Poet Tribute: Sylvia Plath - April 1st - 6th

**Happy National Poetry Month**


In celebration of National Poetry Month, every 6 days in April we will introduce (or re-introduce) you to a Famous poet, and invite you to attempt to write in their approximate style as a tribute!

April 1-6 Sylvia Plath
April 7-12 Federico García Lorca
April 13-18 W.B Yeats
April 19-24 Dr Seuss
April 25-30 Seamus Heaney


April 1st - 6th Sylvia Plath




• Born: October 27, 1932, Boston - Died: February 11, 1963, London
• Most notable for the novel The Bell Jar and Ariel (Poetry)
• Well known for marrying fellow poet Ted Hughes.
• A long term sufferer of depression which is said to have lead to her suicide.
• Her most famous and most effective poems are probably Daddy and Lady Lazarus.
• She was also a close friends with fellow poet Anne Sexton.

The thing I love personally about Plath is how she takes things from everyday life and brings broad and extensive emotion into it. She’s raw, bold and often writes with a fury unmatched by female poets around at her time. I find she’s a huge inspiration for aspiring poets who suffer from depression and I still see her in the works of people I read to this day. She was an inspiration to feminist movements and gave fame to the use of confessional poetry.

Plath’s confessional style of poetry has a depth of passion that leads you to the sharp edges of your senses, cutting your feet as you stand on the cliff of wild and uncensored emotions.

Here is a sample of her finest work:

Daddy

You do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot
For thirty years, poor and white,
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.

Daddy, I have had to kill you.
You died before I had time--
Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,
Ghastly statue with one gray toe
Big as a Frisco seal

And a head in the freakish Atlantic
Where it pours bean green over blue
In the waters off beautiful Nauset.
I used to pray to recover you.
Ach, du.

In the German tongue, in the Polish town
Scraped flat by the roller
Of wars, wars, wars.
But the name of the town is common.
My Polack friend

Says there are a dozen or two.
So I never could tell where you
Put your foot, your root,
I never could talk to you.
The tongue stuck in my jaw.

It stuck in a barb wire snare.
Ich, ich, ich, ich,
I could hardly speak.
I thought every German was you.
And the language obscene

An engine, an engine
Chuffing me off like a Jew.
A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.
I began to talk like a Jew.
I think I may well be a Jew.

The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna
Are not very pure or true.
With my gipsy ancestress and my weird luck
And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack
I may be a bit of a Jew.

I have always been scared of you,
With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.
And your neat mustache
And your Aryan eye, bright blue.
Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You--

Not God but a swastika
So black no sky could squeak through.
Every woman adores a Fascist,
The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart of a brute like you.

You stand at the blackboard, daddy,
In the picture I have of you,
A cleft in your chin instead of your foot
But no less a devil for that, no not
Any less the black man who

Bit my pretty red heart in two.
I was ten when they buried you.
At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do.

But they pulled me out of the sack,
And they stuck me together with glue.
And then I knew what to do.
I made a model of you,
A man in black with a Meinkampf look

And a love of the rack and the screw.
And I said I do, I do.
So daddy, I'm finally through.
The black telephone's off at the root,
The voices just can't worm through.

If I've killed one man, I've killed two--
The vampire who said he was you
And drank my blood for a year,
Seven years, if you want to know.
Daddy, you can lie back now.

There's a stake in your fat black heart
And the villagers never liked you.
They are dancing and stamping on you.
They always knew it was you.
Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through.

By Sylvia Plath

~


This week, we invite you to write a Poetic Tribute poem in the style of Sylvia Plath. Some things to consider when writing in Plath’s style are her deliberate and heavy use of metaphor, solid and effective imagery, and also her strength when defining emotion in her poetry. Have fun, I will enjoy reading what you have to offer.