I would have killed myself gladly that time any possible way.Now there are these veils, shimmering like curtains, the diaphanous satins of a January windowwhite as babies’ bedding and glittering with dead breath. O ivory! — Sylvia Plath, from “A Birthday Present,” Tne Collected Poems (Turtleback Books, January 1, 1999) Originally published 1981.
Electra on Azalea Path The day you died I went into the dirt,Into the lightless hibernaculumWhere bees, striped black and gold, sleep out the blizzardLike hieratic stones, and the ground is hard.It was good for twenty years, that wintering —As if you never existed, as if I cameGod-fathered into the world from my mother’s belly:Her… Continue reading Sylvia Plath
All night your moth-breathFlickers among the flat pink roses. I wake to listen:A far sea moves in my ear. One cry, and I stumble from bed, cow-heavy and floralin my Victorian nightgown.Your mouth opens clean as a cat’s. The window square Whitens and swallows its dull stars. And now you tryYour handful of notes;The clear… Continue reading Sylvia Plath
I am inhabited by a cry.Nightly it flaps outLooking, with its hooks, for something to love.I am terrified by this dark thingThat sleeps in me;All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity. — Sylvia Plath, from “Elm,” Ariel. (Harper Perennial Modern Classics; Reprint edition February 3, 1999) Originally published 1965.
Clouds pass and disperse.Are those the faces of love, those pale irretrievables?Is it for such I agitate my heart? ― Sylvia Plath, from “Elm,” Ariel. (Harper Perennial Modern Classics; Reprint edition February 3, 1999) Originally published 1965.
It is more natural to me, lying down.Then the sky and I are in open conversation,And I shall be useful when I lie down finally:Then the trees may touch me for once, and the flowers have time for me. — Sylvia Plath, from “I am Vertical,” The Collected Poems (HarperPerennial, 1992)
Let’s face it: I’m scared, scared and frozen. First, I guess I’m afraid for myself… the old primitive urge for survival. It’s getting so I live every moment with terrible intensity. It all flowed over me with a screaming ache of pain… remember, remember, this is now, and now, and now. Live it, feel it,… Continue reading Sylvia Plath
How frail the human heart must be―a mirrored pool of thought. ― Sylvia Plath, Letters Home. (Faber & Faber April 19, 1999) Originally published January 1st 1975.
I may never be happy, but tonight I am content. Nothing more than an empty house, the warm hazy weariness from a day spent setting strawberry runners in the sun, a glass of cool sweet milk, and a shallow dish of blueberries bathed in cream. Now I know how people can live without books, without… Continue reading Sylvia Plath
How much of life I have known: love, disillusion, madness, hatred, murderous passions. How to be honest. I see beginnings, flashes, yet how to organize them knowledgably, to finish them. I will write mad stories. But honest. I know the horror of primal feelings, obsessions. — Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath. (Anchor;… Continue reading Sylvia Plath
The Vale of Soul-Making 