- Sylvia Plath, "Ariel"Stasis in darkness.
Then the substanceless blue
Pour of tor and distances.
God’s lioness,
How one we grow,
Pivot of heels and knees!—The furrow
Splits and passes, sister to
The brown arc
Of the neck I cannot catch,
Nigger-eye
Berries cast dark
Hooks—
Black sweet blood mouthfuls,
Shadows.
Something else
Hauls me through air—
Thighs, hair;
Flakes from my heels.
White
Godiva, I unpeel—
Dead hands, dead stringencies.
And now I
Foam to wheat, a glitter of seas.
The child’s cry
Melts in the wall.
And I
Am the arrow,
The dew that flies
Suicidal, at one with the drive
Into the red
Eye, the cauldron of morning.
10 comments:
_________ A CRITIQUE _________
A rebarbative poet named Plath,
Who was filled with revulsion and wrath,
Was best known not for smiling
But rage and reviling ––
The mark of a true psychopath.
She worked herself into a lather
In an orgy of hate for her father.
The poor creature was doomed
As vile passion consumed
Her whole life, which seemed not worth the bother.
So, she stuck her poor head in the oven,
Because she knew nothing of lovin.’
If she’d been more Bourgeois,
She’d have gone to a Spa,
Forgotten her Pa, and got movin.’
The sad saga of Sylvia Plath.
For whom much distaste I do hath.
Might have ended more merrily;
I asseverate verily,
If her soul had been giv’n a hot bath!
And a diet of rich chocolate malts
Along with a good dose of salts
Administered gaily
On schedule daily
To purge her of her grievous faults!
~ Anne Animus };^)>
_______________ The Maze ________________
Once we discover the lure of unbridled sensuality
Or the false promise that great riches will free us
___ from the burden of our humanity,
We do, indeed, wander into an ever-more-perplexing
___ and ultimately terrifying maze of our own devising,
Till ultimately we fall exhausted, –– depleted ––, and expire
___ amid rapidly growing thorns
That tear the putrefying flesh from our sorry remains,
___ while slowly obliterating every trace
______ of our once-promising existence.
~ FreeThinke
____________ THE UNHOLY TRINITY ____________
___________ A Mourning Meditation ___________
When next you must excrete, please take the time
To gaze upon the contents of the bowl.
You will see there the Naked Face of Crime ––
The Devil’s version of The Trinity ––
A monstrous, odious, tri-partite Whole
Whose stench persists into Infinity.
For Evil stalked and plagued us in The Garden
Tempting us to sacrifice our Soul
For the pleasure of the Nether Region’s Warden.
You will, of course, be eager quick to flush
Away the proof that Hell, indeed, exists,
And yet, like an inebriated lush
A self-destructive passion persists:
The false belief Utopia exists.
~ FreeThinke
You sure don't like Sylvia Plath...
I had posted these two items together (Lacan & Plath's poem) so as to better understand the linked critique and some of Lacan's teaching on "The Other". It wasn't specifically intended as commentary upon the quality of her poem...
Seems a pretty sad story... a grudge against "confessional poetry"?
...too mundane, too lyrical, too common... no trace of the epic?
ps - She would appear to have loved her father, her husband reminded her of him (bees)... her husband's affair may have made her wish to join her father's company. She "mortified" his memory.
from Zizek's analysis of vertigo...
Jusy: "No, I don’t want any clothes.I don’t want anything."
Here we are.-Yes, that’s it. When Judy, refashioned as Madeleine, steps out of the door, it’s like fantasy realised. And, of course, we have a perfect name for fantasy realised. It’s called “nightmare”. Fantasy realised. What does this mean? Of course, it is always sustained by an extreme violence. The violence in this case of Scottie’s brutal refashioning of Judy, a real, common girl, into Madeleine. It’s truly a process of mortification, which also is the mortification of woman’s desire.
It is as if in order to have her, to desire her, to have sexual intercourse with her, with the woman, Scottie has to mortify her, to change her into a dead woman. It’s as if, again, for the male libidinal economy, to paraphrase a well-known old saying, the only good woman is a dead woman. Scottie is not really fascinated by her, but by the entire scene, the staging. He is looking around, checking up, are the fantasmatic co-ordinates really here? At that point when the reality fully fits fantasy, Scottie is finally able to realise the long-postponed sexual intercourse. So the result of this violence is a perfect co-ordination between fantasy and reality. A kind of direct short-circuit.
Apparently the "male" libidinal economy is much like a woman's...
____________ QUESTION ____________
What causes some to bathe in sewers,
Or drink their fill from bedside ewers?
I'll be darned if I can tell
I guess they long to live in hell.
~ FreeThinke
I'm sorry, FJ, but people who take themselves too seriously, exhibit no discernible sense of humor, and act as though they believed the world ought to adjust itself to suit THEIR needs really irk me.
Morbid self-absorption I believe to be at the core of all forms of insanity. Insanity is in truth an extreme form of self-indulgence and an infantile rejection of the absolute necessity of learning how act responsibly in society by always consider the needs and feelings of others, –– whether you particularly like them or not.
Instead of coddling, what many of these "dysfunctional" people need is a good swift kick in the ass, and a slap across the face.
Just as the most brutal war is really the kindest war, often the harshest rejection and condign punishment of anti-social behavior in the young –– popularly known as "tough love" –– is the least hurtful method of treating neurotic-psychotic-psychopathic behavior.
I agree, society needs limits, and persistence in the maintenance of said limits.
"This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you're thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy."
~ G. B. Shaw (1856-1950)
I suspect Shaw would not have liked Plath either, nor would he approve, I think, of incessant navel-gazing and self-absorbed introspection.
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