Post the ONE poem that has influenced you the most!!

grooveamatic

Ah, Plath! I had almost forgotten Plath! And what a good one, too...

One of the best closing two lines ever, imo.

AshtonKutcherQuotes

grooveamatic wrote:

Ah, Plath! I had almost forgotten Plath! And what a good one, too...

One of the best closing two lines ever, imo.

She rules! Most people are all about "Daddy" but I don't think you can beat "I am Vertical".....

have you seen the movie Sylvia?

FinsburyParkCarrots

AshtonKutcherQuotes wrote:

She rules! Most people are all about "Daddy" but I don't think you can beat "I am Vertical".....

have you seen the movie Sylvia?

I saw it and hated it, sorry. Sylvia was here in Cambridge, you know. She won a Fulbright scholarship and went to Newnham. She lived in Eltisley Avenue, around the corner from Grantchester Meadows (made famous by Rupert Brooke and, in rock music, Pink Floyd); she made a big impression here and, by some personal accounts I've heard, she wasn't a victim character at all. She was pretty strident, popular, and glamourous.

john girl

You hold on like no other
You were caught as you came out of life
To re-enter it
I don't know if it's in one direction or in another that you shake the
garden gate
You have raised up to your heart the serpentine grass
And forever curled the birds of paradise in the hoarse sky
Your gaze is clairvoyant
You are seated
And we too are seated
The skull for a few more days
In the dip of our features
All of our acts before us
At arm's length
In the little ones' vine tendril
You are feeding us a line on existentialism
There are no flies on you

published as part of the poem cycle Xenophiles, in Poemes.
Ca. 1947,
translated by Jean-Pierre Cauvin and Mary Anne Caws

AshtonKutcherQuotes

FinsburyParkCarrots wrote:

I saw it and hated it, sorry. Sylvia was here in Cambridge, you know. She won a Fulbright scholarship and went to Newnham. She lived in Eltisley Avenue, around the corner from Grantchester Meadows (made famous by Rupert Brooke and, in rock music, Pink Floyd); she made a big impression here and, by some personal accounts I've heard, she wasn't a victim character at all. She was pretty strident, popular, and glamourous.

This is interesting. Changes my ideas about her--and about her poems.

Is there a good, reliable biography out there?

FinsburyParkCarrots

AshtonKutcherQuotes wrote:

This is interesting. Changes my ideas about her--and about her poems.

Is there a good, reliable biography out there?

Try "The Death and Life of Sylvia Plath" by Ronald Hayman, and "The Journals of Sylvia Plath", edited by Karen V. Kukil.

Here are some links:

http://www.sylviaplath.de/

http://www.sylviaplathforum.com/

http://www.neuroticpoets.com/plath/

But Plath was very complex. She did have many sides, introverted as well as extroverted.

I'll try and find the audio recording of her reading her poetry. It's stunning because her voice is hard, deep, firm and confident; not what you might expect.

AshtonKutcherQuotes

Thanks Finsbury! I'm excited about rediscovering Plath....

grooveamatic

john girl wrote:

All of our acts before us
At arm's length
In the little ones' vine tendril
You are feeding us a line on existentialism
There are no flies on you

This here is seriously cool......

christmascleanlove

Grass

Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.
Shovel them under and let me work--
I am the grass; I cover all.

And pile them high at Gettysburg
And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.
Shovel them under and let me work.
Two years, ten years, and the passengers ask the conductor:
What place is this?
Where are we now?

I am the grass.
Let me work.

grooveamatic

Sandburg!! Yay!! you guys are just too good....