For English, our project for next year has to be on American Literature. Because of this, even though I will probably have to drop English, I've looked into various authors, Sylvia Plath, Maya Angelou, etc.
Poetry is my weakness. I love that people can use words to such a manner that they communicate their own emotions so eloquently. I found it with politicians in the same way, the TV debates showed them chose their words so that every sentance hit exactly where it should.
Of Sylvia Plath, I have a book called Ariel. And the more I read through it, the more I loved her, and the more I had to find out about her.
So at aged 8 this little girls father dies, and she publishes her first poem. At aged ten, she nearly drowns, only to be saved at the last minute. Later in life she's diagnosed with Depression, and has to endure Electric Shock Therapy in various psychiatric hospitals. She realises she wants to die, and tries to kill herself aged twenty, by swallowing sleeping pills, and crawling underneath her house, where she remains hidden, unconcious but alive, for three days until her mother and brother find her. She marries the man who would later become one of Englands favourite poems, Ted Hughes, but upon discovering his adultery, she leaves him. Not long after, she kills herself by gas from the oven.
What i find so mesmerising about her is her attitude. She thinks the accident aged 10 when she nearly died, is only an accident because she survived. She is so intruiged by death that her poems reflect a kind of longing for it. And its mesmerising. Lady Lazarus, the poem I posted before this, is just worded so perfectly.
I have done it again.
One year in every ten
I manage it-----
Talking about her closeness to death. First when she was ten, second when she was 20, and poetically, potentially third when she was thirty. The idea that she manages it- its something she wants to overcome.
Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.
The first time it happened I was ten.
It was an accident.
The second time I meant
To last it out and not come back at all.
I rocked shut
The identical woman is her saying she is the same both with and without her mental illness. The attempts are her death experiences.
Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.
I looked alot into this poem. I couldn't place what I felt about this line.
The idea is that while she is someone who craves death, she also craves perfection. The way she words her poetry is reflective of that, but also her wish for it to be every ten years. She talks about the show, the strip tease. Everything she does is controlled, and her wish to die is not an exception.
Herr God, Herr Lucifer
Beware
Beware.
Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.
This combines two images, according to what I read online, although my personal interpretation is a little different. The online claims this mixes both the imagery of Lazarus, coming back from the dead, and her being able to do so, reinvent and renew herself after every death, and the view od the pheonix, with the same connotations. I think it also reflects her self control and within that self confidence. Not in herself, but in her beliefs and understandings, so much so she feels she can take on God and Lucifer, both as her enemies, both controling death which she covets.
There wasn't much point to this ramble, its late, and probably epically bad, but to be honest, I want people to love her like I do. I'm gonna buy her book as soon as I dare, and you can expect feedback on that one too :)
