pubes and
Flaky aristocrats
Pale white, uncut—
Peeling back Ted’s foreskin
With my dead hands
See how he foams—
And glitters with the
Queen’s Order of Merit
_________________________________
My head stuck—
In an Auschwitz oven
How time does fly
Hardly suicidal—
My glaring eyeball
Cauldron of morning
__________________
Stasis of Britain—
Substanceless old empire
Pour of tor and distances
Godless banksters—
The English oinklettes
Skulk of snout & hoof
Kings and Queens—
Black sweet bloody
Mouthfuls of shadows
__________________________
Haunting thru air—
Thighs, pubes and
Flaky aristocrats
Pale white, uncut—
Peeling back Ted’s foreskin
With my dead hands
See how he foams—
And glitters with the
Queen’s Order of Merit
_________________________________
My head stuck—
In an Auschwitz oven
How time does fly
Hardly suicidal—
My glaring eyeball
Cauldron of morning
Pike
Pike
__________________
“Stilled legendary depth:
It was as deep as England”
—Ted Hughes, “Pike,”
Lupercal
_________________________
Pretty Pike Teeth—
Assia smiles thinking
About her dream of
Seducing Ted Hughes
________________________
How gullible Ted is—
Falling for the malevolent
Killer Pike’s toothy grin
Slinking beneath him
________________________
Stunned by his own male—
Grandeur embedded and
Silhouetted by emerald
Submarine horrors
__________________________
Beyond Hawk or Wolf—
Sliding under lily-pads
Down in the gloomy stillness
Sleek stealthy Pike grins
_________________________________
Streamlined fishy Snake—
Slithery subdued phallic
Savage killer with fins
Gills kneading quietly
_____________________________
Jungle pubes twisted—
Jammed down there deep
Inside Assia’s other gullet
His muscular monastery
___________________________
She dreamed his dream—
Better than Sylvia who fled
Blood, guts & rabbit-killers
Her manly man of the Moors
“Stilled legendary depth:
It was as deep as England”
—Ted Hughes, “Pike,”
Lupercal
_________________________
Pretty Pike Teeth—
Assia smiles thinking
About her dream of
Seducing Ted Hughes
________________________
How gullible Ted is—
Falling for the malevolent
Killer Pike’s toothy grin
Slinking beneath him
________________________
Stunned by his own male—
Grandeur embedded and
Silhouetted by emerald
Submarine horrors
__________________________
Beyond Hawk or Wolf—
Sliding under lily-pads
Down in the gloomy stillness
Sleek stealthy Pike grins
_________________________________
Streamlined fishy Snake—
Slithery subdued phallic
Savage killer with fins
Gills kneading quietly
_____________________________
Jungle pubes twisted—
Jammed down there deep
Inside Assia’s other gullet
His muscular monastery
___________________________
She dreamed his dream—
Better than Sylvia who fled
Blood, guts & rabbit-killers
Her manly man of the Moors
Saturday, March 3, 2012
Troubled Jaguar
Troubled Jaguar
__________________
Troubled Jaguar
The London Zoo
Jaguar Sermon I
Jaguar Sermon II
De-evolution
Seancing the Self
_______________
Troubled Jaguar
“The sculpture, which Hughes
gave to his brother, is particularly
striking because he branded the
jaguar's forehead with the letter 'A',
possibly for Assia or "adulterer", as
recalled in Nathaniel Hawthorne's
The Scarlet Letter, in which a woman
is sentenced to wearing the letter
A around her neck.”
—Dalya Alberge, “Ted Hughes's
Jaguar Sculpture Hints at Poet's
Demons,” The Guardian, Dec 31, 2011
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/dec/31/ted-hughes-jaguar-sculpture-sale
___________________________
But why just Assia?—
Why not Hughes himself
Addicted to adultery like
A jaguar to blood?
Moody Moors male—
Admired by so many for
His unabashed natural
Manhood demeanor
Can we enclose him—
In a cage like a panther
In the London Zoo with
Him behind bars?
_______________________
So many lit crit experts—
Both men and women
And even Queen Elizabeth
Loved his uncouth ways
His wild Yorkshire—
Hunting Fishing Trapping
Worship of the Goddess
Gaia of the Moors?
Was he not what—
Men are supposed to be
Or used to be back when
Men were wild Jaguars?
__________________________
And yet he was caught—
But then he struggled
To be free, this troubled
Man like you and me?
_________________________
The London Zoo
—for Frieda and Nicholas
I took them thru—
The Park to the Zoo
To get them outta that
W. B. Yeats madhouse
Panthers pace back—
And forth in the cages
Monkey-brained humans
Strutting like cheap tarts
I wanted them to see—
How invisible cages
Enclose all of us
Living in a dream
But the slinky jaguar—
Caught my eye and made
Me realize that not even
Poet-Panthers are free
_______________________
Poet-Panther
—for Ted Hughes
I dream in the—
Invisible Zoo slinking
Paw after paw stalking
The human prey
The naked apes yawn—
Eating their peanuts
Monkey-brain humans
Naked ape drowsers
Cheap tarts mincing—
Fatigued by indolence
Shrieking like parrots
Their kids in strollers
The Invisible Zoo—
With bars just as real
As the steel ones
Between them & me
___________________________
Jaguar Sermon I
“No, the serpent didn’t
Seduce Eve to the apple”
—Ted Hughes, “Theology,”
Wodwo
Adam ate the apple—
Then he ate out Eve
And God was jealous
So very displeased
So he cast the Serpent—
Down between Adam’s legs
And made the Snake grovel
And wiggle down there
Casting the Serpent—
All the way down as the
Snake with Two Legs
Walking the naked earth
So the next time—
He raises his ugly head
Smoldering arrogant Snake
Know his Downfall is yours
___________________
Jaguar Sermon II
“That rose slowly
towards me, watching”
—Ted Hughes,
“Pike,” Lupercal
The Snake hardly moves—
Fossil-slow Boa-Constrictor
Captured in the London Zoo
Down between his legs
The era of Giant Lizards—
Isn’t over sitting in its
Prehistoric stillness and
Slow-motion wisdom
Mucousy slug tracks—
Beneath Iago idiot eyeballs
Close to the Killer Cobra
Eclipse of monkey-brains
African Garden of Eden—
Retro-engineered just right
With a flawed genetic code
Panther Killer Chromosome
___________________
De-Evolution
“Had those antlers
fallen from a star?”
—Ted Hughes,
“The Last Migration,”
Uncollected Poems
So God died—
And a new god with a
More narrowed insight
Using the Word reversed
Gazed backward in Time
Standing there was Man—
Pandora Box of Pain
Purposeless pale gristle
Cloying unbelievably
To the empty horizon
___________________________
A Devil with antlers—
Hoisted on a dazed curly head
A Michelangelo body but
A dreary draughty brain
Veiny Baroque Bernini legs
Cluttered there among—
The other unbelievable
Leftovers of hooves and
Antlers and roots that didn’t
Belong to a Garden of Eden
________________________________
Burning the Brothel—
Spiraling Time backwards
Counter-clockwise weightlessly
Shuddering haunches and horns
Into the vortex of words
Quarks quaking—
Black holes suckin in
The tumbling final Thunder
Back thru the eye-pupil
Connecting what had spoiled
___________________
Seancing the Self
“Godforsaken darkness—
This monstrous-headed
difficult child”
—Ted Hughes,
“The Perfect Forms,”
Lupercal
Undoing the Ouija Pan voice—
Remaking the Tarot deck closely
To fit the faces of Eve and the
Periplum perplexities of the Pike
How to make the bars disappear—
The invisible cage in the London Zoo
Undoing the bed we slept in and
Undreaming the Fortune Teller jive
_______________________
Retooling Mytholmroyd Mythology—
The phases of the Hubris Moon
Down in the Maze of Ted’s Navel
Unlocking Ariadne’s Umbilical Cord
All that was easy stuff—
Compared with the last Trick of All
Cleaning the Stables of the Gods
All that man-made manure stuff
__________________
Troubled Jaguar
The London Zoo
Jaguar Sermon I
Jaguar Sermon II
De-evolution
Seancing the Self
_______________
Troubled Jaguar
“The sculpture, which Hughes
gave to his brother, is particularly
striking because he branded the
jaguar's forehead with the letter 'A',
possibly for Assia or "adulterer", as
recalled in Nathaniel Hawthorne's
The Scarlet Letter, in which a woman
is sentenced to wearing the letter
A around her neck.”
—Dalya Alberge, “Ted Hughes's
Jaguar Sculpture Hints at Poet's
Demons,” The Guardian, Dec 31, 2011
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/dec/31/ted-hughes-jaguar-sculpture-sale
___________________________
But why just Assia?—
Why not Hughes himself
Addicted to adultery like
A jaguar to blood?
Moody Moors male—
Admired by so many for
His unabashed natural
Manhood demeanor
Can we enclose him—
In a cage like a panther
In the London Zoo with
Him behind bars?
_______________________
So many lit crit experts—
Both men and women
And even Queen Elizabeth
Loved his uncouth ways
His wild Yorkshire—
Hunting Fishing Trapping
Worship of the Goddess
Gaia of the Moors?
Was he not what—
Men are supposed to be
Or used to be back when
Men were wild Jaguars?
__________________________
And yet he was caught—
But then he struggled
To be free, this troubled
Man like you and me?
_________________________
The London Zoo
—for Frieda and Nicholas
I took them thru—
The Park to the Zoo
To get them outta that
W. B. Yeats madhouse
Panthers pace back—
And forth in the cages
Monkey-brained humans
Strutting like cheap tarts
I wanted them to see—
How invisible cages
Enclose all of us
Living in a dream
But the slinky jaguar—
Caught my eye and made
Me realize that not even
Poet-Panthers are free
_______________________
Poet-Panther
—for Ted Hughes
I dream in the—
Invisible Zoo slinking
Paw after paw stalking
The human prey
The naked apes yawn—
Eating their peanuts
Monkey-brain humans
Naked ape drowsers
Cheap tarts mincing—
Fatigued by indolence
Shrieking like parrots
Their kids in strollers
The Invisible Zoo—
With bars just as real
As the steel ones
Between them & me
___________________________
Jaguar Sermon I
“No, the serpent didn’t
Seduce Eve to the apple”
—Ted Hughes, “Theology,”
Wodwo
Adam ate the apple—
Then he ate out Eve
And God was jealous
So very displeased
So he cast the Serpent—
Down between Adam’s legs
And made the Snake grovel
And wiggle down there
Casting the Serpent—
All the way down as the
Snake with Two Legs
Walking the naked earth
So the next time—
He raises his ugly head
Smoldering arrogant Snake
Know his Downfall is yours
___________________
Jaguar Sermon II
“That rose slowly
towards me, watching”
—Ted Hughes,
“Pike,” Lupercal
The Snake hardly moves—
Fossil-slow Boa-Constrictor
Captured in the London Zoo
Down between his legs
The era of Giant Lizards—
Isn’t over sitting in its
Prehistoric stillness and
Slow-motion wisdom
Mucousy slug tracks—
Beneath Iago idiot eyeballs
Close to the Killer Cobra
Eclipse of monkey-brains
African Garden of Eden—
Retro-engineered just right
With a flawed genetic code
Panther Killer Chromosome
___________________
De-Evolution
“Had those antlers
fallen from a star?”
—Ted Hughes,
“The Last Migration,”
Uncollected Poems
So God died—
And a new god with a
More narrowed insight
Using the Word reversed
Gazed backward in Time
Standing there was Man—
Pandora Box of Pain
Purposeless pale gristle
Cloying unbelievably
To the empty horizon
___________________________
A Devil with antlers—
Hoisted on a dazed curly head
A Michelangelo body but
A dreary draughty brain
Veiny Baroque Bernini legs
Cluttered there among—
The other unbelievable
Leftovers of hooves and
Antlers and roots that didn’t
Belong to a Garden of Eden
________________________________
Burning the Brothel—
Spiraling Time backwards
Counter-clockwise weightlessly
Shuddering haunches and horns
Into the vortex of words
Quarks quaking—
Black holes suckin in
The tumbling final Thunder
Back thru the eye-pupil
Connecting what had spoiled
___________________
Seancing the Self
“Godforsaken darkness—
This monstrous-headed
difficult child”
—Ted Hughes,
“The Perfect Forms,”
Lupercal
Undoing the Ouija Pan voice—
Remaking the Tarot deck closely
To fit the faces of Eve and the
Periplum perplexities of the Pike
How to make the bars disappear—
The invisible cage in the London Zoo
Undoing the bed we slept in and
Undreaming the Fortune Teller jive
_______________________
Retooling Mytholmroyd Mythology—
The phases of the Hubris Moon
Down in the Maze of Ted’s Navel
Unlocking Ariadne’s Umbilical Cord
All that was easy stuff—
Compared with the last Trick of All
Cleaning the Stables of the Gods
All that man-made manure stuff
The Bell Jar
The Bell Jar
__________________
“How can I accuse
Ted Hughes of what the
entire British and American
literary and critical
establishment has been
at great lengths to deny
without saying it in so
many words, of course,
the murder of Sylvia Plath?”
—Robin Morgan
“Arraignment,” Monster
______________________
Can a Bell Jar baby—
Especially a dead one
Talk in the night?
Using me like a—
Poetic tool to speak
From the grave again?
Can I be used—
And in demand from
Moment to moment?
____________________
Can he ride me?—
Ariel of the dawn
Onto this page?
HOW did I know—
Smith and Cambridge
Were waiting for me?
Here in London—
W.B. Yeats’ own flat
This cold winter?
____________________
And yet here—
I am beneath the
Bell Jar again
And here you are—
My young Ariel with
Your Pegasus wings
The Bell Jar I
That’s when Ariel—
Came into my life
Like the Pony Express
It didn’t take any—
Ouija board séances
With Miss Planchette
No troubling arcane—
Tarot deck quackings
With the Living Dead
____________________
No black magic—
“Who is he? Tell me?
The race track winner?”
Just Ariel inside me—
My own inner voice
A Madame Sosostris
Stoned on Hashish—
Famous clairvoyante
Lilacs from the Dead
_____________________
Wastrel wastelands—
Having moved on since
Miss Eliot’s Faber Inc.
Sipping their drinks—
There in the Stairwell
The Boys in the Band
Serpentine Auden—
His lizardy-scaled neck
Sipping his cocktail
__________________
Wolf-teeth Hughes—
Letting his arms down
To howl at the moon
Spinster Spender—
Wreathed with seaweed
And bored yawns
Madame Macneice—
Spawning silently in a
More sudden world
The Bell Jar II
I imagined him—
Arrayed on a nice
Ladies Day banquet table
With yellow-green—
Avocado pear halves
Stuffed with crabmeat
And slathered with—
Mayonnaise in the middle
Of rare roast beef
___________________
And cold chicken—
Art-glass bowls heaped
With black caviar
I’d never eaten out—
Such an exquisitely
expensive dish as him
Lucky for me that—
My all-protein diet kept
Me svelte and trim
__________________
Otherwise I’d have—
Blimped out after
Engorging myself so
The mountainous—
Centerpiece of marzipan
Fruit making me dizzy
Even tho seminal—
Caviar oozing outta
Hughes was gross
_________________
So gross and ugly—
I always made a pig
Outta myself over it
It was like he robbed—
The Country Club kitchen
And saved it for me
Amidst the clinking—
Water goblets & silverware
I spread Hughes thick
___________________
Thick as peanut butter—
All over my lips making
Sure it didn’t ooze awry
I was apprehensive—
At first but then if you’re
Arrogant anything’s permitted
Hughes was bad-mannered—
And poorly brought up but
His animality was perfect
_____________________
The more rude he got—
With his primitive Pike
The more I wanted him
My pale, stubby fingers—
Were all over his avocado
And crabmeat salad bowl
Drooling over the sauce
The Bell Jar III
Doreen kept asking—
“Did you get off?”
“Did you get off?”
I felt very low—
“Why not come to the
Fur Show with me?”
She kept repeating—
Herself I thought or
Was it just me?
_________________
I was tempted but—
I had my own fur show
With Ted Hughes
After all these years—
With good grades and
Prizes and grants
I felt like dropping—
Out of the race and
Just staying in bed
_________________
I didn’t care about—
Cambridge or caviar
Or cock anymore
I told Doreen that—
I wasn’t going anywhere
Anymore at all
And that I wasn’t—
Coming anymore with
Ted Hughes either
_______________
My breakfast in bed—
Ruined by all my tears
My lemon meringue mute
Studying and reading—
Writing and working didn’t
Interest me anymore
The New Yorker—
The cloying English Dept
Faculty wives bored me
_____________________
I’m not interested—
In anything anymore
I said quietly to myself
I hated Big Daddy—
My Deutsch Dick Father
My lover Ted as well
I didn’t give a fuck—
For Finnegan’s Wake or
Lady Chatterley either
____________________
What’s a girl to do—
In queer offbeat England
Simply bored with it all?
The Bell Jar IV
“It was a queer, sultry summer,
the summer they electrocuted
the Rosenbergs”—Sylvia Plath,
The Bell Jar
__________________
But in my head—
It was something else
Not the Rosenbergs
But rather Sylvia Plath
I kept dreaming—
About her that last
Night when Hughes
Murdered her
It’s like a hive—
Of buzzing bees in
My head that won’t
Let me sleep or dream
_______________________
When I do dream—
I turn into Ariel her
Wild stampeding fast
Thoroughbred mind
It’s like being—
Executed alive
Burning though all
Those little nerves
It sounds like—
The worst thing in
The world but then
You get used to it
_______________
I kept seeing—
Sylvia’s body sticking
Outta the stove
Shoved inside deep
Her head floated up—
Behind the olive in
My martini at a swank
Cocktail party once
Pretty soon—
Her Medusa gaze
Froze me tight
In my tracks
_______________
I was motionless—
I turned into a woman
As if Sylvia were a man
And me in drag
She was burning hot—
In that Cambridge cold
Her arctic academic life
Wanted hoodlum beauty
In my head her voice—
She wanted a Big Daddy
With a big dick instead
Of a big walrus toe
The Bell Jar V
I suppose I was—
The envy of everybody
With my Fulbright there
At famous Cambridge
With my size-seven—
Patent leather shoes
Bought in Bloomingdale’s
And my pretty smile
My black patent leather—
Belt and black patent
Leather pocketbook to
Match so very chic
__________________
My skimpy, imitation—
Silver-lamé bodice stuck
Onto a big fat cloud
Of delicate white tulle
My lovely all-American—
Bone-structure and skin
As smooth as a peach
I was ready for Hughes
I had my makeup kit—
Fitted out for a lady
With brown eyes and
Brown hair like mine
______________________
An oblong of mascara—
With a tiny brush and
Some blue eye-shadow
To dab my finger in
And three different—
Lipsticks from scarlet
To pink, all cased in
The box with a mirror
My sunglasses—
Were tear-drop shaped
With sequins and green
Stars pasted on neat
___________________
Ted had ten inches—
So that took care of all
My fussy little purse
Full of cosmetic shit
I didn’t have time—
Anymore for messing
Around playing cute
Schoolgirl games
I wasn’t just some—
Little Red Riding Hood
Chic amazed at how big
Grandma’s nose was
The Bell Jar VI
My troubles began—
With Hughes whose
Mouth was set in this
Perpetual sort of sneer
A nasty sneer—
And he’d whisper these
Witty sarcastic remarks
To me under his breath
He had this marvelous—
Animal intensity that
Really turned me on
Like a sexy light-switch
_____________________
He had this slightly—
Sweaty smell that sort
Of reminded me of a
Cheesy man’s shorts
He smoked cigarettes—
Letting his nostrils flare
Out when he let the
Smoke ooze downward
“It’s ugly as sin”—
He’d say, “I’d have to
Turn out the lights so
You wouldn’t puke.”
____________________
I wanted to see him—
All the way naked though,
His belly rippling as he
Smirked at me doing him
He was wise & cynical—
He’d lean against me so
Engagingly with this big
Toothpaste-ad smile
When he touched—
Me down there it was
Like the Rosenbergs
Getting zapped & fried
_____________________
He had this lowlife—
Know-it-all snicker that
Guys get when they think
They’re gonna get something
I felt gawky & morbid—
Bending down & doing him
The first time like I was in
Some carnival sideshow
Afterwards I kept staring—
At him as if he were a
Macaw in a zoo, waiting
For him to say something
____________________
Slowly with what—
Seemed a great effort
I dragged my eyes
Away from his dick
No wonder he was—
An Anthropology major
With that huge schwanz
Like the one he had
“Do all the young men—
From the Yorkshire moors
Have a piece of meat
Like the one you’ve got?”
____________________
It sounded like a—
Stupid question but then
I was just a naïve English
Major from Poughkeepsie
“What’s a nice girl like—
you doing with a name
like Elly Higginbottom or
is that your real name?”
I felt like a runt—
With my suede elevator
Shoes and dingy T-shirt
And blue sports coat
____________________
I kept pulling his skimpy—
Fruit-of-the-Loom shorts
Down and pretending I
Was going to bite it
But it was flat up—
Against his hard stomach
Up past his bellybutton
And was serious business
I felt like a circus—
Sword swallower and
It made me feel very
Powerful & godlike
__________________
“Stick around” he said
“You haven’t seen anything
yet. You like my muscle?”
I nearly fainted & died.
I sat there cross-eyed—
Like watching an Algerian
Belly dancer doing the
Hoochie-Koochie
There’s something—
Demoralizing about just
Watching a guy go crazy
Over himself in bed
________________
It’s like watching—
A guy fall deeper and
Deeper into himself
The more I did him
Hughes was like—
Totally in love with
Himself and I was
Just a bang & a kiss
The Bell Jar VII
Back in my apartment—
I propped myself up in
Bed with some pillows
I pretended I was—
Miss Proust writing a
Novel about Hughes
Ted would be my—
Faithless Augustine
Tricking on the side
____________________
My cute chauffeur—
Filling me with lovely
Temps perdu nostalgia
Except I hated him—
I was a man-hater now
All because of him
I leaned back—
And read what I’d
Written with a glance
____________________
A jaundiced glance—
If he only knew how
I really thought about him
Oh well, what difference—
Did it make, we’d never
Treat each other as adults
Inertia oozed like—
Molasses thru my limbs
Did I have malaise?
____________________
I the tore page up—
I needed more experience
Before writing a novel
How could I write—
About love without him
Doing me some more?
Maybe a short story—
About pygmies in Africa
Overly well-endowed?
____________________
Later at his apartment—
I crawled into bed and
Wanted to make love
His breathing was slow—
And steady, he was
Totally completely asleep
I reached under the—
Sheets and felt him up
He just kept snoring
____________________
It was hard and flat—
Up against his stomach
He didn’t wake up
Up past his bellybutton—
All the my to his tits
His nipples erect too
It was about as sexy—
As reading Finnegan’s Wake
Or going thru a phonebook
____________________
There wasn’t a market—
For MFA writing degrees
It all seemed senseless
They’d already fired—
All the writing instructors
They didn’t have tenure
I pulled a kinky pube—
From out between my teeth
What sharp incisors I had
____________________
He was snoring again—
His piggish noire demeanor
Such a tragic distraction
Bay of Pigs oinkings—
Ted’s Porky Pig prick
How can he be so crude?
And then out of the blue—
Hughes cut a juicy fart
Unpleasant stench indeed!
__________________
“How can I accuse
Ted Hughes of what the
entire British and American
literary and critical
establishment has been
at great lengths to deny
without saying it in so
many words, of course,
the murder of Sylvia Plath?”
—Robin Morgan
“Arraignment,” Monster
______________________
Can a Bell Jar baby—
Especially a dead one
Talk in the night?
Using me like a—
Poetic tool to speak
From the grave again?
Can I be used—
And in demand from
Moment to moment?
____________________
Can he ride me?—
Ariel of the dawn
Onto this page?
HOW did I know—
Smith and Cambridge
Were waiting for me?
Here in London—
W.B. Yeats’ own flat
This cold winter?
____________________
And yet here—
I am beneath the
Bell Jar again
And here you are—
My young Ariel with
Your Pegasus wings
The Bell Jar I
That’s when Ariel—
Came into my life
Like the Pony Express
It didn’t take any—
Ouija board séances
With Miss Planchette
No troubling arcane—
Tarot deck quackings
With the Living Dead
____________________
No black magic—
“Who is he? Tell me?
The race track winner?”
Just Ariel inside me—
My own inner voice
A Madame Sosostris
Stoned on Hashish—
Famous clairvoyante
Lilacs from the Dead
_____________________
Wastrel wastelands—
Having moved on since
Miss Eliot’s Faber Inc.
Sipping their drinks—
There in the Stairwell
The Boys in the Band
Serpentine Auden—
His lizardy-scaled neck
Sipping his cocktail
__________________
Wolf-teeth Hughes—
Letting his arms down
To howl at the moon
Spinster Spender—
Wreathed with seaweed
And bored yawns
Madame Macneice—
Spawning silently in a
More sudden world
The Bell Jar II
I imagined him—
Arrayed on a nice
Ladies Day banquet table
With yellow-green—
Avocado pear halves
Stuffed with crabmeat
And slathered with—
Mayonnaise in the middle
Of rare roast beef
___________________
And cold chicken—
Art-glass bowls heaped
With black caviar
I’d never eaten out—
Such an exquisitely
expensive dish as him
Lucky for me that—
My all-protein diet kept
Me svelte and trim
__________________
Otherwise I’d have—
Blimped out after
Engorging myself so
The mountainous—
Centerpiece of marzipan
Fruit making me dizzy
Even tho seminal—
Caviar oozing outta
Hughes was gross
_________________
So gross and ugly—
I always made a pig
Outta myself over it
It was like he robbed—
The Country Club kitchen
And saved it for me
Amidst the clinking—
Water goblets & silverware
I spread Hughes thick
___________________
Thick as peanut butter—
All over my lips making
Sure it didn’t ooze awry
I was apprehensive—
At first but then if you’re
Arrogant anything’s permitted
Hughes was bad-mannered—
And poorly brought up but
His animality was perfect
_____________________
The more rude he got—
With his primitive Pike
The more I wanted him
My pale, stubby fingers—
Were all over his avocado
And crabmeat salad bowl
Drooling over the sauce
The Bell Jar III
Doreen kept asking—
“Did you get off?”
“Did you get off?”
I felt very low—
“Why not come to the
Fur Show with me?”
She kept repeating—
Herself I thought or
Was it just me?
_________________
I was tempted but—
I had my own fur show
With Ted Hughes
After all these years—
With good grades and
Prizes and grants
I felt like dropping—
Out of the race and
Just staying in bed
_________________
I didn’t care about—
Cambridge or caviar
Or cock anymore
I told Doreen that—
I wasn’t going anywhere
Anymore at all
And that I wasn’t—
Coming anymore with
Ted Hughes either
_______________
My breakfast in bed—
Ruined by all my tears
My lemon meringue mute
Studying and reading—
Writing and working didn’t
Interest me anymore
The New Yorker—
The cloying English Dept
Faculty wives bored me
_____________________
I’m not interested—
In anything anymore
I said quietly to myself
I hated Big Daddy—
My Deutsch Dick Father
My lover Ted as well
I didn’t give a fuck—
For Finnegan’s Wake or
Lady Chatterley either
____________________
What’s a girl to do—
In queer offbeat England
Simply bored with it all?
The Bell Jar IV
“It was a queer, sultry summer,
the summer they electrocuted
the Rosenbergs”—Sylvia Plath,
The Bell Jar
__________________
But in my head—
It was something else
Not the Rosenbergs
But rather Sylvia Plath
I kept dreaming—
About her that last
Night when Hughes
Murdered her
It’s like a hive—
Of buzzing bees in
My head that won’t
Let me sleep or dream
_______________________
When I do dream—
I turn into Ariel her
Wild stampeding fast
Thoroughbred mind
It’s like being—
Executed alive
Burning though all
Those little nerves
It sounds like—
The worst thing in
The world but then
You get used to it
_______________
I kept seeing—
Sylvia’s body sticking
Outta the stove
Shoved inside deep
Her head floated up—
Behind the olive in
My martini at a swank
Cocktail party once
Pretty soon—
Her Medusa gaze
Froze me tight
In my tracks
_______________
I was motionless—
I turned into a woman
As if Sylvia were a man
And me in drag
She was burning hot—
In that Cambridge cold
Her arctic academic life
Wanted hoodlum beauty
In my head her voice—
She wanted a Big Daddy
With a big dick instead
Of a big walrus toe
The Bell Jar V
I suppose I was—
The envy of everybody
With my Fulbright there
At famous Cambridge
With my size-seven—
Patent leather shoes
Bought in Bloomingdale’s
And my pretty smile
My black patent leather—
Belt and black patent
Leather pocketbook to
Match so very chic
__________________
My skimpy, imitation—
Silver-lamé bodice stuck
Onto a big fat cloud
Of delicate white tulle
My lovely all-American—
Bone-structure and skin
As smooth as a peach
I was ready for Hughes
I had my makeup kit—
Fitted out for a lady
With brown eyes and
Brown hair like mine
______________________
An oblong of mascara—
With a tiny brush and
Some blue eye-shadow
To dab my finger in
And three different—
Lipsticks from scarlet
To pink, all cased in
The box with a mirror
My sunglasses—
Were tear-drop shaped
With sequins and green
Stars pasted on neat
___________________
Ted had ten inches—
So that took care of all
My fussy little purse
Full of cosmetic shit
I didn’t have time—
Anymore for messing
Around playing cute
Schoolgirl games
I wasn’t just some—
Little Red Riding Hood
Chic amazed at how big
Grandma’s nose was
The Bell Jar VI
My troubles began—
With Hughes whose
Mouth was set in this
Perpetual sort of sneer
A nasty sneer—
And he’d whisper these
Witty sarcastic remarks
To me under his breath
He had this marvelous—
Animal intensity that
Really turned me on
Like a sexy light-switch
_____________________
He had this slightly—
Sweaty smell that sort
Of reminded me of a
Cheesy man’s shorts
He smoked cigarettes—
Letting his nostrils flare
Out when he let the
Smoke ooze downward
“It’s ugly as sin”—
He’d say, “I’d have to
Turn out the lights so
You wouldn’t puke.”
____________________
I wanted to see him—
All the way naked though,
His belly rippling as he
Smirked at me doing him
He was wise & cynical—
He’d lean against me so
Engagingly with this big
Toothpaste-ad smile
When he touched—
Me down there it was
Like the Rosenbergs
Getting zapped & fried
_____________________
He had this lowlife—
Know-it-all snicker that
Guys get when they think
They’re gonna get something
I felt gawky & morbid—
Bending down & doing him
The first time like I was in
Some carnival sideshow
Afterwards I kept staring—
At him as if he were a
Macaw in a zoo, waiting
For him to say something
____________________
Slowly with what—
Seemed a great effort
I dragged my eyes
Away from his dick
No wonder he was—
An Anthropology major
With that huge schwanz
Like the one he had
“Do all the young men—
From the Yorkshire moors
Have a piece of meat
Like the one you’ve got?”
____________________
It sounded like a—
Stupid question but then
I was just a naïve English
Major from Poughkeepsie
“What’s a nice girl like—
you doing with a name
like Elly Higginbottom or
is that your real name?”
I felt like a runt—
With my suede elevator
Shoes and dingy T-shirt
And blue sports coat
____________________
I kept pulling his skimpy—
Fruit-of-the-Loom shorts
Down and pretending I
Was going to bite it
But it was flat up—
Against his hard stomach
Up past his bellybutton
And was serious business
I felt like a circus—
Sword swallower and
It made me feel very
Powerful & godlike
__________________
“Stick around” he said
“You haven’t seen anything
yet. You like my muscle?”
I nearly fainted & died.
I sat there cross-eyed—
Like watching an Algerian
Belly dancer doing the
Hoochie-Koochie
There’s something—
Demoralizing about just
Watching a guy go crazy
Over himself in bed
________________
It’s like watching—
A guy fall deeper and
Deeper into himself
The more I did him
Hughes was like—
Totally in love with
Himself and I was
Just a bang & a kiss
The Bell Jar VII
Back in my apartment—
I propped myself up in
Bed with some pillows
I pretended I was—
Miss Proust writing a
Novel about Hughes
Ted would be my—
Faithless Augustine
Tricking on the side
____________________
My cute chauffeur—
Filling me with lovely
Temps perdu nostalgia
Except I hated him—
I was a man-hater now
All because of him
I leaned back—
And read what I’d
Written with a glance
____________________
A jaundiced glance—
If he only knew how
I really thought about him
Oh well, what difference—
Did it make, we’d never
Treat each other as adults
Inertia oozed like—
Molasses thru my limbs
Did I have malaise?
____________________
I the tore page up—
I needed more experience
Before writing a novel
How could I write—
About love without him
Doing me some more?
Maybe a short story—
About pygmies in Africa
Overly well-endowed?
____________________
Later at his apartment—
I crawled into bed and
Wanted to make love
His breathing was slow—
And steady, he was
Totally completely asleep
I reached under the—
Sheets and felt him up
He just kept snoring
____________________
It was hard and flat—
Up against his stomach
He didn’t wake up
Up past his bellybutton—
All the my to his tits
His nipples erect too
It was about as sexy—
As reading Finnegan’s Wake
Or going thru a phonebook
____________________
There wasn’t a market—
For MFA writing degrees
It all seemed senseless
They’d already fired—
All the writing instructors
They didn’t have tenure
I pulled a kinky pube—
From out between my teeth
What sharp incisors I had
____________________
He was snoring again—
His piggish noire demeanor
Such a tragic distraction
Bay of Pigs oinkings—
Ted’s Porky Pig prick
How can he be so crude?
And then out of the blue—
Hughes cut a juicy fart
Unpleasant stench indeed!
The Black Telephone
The Black Telephone
__________________
“the telephone
jerked awake,
in a jabbering
alarm, a voice
like weapon—
“Your wife
is dead.”
—Ted Hughes
____________________
Telling the story—
What happened that
Night between us
Telling the Lie—
I now have to tell
To cover it all up
It couldn’t happen—
It wasn’t happening
It didn’t happen!!!
_________________________
Late that night—
You carefully ended
Annihilated it
Our reconciliation—
My letter telling you
I still loved you
Wishing surely—
That you’d forgive
Me and Assia
____________________
But you burned it—
My letter in that
Ashtray into cinders
Smiling at me—
Letting the smoking
Shards speak for you
You smiled at me—
Smirking at my double,
Triple exposure
__________________
It was hopeless—
You so calmly blew
The ashes away
I went blind with—
Anger & picked up the
Heavy glass ashtray
Smashing it—
Against your temple
Your ugly face
__________________
You fell down—
On the floor and
I suddenly realized
All was lost—
The police, hospital
Divorce & jail
Now it was far—
Beyond double, treble
Exposure my crimes
____________________
I pulled you over—
To the oven and
Stuffed your head in
What else could—
I do but cover-up my
Murder most foul of you?
The inquest found—
The bruise but nothing
Was ever said about it
______________________
Sylvia already had—
Made up her mind to
Leave me for America
My career would’ve—
Been ruined by a bloody
Murder Scandal
I turned on the gas—
Put towels around the
Bottoms of the doors
______________________
I said goodbye—
To you my poetess
Troubled wife
Then I locked—
The front door behind
Me to cover my tracks
Assia Wevill was—
Next when she got
Ready to squeal
_____________________
It was easy—
The second time
Turning on the gas
__________________
“the telephone
jerked awake,
in a jabbering
alarm, a voice
like weapon—
“Your wife
is dead.”
—Ted Hughes
____________________
Telling the story—
What happened that
Night between us
Telling the Lie—
I now have to tell
To cover it all up
It couldn’t happen—
It wasn’t happening
It didn’t happen!!!
_________________________
Late that night—
You carefully ended
Annihilated it
Our reconciliation—
My letter telling you
I still loved you
Wishing surely—
That you’d forgive
Me and Assia
____________________
But you burned it—
My letter in that
Ashtray into cinders
Smiling at me—
Letting the smoking
Shards speak for you
You smiled at me—
Smirking at my double,
Triple exposure
__________________
It was hopeless—
You so calmly blew
The ashes away
I went blind with—
Anger & picked up the
Heavy glass ashtray
Smashing it—
Against your temple
Your ugly face
__________________
You fell down—
On the floor and
I suddenly realized
All was lost—
The police, hospital
Divorce & jail
Now it was far—
Beyond double, treble
Exposure my crimes
____________________
I pulled you over—
To the oven and
Stuffed your head in
What else could—
I do but cover-up my
Murder most foul of you?
The inquest found—
The bruise but nothing
Was ever said about it
______________________
Sylvia already had—
Made up her mind to
Leave me for America
My career would’ve—
Been ruined by a bloody
Murder Scandal
I turned on the gas—
Put towels around the
Bottoms of the doors
______________________
I said goodbye—
To you my poetess
Troubled wife
Then I locked—
The front door behind
Me to cover my tracks
Assia Wevill was—
Next when she got
Ready to squeal
_____________________
It was easy—
The second time
Turning on the gas
Open Lit Crit
Open Lit Crit
__________________
The Guardian’s recent “Guardian open journalism: Three Little Pigs advert – video” http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/open-journalism seems rather appropriate as a new genre of open lit crit in regard to issues such as the former Poet Laureate Ted Hughes’ poetic love life.
Ted Hughes and the Three little Pigs? With Ted Hughes as the Big Bad Wolf. And the 3 little pigs: Assia Wevill, Jill Barber & Claudia Wright. Along with Emma Tennant— half-sister of Princess Margaret’s close friend Lord Glenconner—who styled herself his "submistress."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/data/book/literary-criticism/9780712358620/poet-and-critic-the-letters-of-ted-hughes-and-keith-sagar?commentpage=last#end-of-comments
__________________
The Guardian’s recent “Guardian open journalism: Three Little Pigs advert – video” http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/open-journalism seems rather appropriate as a new genre of open lit crit in regard to issues such as the former Poet Laureate Ted Hughes’ poetic love life.
Ted Hughes and the Three little Pigs? With Ted Hughes as the Big Bad Wolf. And the 3 little pigs: Assia Wevill, Jill Barber & Claudia Wright. Along with Emma Tennant— half-sister of Princess Margaret’s close friend Lord Glenconner—who styled herself his "submistress."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/data/book/literary-criticism/9780712358620/poet-and-critic-the-letters-of-ted-hughes-and-keith-sagar?commentpage=last#end-of-comments
Sylvia Plath's Cubist Collage Poetry
Sylvia Plath, Political Collage (1960)
Sylvia Plath’s Cubist Collage Poetry
“This is newness—
there’s no getting up
to it by words you know”
—Sylvia Plath,
New Year on Dartmoor
Harold Bloom makes a distinction between the “poet-in-a-poet” and the “person-in-a-poet.” So that Plath’s two early ‘50s collages, “Nine Female Figures” and “Two Women Reading,” can be “seen” and “read” as alternate modes for achieving this “poet-in-a-poet” status—within Plath’s boring tawdry tacky day-to-day “person-in-a-poet” existence.
Both collages are “performances”—toward the Other or the Double Diva that is the true poet which Plath wants to be. Her Journals read like notebooks—meditating on how to achieve her goal. But discursive prose doesn’t do the trick. It takes poetry to make the “poet-in-a-poet” possible. Journal prose is simply “pulp fiction”—when it comes to actualizing the Double.
Plath portrays her Double gradually—as a coming out of the closet into a visible performative existence. “Nine Female Figures” shows how the Double gradually performs itself out of its sketchy collage background—into the more articulated Double in the foreground.
The boxed-in sketchy closetry of "Nine Female Figures” moves from the background to the foreground completed portrait of Plath’s double—uniting both sides of her personality and poetry into a single complete face.
“Two Women Reading” does the same thing—except with a more synthetic cubist approach. Two women are having a picnic—both are reading a book. There’s no linear progression from fragmented self—to the Other. Instead both women are reading—what we’re reading. Both books are blank—but it’s not the books that the two women are reading. Instead the collage is reading-performance—giving us the Double’s perspective of what’s going on:
“The composition of this tempera may also be seen as an unconventional conflation of cubism and linear perspective, techniques Plath had been studying for years. While cubism tends to flatten geometrical objects into multidimensional fields of monochromatic colors, often presenting multiple viewpoints simultaneously, this painting places vibrant, multicolored forms of shifting dimensions within a prominent two-point perspective. The scene is positioned from the viewpoint of one woman stretched out on the lawn, whose gaze is aligned with the viewer of the painting, blurring the division between the seeing eye of the creator and her audience.”—Kathleen Connors, “Visual Art in the Life of Sylvia Plath: Mining Riches in the Lilly and Smith Archives,” The Unraveling Archives: Essays on Sylvia Plath, ed. Anita Helle, Ann Arbor: U of Michigan Press, 2007
Paraphrasing Robin Peel in Writing Back, a book that concentrates on some of Plath’s more political collages, one can see Plath’s 1) writing, 2) reading and 3) artwork as acts of a seriously deliberate and conscious performance art. First as conscious experiments in form and voice—as with the BBC performance of “Daddy.” Then as “writing back”—Plath’s rereading of her poetry, artwork and fiction as performed responses to the would-be controlling forces of poet-in-poet v. person-in-poet. These forces seem to be emerging from an as yet articulate “newness” libidinal level—the transgressive world of the Other, the hidden performance art of the Double, the subversive Doppelganger dishy bitch-goddess style of Ariel.
This battle with the “Other” that is enacted in the later poems is seen primarily as a “gender or personal battle, ignoring the political legacy of Cold War McCarthyism, in which the enemy is internalized, and the Other is within America as well as outside. The Rosenbergs’ execution, with which The Bell Jar opens, is merely the most obvious metaphor for the process in which public events work on the private imagination.”—Robin Peel, “The Political Education of Sylvia Plath,” The Unraveling Archives: Essays on Sylvia Plath, ed. Anita Helle, Ann Arbor: U of Michigan Press, 2007
What is this Double? What is this Other—that Plath contacted through her poetry and collages?
“To guess the final significance of Plath’s use of the double, we must backtrack to her poetics. As we have observed, Plath’s true self was essentially her “creative mind (J 15), her interior “genius” that allowed her to feel an “intense sense of living richly and deeply.” Her false-self was everything that hid, blocked, stifled or defeated her creativity. Her true self was the one that waxed in the compositional process and waned when the process concluded.—Steven Axelrod, Sylvia Plath: “There Are Two of Me Now,” The Wound and the Cure of Words, Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1990, 234
It seems to me that Plath’s two collages “Nine Female Figures” and “Two Women Reading”—are early examples of how she was approaching the Double. The Double seems to be a constant preoccupation with her—from her early Diary entries addressed to “you”—all the way up through her Dostoyevsky studies at Smith—ultimately to the conception, realization and deployment of Ariel as her ultimate Other.
“Plath seized the poetic act itself as her most desired double. In one sense it was her opposite: in literary creation she felt alive, whereas in all other times she felt dead. But in another sense the poetic act replicated as a pretext for her word making, as her mentor Lowell claimed to do (“In Conversation” 19). Yet even if the analogies between life experience and art were only pretext, the autobiographical matter finally loomed large, laden with power. And the analogies were undoubtedly more than just pretext. They helped Plath to libidinize language; to fulfill her need for osmosis with someone or something outside herself; and to construct a regulated self-image in a realm of freedom.”
—Steven Axelrod, Sylvia Plath: “There Are Two of Me Now,” The Wound and the Cure of Words, Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1990, 234
“Two Women Reading” has two women reading during a picnic—one reader fully depicted while the other reader only half-depicted. As we read the readers reading—we perhaps become the reader in the foreground with our line of sight lined up with her POV toward the other woman as her double. The books are doubled too—both blank. Instead of a collage “analytical” cubist linear progression of 9 different views of the self in “Nine Female Figures” progressing toward the Double—with “Two Women Reading” there’s a more integrated cubist “synthetic” depiction of the double-experience visualizing what Plath later does with Ariel.
Robin Peel in his “The Political Education of Sylvia Plath” in The Unraveling Archives: Essays on Sylvia Plath makes the distinction that Plath’s Double wasn’t all gender politics and empowerment of the Other.
This so-called struggle with the “Other” that is enacted in Plath’s poetry, fiction and collages—when seen as both gender & personal struggle, as well as the political legacy of Cold War McCarthyism internalized as the Other within America as well as outside—documents Plath’s political education undergoing a sudden acceleration in England in 1960s…her post-1960 experience involving a reassessment, revival, and restoration of a dormant political engagement, culminating in the Ariel sequence.” (TUA 39-40)
In addition, Peel’s Writing Back: Sylvia Plath and Cold War Politics (Madison: Dickinson Press, 2002) goes into even more details describing how Plath’s Arielesque politics suddenly pushed her poetry forward—after disenthralling herself from the Hughes “Big Daddy” Electra complex that both stimulated and restricted her poetic Double. The cover of Peel’s Writing Back illustrates another “Big Daddy”—Eisenhower at his desk, surrounded by kitschy images of sexy models, Tums tablets, the Queen of Spades with some playing cards and the gruesome haunting image of Richard Nixon looming up in the background. This political collage of 1960—shows Plath’s increasing awareness of the Double’s dark side and the dystopian context of the McCarthyism years and the Cold War of Korea, Viet Nam, Iran, Iraq and now Afghanistan-Pakistan.
Plath’s 1960 political collage is more politically aware than her early ‘50s collages of women—but her Feminist poetics and politics were really never separated. They merged together—creating what makes Arial’s voice so “new.”
“The essential voice that is released, like Ariel from his pine tree, is either androgynous, like Shakespeare’s Ariel, or the voice of unmediated woman. Plath is Venus, Sapphic, Lilith, the Earth Mother, the female principle, the winged lioness. Plath’s achievement lay in writing about women with a clarity and directness that had not been achieved before.”
Plath praises Anne Sexton’s All My Pretty Ones for being womanly in the greatest sense” and “blessedly unliterary.” Poems such as “For God While Sleeping,” “Letter written during a January Northeaster,” “The Black Art,” and “Lament” with their exploration of absence of a former lover, questions about what it means to be a woman writer, and the remorseless indifference of nature to human suffering.”
Plath like Sexton starts consciously writing directly as an Arielesque “literary entity”—as Jacqueline Rose describes her post-structuralism approach to biography-writing in The Haunting of Sylvia Plath—and the fascinating discussion she has with Janet Malcolm at the end of The Silent Woman. Seeing subjects, books, poems, collages, letters, commentaries, criticisms—as separate “fragments” of an ongoing open-ended non-discursive non-linear narrative without closure is a method equal to the collage poetics of Plath in Ariel and much of her later work.
This collage-poetics and dialog with the Other—is a new language that’s no longer controlled or embedded as a reaction to male patriarchal agenda poetry. The kind of poetry set in Modernist motion by the Pound Era—contrary to the early Sapphic Modernist poetry canon of Gertrude Stein, Mina Loy, Djuna Barnes, HD and Natalie Barney.
“In recent feminist readings, where gender itself is seen as a social construct or performance (as argued by Judith Butler), Plath’s later work can be seen in part as an acting-out, or unraveling, of that performance. Jacqueline Rose develops a similar argument, and Susan Van Dyne also considers the performative element in her study of Plath’s poetry. Many of these debates about gender, subjectivity and language are brought together in Christina Britzolakis’ Sylvia Plath and the Theatre of Mourning, in which Plath’s poetry is read as psychic theater.” (Peel, Writing Back)
This performance aspect unravels the myth of monolithic memory. The Plath archive itself becomes an open-ended mélange performance—a Foucault “mass of things, spoken and unspoken, conserved, valaorized, re-used, repeated and transformed.” Plath’s oeuvre—isn’t like other oeuvres.
Collage fragments become palimpsest tools for making texts more unstable and dense like Ariel. Plath’s poetry and the Plath archive involves a revised paradigm of “collage composition”—reflecting Plath’s interest across several decades with surrealism and the arts of collage.
Finally there’s Plath’s wicked tongue—the thing that upset Dido Merwin so much with Plath’s poem “Face Lift.” Enough to cause Merwin to write a long rambling bitchy sarcastic “Dido dish” of Plath as Appendix II in Anne Stevenson’s Bitter Fame. There’s nothing like a literary “cat fight” to bring to the surface things that most biographers hesitate to put in print. But after all, it was Plath who threw down the gauntlet—at least to the wounded pride of Dido’s perspective who claimed she trusted Plath too much with the details of her cosmetic surgery. But as Sylvia Plath’s Last Days and other more recent memoirs have brought out—there was cause for Plath’s satire since Dido was one of many admitted or hidden lovers of Ted Hughes the Gigolo Poet Laureate.
This aspect of Plath’s bitchy, biting, wry, droll, ekphrastic attitude toward not only women who she perceived as “rivals” and “jealous Hughes competition”—had also much to do with the men in Plath’s life as well. Reading “Daddy” is one thing—but listening to the BBC performance is another. It’s not just a reading—it’s a furious, raging deliberately bizarre and eccentric performance with all sorts of funny shocking Hollywood cartoonish exaggerations and gallows humor worthy of a Berlin bunker or some of Beckett’s characters. Not all literary critics—can dish like Dido.
Three Plath Collages
Three Plath Collages
__________________
Sylvia Plath, Eisenhower Collage (1960)
Nixon Collage (1970)
Newt Gingrich Collage (2012)
In reading Jacqueline Rose’s The Haunting of Sylvia Plath, one finds the following description of her collage from 1960. The image places Plath into relation with the cultural logic of the 50s and clarifies her formal intervention at the same time. With that, and reading Plath against the negativity of Laura Riding—a substantial but little-known influence that Plath shared with Ted Hughes (who arguably saw themselves in terms of Graves and Riding’s mulitiauthorship and its eventual synthesis in The White Goddess)—one begins to construct a different Sylvia Plath.
In the Plath/Hughes revision of the Graves/Riding couple, ascetic negativity in Riding meets Georgian versification of Graves to produce a hybrid lyric that distances and undermines the self in its expansiveness and contradiction. Rose sees this coupling as leading to states of fantasy in the work; it is anything but expressive of feminist anger or a confession of intimate secrets. Rather, a more public dimension of the presentation of self in Plath emerges, given support by the collage (as both content and form) in Rose’s description of it:
There is an extraordinary collage that Plath put together in the 1960s. At the centre, Eisenhower sits beaming at his desk. Into his hands, Plath has inserted a run of playing cards; on the desk lie digestive tables (‘Tums’) and camera on which a cutout of a model in a swimsuit is posed. Attached to this model is the slogan ‘Every Man Wants His Woman on a Pedestal’; a bomber is pointing at her abdomen; in the corner there is a small picture of Nixon making a speech. A couple sleeping with eye shields are accompanied by the caption: ‘It’s HIS AND HER time all over America’. In the top left-hand corner of the picture, this news item: ‘America’s most famous living preacher whose religious revival campaigns have reached tens of millions of people both in the U.S. and abroad.’ . . .
Like all collages, this collage offers itself as a set of fragments. It is also not unlike a picture puzzle or rebus, which is the model Freud offered for the language of dreams. It shows Plath immersed in war, consumerism, photography, and religion at the very moment she was starting to write the Ariel poems. It shows her incorporating the multiple instances of the very culture against which these same poems, or one vision of these poems, is so often set. (Rose, Haunting of Sylvia Plath [Harvard UP, 1991], 9)
What remains is to fully bring Plath’s poetics into the framework of the same cultural logics that produced The New American Poets—think of Ginsberg’s A Supermarket in California, for instance—a revision that, come to think of it, gets us past the avant-garde/mainstream, or post-avant/School of Quietude, faultline that has troubled our thinking on poetry for so long.
http://barrettwatten.net/texts/entry-06-sylvia-plaths-50s-collage/2010/01/
__________________
Sylvia Plath, Eisenhower Collage (1960)
Nixon Collage (1970)
Newt Gingrich Collage (2012)
In reading Jacqueline Rose’s The Haunting of Sylvia Plath, one finds the following description of her collage from 1960. The image places Plath into relation with the cultural logic of the 50s and clarifies her formal intervention at the same time. With that, and reading Plath against the negativity of Laura Riding—a substantial but little-known influence that Plath shared with Ted Hughes (who arguably saw themselves in terms of Graves and Riding’s mulitiauthorship and its eventual synthesis in The White Goddess)—one begins to construct a different Sylvia Plath.
In the Plath/Hughes revision of the Graves/Riding couple, ascetic negativity in Riding meets Georgian versification of Graves to produce a hybrid lyric that distances and undermines the self in its expansiveness and contradiction. Rose sees this coupling as leading to states of fantasy in the work; it is anything but expressive of feminist anger or a confession of intimate secrets. Rather, a more public dimension of the presentation of self in Plath emerges, given support by the collage (as both content and form) in Rose’s description of it:
There is an extraordinary collage that Plath put together in the 1960s. At the centre, Eisenhower sits beaming at his desk. Into his hands, Plath has inserted a run of playing cards; on the desk lie digestive tables (‘Tums’) and camera on which a cutout of a model in a swimsuit is posed. Attached to this model is the slogan ‘Every Man Wants His Woman on a Pedestal’; a bomber is pointing at her abdomen; in the corner there is a small picture of Nixon making a speech. A couple sleeping with eye shields are accompanied by the caption: ‘It’s HIS AND HER time all over America’. In the top left-hand corner of the picture, this news item: ‘America’s most famous living preacher whose religious revival campaigns have reached tens of millions of people both in the U.S. and abroad.’ . . .
Like all collages, this collage offers itself as a set of fragments. It is also not unlike a picture puzzle or rebus, which is the model Freud offered for the language of dreams. It shows Plath immersed in war, consumerism, photography, and religion at the very moment she was starting to write the Ariel poems. It shows her incorporating the multiple instances of the very culture against which these same poems, or one vision of these poems, is so often set. (Rose, Haunting of Sylvia Plath [Harvard UP, 1991], 9)
What remains is to fully bring Plath’s poetics into the framework of the same cultural logics that produced The New American Poets—think of Ginsberg’s A Supermarket in California, for instance—a revision that, come to think of it, gets us past the avant-garde/mainstream, or post-avant/School of Quietude, faultline that has troubled our thinking on poetry for so long.
http://barrettwatten.net/texts/entry-06-sylvia-plaths-50s-collage/2010/01/
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)