Sylvia Plath part 5 of 6

&gt

This documentary has been viewed 16,749 times. At least 1,000 of those views are by one DT. This section in particular, where Clarissa Roche, a friend of Plath's recounts...sets the record straight about "Daddy" not being a hateful poem, not being a poem about Plath hating her father...is a good lesson for any reader of poetry. It is best to keep an open mind. To read, digest, and then come back to the work, especially if one has had a visceral reaction to it. Especially if one has some conscious or subconscious perceptual agenda...toward the poet. The less one responds to the urge to frame a poet's work around a single issue, emotion, theme, topic, the more one gains, as readers. It's important to keep in mind. Poetry is such a gift from the One, the universe, from writer to reader (sometimes), that to treat it as mere fodder, ammunition, justification, is to miss the whole point of it. One only cheats the self. As a whole, this documentary is astonishing to take in. The most accurate voices for Plath in it come from Mr. Alvarez, Sandra Gilbert, and Clarissa Roche. It is so interesting to hear the very British i.e., very on Hughes side, Dido Merwin, wife of W.S. Merwin, speak  about Assia not being the main reason Ted left, and about Plath's behavior. Peace.

The Elegant Soft Boiled Egg

So, when I was 17 and working alone in Hamburg, Germany, I lived in a lovely little pension on Rothenbaumchaussee. The house frau served a wonderful breakfast of granola, or muesli, with yogurt, and soft boiled eggs on the side. This breakfast kept me going through a very cold autumn. With 12 appointments a day, all over the city, and not enough money to take taxis everywhere, I needed lots of fuel. However, despite my diet consisting in large part on the noble egg, I still came home at the end of the year with Pneumonia.

Soft boiled eggs are the most delicious way to eat an egg. My grandmother always ordered her eggs cooked soft boiled. As a small child, I would to cringe at this, but now, I see that this preparation is the best way to experience the dynamism of an egg. Well, maybe the delicately whipped eggs sprinkled with caviar that I once had at Maxim's, in NYC, top the soft boiled egg, but mostly for the presentation: the eggs were served with little silver spoons that had been warmed, and that fit neatly inside the shells, which had been cut open in a perfect circle. The caviar was the best I had ever had at the time. Ah, modeling was rarely so grand, but it certainly helped to develop my tastes as an adult. 

So, I just finished my morning meal of soft boiled eggs and a slice of Ezekiel bread. Yum! Really messy, but so worth it.           

A Fable by Richard Wilbur

"Black Rook in Rainy Weather" by Sylvia Plath

On the stiff twig up there
Hunches a wet black rook
Arranging and rearranging its feathers in the rain.
I do not expect a miracle
Or an accident.

To set the sight on fire
In my eye, not seek
In the desultory weather some design,
But let spotted leaves fall as they fall,
Without ceremony or portent.

Although, I admit, I desire,
Occasionally, some backtalk
From the mute sky, I can't honestly complain:
A certain minor light may still
Leap incandescent

Out of the kitchen table or chair
As if a celestial burning took
Possession of the most obtuse objects now and then ---
Thus, hallowing an interval
Otherwise inconsequent

By bestowing largess, honor,
One might say love. At any rate, I now walk
Wary (for it could happen
Even in this dull ruinous landscape); sceptical,
Yet politic, ignorant

Of whatever angel may choose to flare
Suddenly at my elbow. I only know that a rook
Ordering its black feathers can so shine
As if to seize my senses,
Haul my eyelids up, and grant

A brief respite from fear
Of total neutrality. With luck,
Trekking stubborn through this season
of fatigue, I shall
Patch together a content

Of sorts. Miracles occur,
If you care to call those spasmodic
Tricks of radiance miracles. The wait's begun again.
The long wait for the angel.
For that rare, random descent.




So, this poem speaks to my orientation, a profundity of isolation and longing. A black bird in the rain the only sign of possibility, in a waning optimism's heart. The self deprecating acknowledgment of the need, yet doubt over miracles and the prison of one that is unabated -- by friendly comfort, the love of the lover. Missing. That ironic loneliness when a marriage fibrillated between quicksand, imprisonment, and betrayal. As Sylvia Plath's and Ted Hughes' marriage did, back in 1962-63.