petal by petal, we sheave our lies into the wind like falling cherry blossoms
or plane crashes while the insects and the frogs vette our plans for signs of
the inaccuracy and doubt which is the hallmark of our species
the infamy of humanity will eventually also fade
like kites caught in tree branches,
forgotten by the moonlit hawks and dreary beetles

(1)

The day she visited the dissecting room
They had four men laid out, black as burnt turkey,
Already half unstrung. A vinegary fume
Of the death vats clung to them;
The white-smocked boys started working.
The head of his cadaver had caved in,
And she could scarcely make out anything
In that rubble of skull plates and old leather.
A sallow piece of string held it together.

In their jars the snail-nosed babies moon and glow.
He hands her the cut-out heart like a cracked heirloom.

(2)

In Brueghel’s panorama of smoke and slaughter
Two people only are blind to the carrion army:
He, afloat in the sea of her blue satin
Skirts, sings in the direction
Of her bare shoulder, while she bends,
Fingering a leaflet of music, over him,
Both of them deaf to the fiddle in the hands
Of the death’s-head shadowing their song.
These Flemish lovers flourish; not for long.

Yet desolation, stalled in paint, spares the little country
Foolish, delicate, in the lower right hand corner.

.

Tres mujeres

.

Decorado: un hospital de maternidad y sus alrededores

.

PRIMERA VOZ:

.

Soy lenta como la Tierra. Soy muy paciente,

Cumplo mi ciclo, soles y estrellas

Me miran con atención.

El celo de la luna es más personal:

Pasa y vuelve a pasar, luminosa como

una enfermera. ¿Lamenta ella lo que me va a suceder?

No lo sé. Está simplemente asombrada

ante la fecundidad.

Cuando salgo, soy un gran suceso. No tengo necesidad de pensar

o de prepararme. Lo que sucede en mí tendrá lugar

de todos modos.

El faisán se yergue sobre la colina:

Se alisa las plumas pardas.

Sonrío a mi pesar a todo lo que conozco.

Hojas y pétalos me acompañan.

Estoy lista.

.

SEGUNDA VOZ:

.

Cuando la vi por vez primera,

esta pequeña hemorragia, no lo creí.

Veía a los hombres andar a mi alrededor,

en la oficina.

¡Estaban tan tranquilos!

Algo había de cartón en ellos,

después comprendí

Esta banalidad tan vacía, la que engendra

las ideas, las destrucciones,

Los buldozers, las guillotinas, las habitaciones

blancas llenas

De aullidos. Y las abstracciones. Estos

arcángeles fríos.

Yo estaba sentada ante mi máquina de escribir,

en sastre y tacones altos,

Cuando el hombre para el que trabajo me dijo

sonriente: “¿Vio un fantasma?

De pronto está usted tan pálida”. No dije nada.

No alcanzaba a creer. ¿Es que es tan

difícil

Para el espíritu concebir una cara, una

boca?

Los pedidos salen de las teclas

negras y las teclas negras

salen

De mis dedos alfabéticos, ellas ordenan las piezas.

Y aún las piezas, los pabilos, los engranajes,

toda una multiplicidad brillante.

Muero sentada. Pierdo una dimensión.

En mis oídos hay trenes que rugen, salen, salen.

La huella plateada del tiempo se devana en la

distancia,

El cielo blanco se vacía de sus promesas

como un tazón.

Esta resonancia mecánica

producida por mis pies.

Tap, tap, tap, tobillos de acero. Siento

una insuficiencia.

Es una enfermedad que llevo conmigo,

es una muerte.

Una vez más, es una muerte.

¿Es el aire, Las partículas mortales que aspiro? ¿Soy

un pulso

Que se debilita cada vez más ante

el arcángel frío?

¿Es él mi amante?

¿Esta muerte, es ella

otra muerte?

Cuando fui niña, amé un nombre

corroído por el liquen.

¿Sería entonces el único pecado, este viejo amor

muerto de la muerte?

.

TERCERA VOZ:

.

Recuerdo el instante en que

realmente lo supe.

Los sauces perdían su calor,

El rostro en el estanque era bello, pero

no era el mío, Tenía un aire importante, como todo

el resto,

Y no veía más que peligros:

palomas, palabras,

Estrellas y lluvias de oro — ¡concepciones,

inseminaciones! —

Recuerdo un ala blanca y fría.

Y el gran cisne, con su mirada terrible,

viniendo a mí, como un castillo,

de río crecido.

Hay una serpiente en los cisnes.

Ella resbaló cerca de mí; su ojo contenía un

mensaje sombrío,

Vi el mundo en ella —pequeño, mezquino y

sombrío.

Cada pequeña palabra enganchada a otra,

los actos a los actos.

Algo había brotado de ese día cálido

y azul.

No estaba lista. Las nubes blancas

se precipitaron.

A los cuatro sentidos.

Ellas me descuartizaron.

No estaba lista.

Carecía de respeto.

Creía poder negar las consecuencias.

Pero ya era demasiado tarde.

Era demasiado tarde,

y el rostro se tornó más nítido,

amoroso, como si yo estuviera lista.

.
Sylvia Plath
De Tres mujeres
Universidad Autónoma del Estado de México, 1987
Traducción de Uriel Martínez
.

Welcome again, Wise Latino Women! Black Friday’s around the corner, and yet I’m not feeling like pushing past a throng of people just to shop. I don’t really feel like spending a lot of money in a lot of things that won’t make me happy. I want to buy a few selected things that I’ll have the time to truly enjoy. So, I’ll be doing my shopping over the Internet, and inside my own closets and cupboards. Who knows what I’ll find there? If you’re a better shopper than I, please enjoy, and save the economy in the process. As for me, I think I’ll look in my trunk-full of “tried-and-trues” and allow my fingers to search for some complementing treasures (books, movies, music) to make my holidays even merrier. Happy Holidays to all of you, my Wise Latina Woman (and to the men who appreciate you.)

1. Movie “The Lives of Others”
2. Dwell Magazine
3. Anything by Nereida Garcia Ferraz (www.nereidagarciaferraz.com)
4. Laurent Korcia’s “Cinema” CD; especially cuts 1,3 and 4… and 12… and 15… and, you get the point.
(If you’re into broadway shows and/or telenovelas, you’ll appreciate his music’s sense of drama.)
5. The Antique & Collectables Market on Lincoln Road
6. Corinne Bailey Rae’s first CD
7. Macy Gray’s first CD
8. Music by Buena Fe, Habana Abierta, Yerba Buena and Orishas
9. Any Hector Lavoe CD
10. Anything written by E.L. Doctorow and F. Scott Fitzgerald
11. “The Science of Getting Rich” by Wallace Wattles
12. “Creating Money” by Sanaya Roman and Duane Packer
13. Netflix
14. “Little Stalker” by Jennifer Belle
15. “Post Coitum Animal Triste” (1997 French Movie, also known as Aftersex)
16. Women Artists: Sophie Calle, Helen Levitt, Marlene Dumas and Lorna Simpson
17. Christian Lacroix shoes; the more vintage, the better
18. Calvin Klein Underwear (and I was a fan well before Eva Mendes)
19. The SX-70 Polaroid Land Camera
20. “Tinta y Café” in Little Havana
21. “The Floating Opera” by John Barth
22. “The Long Hot Summer;” a 50s feel-good movie
23. Collaging… it really doesn’t matter how you do it
24. “Sex and the City;” the book, the series and the movie… and the thoughts behind it.
25. “The Daily Show” with Jon Stewart, whose bath-water I’d drink
26. The soundtrack to “The Royal Tennenbaums”
27. NPR, especially “The Diane Rehm Show,” “All Things Considered,” and “The Splendid Table”
28. Tim Walker Pictures
29. Feng Shui
30. Jenny Craig (It works, as long as you avoid box-food fatigue.)
31. “Eternal Sunsine of the Spotless Mind,” the movie…
32. The Creative Writing MFA program at FIU
33. BusinessWeek magazine
34. “The Bell Jar” by Sylvia Plath
35. Reading art books at the Wolfsonian’s Café

Have a great Thanksgiving! Besos, Anja
***And sorry about putting quotes around book titles, instead of underlining. Still trying to figure out this blogging thing.

I have done it again.
One year in every ten
I manage it—–

A sort of walking miracle, my skin
Bright as a Nazi lampshade,
My right foot

A paperweight,
My featureless, fine
Jew linen.

Peel off the napkin
O my enemy.
Do I terrify?——-

The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?
The sour breath
Will vanish in a day.

Soon, soon the flesh
The grave cave ate will be
At home on me

And I a smiling woman.
I am only thirty.
And like the cat I have nine times to die.

This is Number Three.
What a trash
To annihilate each decade.

What a million filaments.
The Peanut-crunching crowd
Shoves in to see

Them unwrap me hand and foot ——
The big strip tease.
Gentleman , ladies

These are my hands
My knees.
I may be skin and bone,

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

As a seashell.
They had to call and call
And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.

Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.

I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I’ve a call.

It’s easy enough to do it in a cell.
It’s easy enough to do it and stay put.
It’s the theatrical

Comeback in broad day
To the same place, the same face, the same brute
Amused shout:

‘A miracle!’
That knocks me out.
There is a charge

For the eyeing my scars, there is a charge
For the hearing of my heart—
It really goes.

And there is a charge, a very large charge
For a word or a touch
Or a bit of blood

Or a piece of my hair on my clothes.
So, so, Herr Doktor.
So, Herr Enemy.

I am your opus,
I am your valuable,
The pure gold baby

That melts to a shriek.
I turn and burn.
Do not think I underestimate your great concern.

Ash, ash—
You poke and stir.
Flesh, bone, there is nothing there—-

A cake of soap,
A wedding ring,
A gold filling.

Herr God, Herr Lucifer
Beware
Beware.

Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.

~ Sylvia Plath

‘IN BED, HE SMELLS LIKE A BUTCHER’

I couldn’t help but think of Assia Wevill’s description of Ted Hughes’ ferocious love-making as I wandered through the grounds of Lumb Bank last week. I have been lucky enough to spend a few days working at the Arvon Foundation in Heptonstall. Lumb Bank, a former mill owner’s house, is surrounded by deep walls of thickets, mud, berries, and the silent echoes of a thousand pencils scratching at paper on stone. Lumb Bank holds residential writer’s courses in Ted Hughes’  home. I’m not too sure exactly when he bought Lumb Bank, but he lived there in the 1970s.

Ted’s poetry runs like blood from every open cragg in Calderdale. So much so that I have started a self-imposed ban on reading his work. It’s as though everything that ever needed to be said about this area has already been nailed in stanza.  What does interest me is the thought of Sylvia – and the power of pathetic fallacy upon her during her visits. The desolate, unforgiving wilderness of Slack Top, the carbon charred walls, the suffocating streets trapped in the shadows of Hebden Bridge, all of these images must have been a frightening prospect for Sylvia’s future. She is buried at Heptonstall, overlooking my house. I see her looming every day when I open my front door. She is omnipresent. Perched on the highest point in the valley.

I often wonder how Sylvia managed to gain such widespread acclaim in Britain when the poems of Anne Sexton are just as revealing. Sexton was probably one of the greatest American female poets of the last century – but is rarely mentioned in the UK. Maybe Sexton’s work is too ‘difficult’?  Are people uncomfortable with confessional poetry from women? Lowell was well-loved and respected for his work, yet Sexton is readily dismissed as a ‘feminist’ writer by the literary vanguard, rather than being included in the female poetic canon of the 20th century. Her poems were written as part of her psychotherapy, she was bi-polar, erratic, majestic, and also from similar stock to Plath. Sexton was mentored by W.D Snodgrass, and has a similar bite to Plath’s. By that I mean her tone and inflection have similarities. The Poetry Library at The South Bank have some recordings of her in their tape archives. Well worth a visit if ever you are passing. I’d also suggest Diane Middlebrook’s biography – which has transcripts from her psychotherapy sessions – for a wider perspective on Sexton’s work.

In the meantime I wanted to post some of Anne’s reading that I found on Youtube:

last nite i w as feel in gsa d

so i texted a great poet

i said :

dear goD

do you think, if
i havent really suffered
if

basically

ive lived a spoiled
and                          TOTALLY

pampered life

is there still a chance that sometimes
at least

i could still write good poetry ?

and hE said no.

No my child
as with anything in lifE

there are prerequisites :

like two heads in the oven
or a noose hanging
off a wooden beam

a chair kicked over into the corner of a room
those are the ideal
asia weevils
plaths

you need those

but who would want those my child

wouldnt you just want to be dr williams
dead of a recurring stroke
that pushed his weelchair
into a bush
of crimson cyclamen

he, pushed over
headfirst ?

leave dying alone
at a stinking hospital bed at tangiers
both yr legs cut off at the knees

leave greatness
to the real Gods

to the Rimbauds of the world
to the Rambos of the world

remember how in First Blood Part Un
he had to chisel a bullet
out of his arm
with a hunting knife ?

you want that ?

no you dont
believe mE

you wouldnt want that kind of lifE
greatness is overrated
believe mE

.

…………………………………………………………………………………….Para Ruth Fainlight

.
Conozco el fondo, dice ella. Lo conozco con mi profunda raíz.
Es lo que temes.
Yo no le temo: estuve ahí.

¿Es el mar lo que oyes en mí,
sus desacuerdos?
¿O la voz de la nada, que fue tu locura?

El amor es una sombra.
Cómo mientes y lloras por él.
Escucha: estos son sus cascos: se ha ido, como un caballo.

Toda la noche galoparé como él, impetuosamente,
Hasta que tu cabeza sea una piedra y tu almohada un poco de pasto,
Resonando, resonando.

¿O he de traerte el sonido de venenos?
Es la lluvia, ahora, la gran calma
Y éste es su fruto: blanco estaño, como arsénico.

He sufrido la atrocidad de las puestas de sol.
Abrasados hasta la raíz,
Mis rojos filamentos arden y resisten, una manojo de alambres.

Ahora me rompo en pedazos que vuelan como clavas.
Un viento de tal violencia
No tolerará espectadores: debo aullar.

También la luna es despiadada: me arrastraría
cruelmente, si fuese estéril.
Su resplandor me hiere. O tal vez la he atrapado.

La dejo ir. La dejo ir.
Disminuida y aplastada como después de una cirugía radical.
Cómo me poseen y me alimentan tus pesadillas.

Estoy habitada por un grito.
De noche se agita
Buscando, con sus garfios, algo para amar.

Me aterra esta cosa oscura
Que duerme en mí;
Todo el día siento sus giros suaves como plumas, su malignidad.

Las nubes pasan y se dispersan.
¿Son así los rostros del amor, tan pálidos e irrecuperables?
¿Por eso se conmueve mi corazón?

Soy incapaz de más conocimiento.
¿Qué es eso, esa cara asesina
estrangulada entre las ramas?—

Sus ácidos besos de serpiente.
Petrifica la voluntad. Estas son las aisladas y lentas faltas
Que matan, que matan, que matan.

.

.

Elm

.

………………………………………………………………………………………for Ruth Fainlight

.
I know the bottom, she says. I know it with my great tap root;
It is what you fear.
I do not fear it: I have been there.

Is it the sea you hear in me,
Its dissatisfactions?
Or the voice of nothing, that was you madness?

Love is a shadow.
How you lie and cry after it.
Listen: these are its hooves: it has gone off, like a horse.

All night I shall gallup thus, impetuously,
Till your head is a stone, your pillow a little turf,
Echoing, echoing.

Or shall I bring you the sound of poisons?
This is rain now, the big hush.
And this is the fruit of it: tin white, like arsenic.

I have suffered the atrocity of sunsets.
Scorched to the root
My red filaments burn and stand, a hand of wires.

Now I break up in pieces that fly about like clubs.
A wind of such violence
Will tolerate no bystanding: I must shriek.

The moon, also, is merciless: she would drag me
Cruelly, being barren.
Her radiance scathes me. Or perhaps I have caught her.

I let her go. I let her go
Diminished and flat, as after radical surgery.
How your bad dreams possess and endow me.

I am inhabited by a cry.
Nightly it flaps out
Looking, with its hooks, for something to love.

I am terrified by this dark thing
That sleeps in me;
All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity.

Clouds pass and disperse.
Are those the faces of love, those pale irretrievables?
Is it for such I agitate my heart?

I am incapable of more knowledge.
What is this, this face
So murderous in its strangle of branches? —-

Its snaky acids kiss.
It petrifies the will. These are the isolate, slow faults
That kill, that kill, that kill.

.
Sylvia Plath
Olmo
Traducción de Victoria L. Martí y María Julia de Ruschi Crespo.
.

To be honest, I didn’t get a whole lot out of Sylvia this first time reading her.  I would read one poem, every night, as the last thing I did before falling asleep (often while in the process of falling asleep).  While the language was pretty gorgeous and the imagery dynamic, I rarely got much content out of what was being said.  I get it, she’s pretty sad and has some major man issues, but beyond that I couldn’t tell you much, and I know there was a lot else going on.  My favorite poems (Cut, Daddy) seemed to be the ones that I could “figure out” without too much trouble.  So, I’m sorry I didn’t spend the appropriate time studying you, Sylvia.  But I promise I will be back.

I decided to accomplish a flanerie adventure I’ve been meaning to embark on for a while now: Primrose Hill and Village.  I decided to head up by bus–my newly preferred method of transit as I realize that my days in London are numbered and I want to soak up as much of it as I can, something that is less successfully accomplished while ‘gophering’ on the tube.  My first task was soaking in the panoramic views from atop the Hill; second, strolling through the quaint village at my leisure, including stops into Primrose Hill Books, an adorable children’s bookshop (Tales on Moon Lane), the famous Primrose Bakery, and tea time at The Engineer.  All in all, extremely successful, as the photos below will hopefully prove.

On my way south through London I made a quick pit-stop at Carnaby Street for its Christmas Light Switch-On.  Famous for embodying the heart of “Swinging London,” the theme reflected the 40th anniversary of the decade in which the street became immortalized.

In principio c’era suo padre, che la lanciava in aria, così in alto che le si mozzava il respiro in gola, e poi la afferrava al volo e la avviluppava in un abbraccio potente. Se gli appoggiava l’orecchio al petto, sentiva il rombo di tuono del cuore e il pulsare delsangue nelle sue vene, simile al galoppo di cavalli selvaggi.

Sì, perchè il padre di Alice Denway era un gigante. Nel lampo azzurro dei suoi occhi era concentrato il colore dell’intera volta celeste, e quando rideva era come se tutte le onde dell’oceano si infrangessero mugghiando sulla spiaggia. Alice lo adorava per la sua potenza, e tutti gli ubbidivano, perchè lui sapeva tutto e non dava mai giudizi sbagliati.

(Da Il volo dei bombi, ne Icapolavori di Sylvia Plath, Mondadori)

Ma quando invece è Andromaca a compiere il gesto di Ettore?

Som Sylvia Plath kommer jag ibland på mig själv med att resonera om det smidigaste sättet för självutplåning. Jag är alldeles för feg för att skära mig, min omtanke om lokförare och lastbilschaufförer utesluter köttfärsvarianten. Jag är skitdålig på att ljuga och skulle antagligen inte kunna fejka till mig några piller. J föreslår att man kan dra en kateter i benet och långsamt tömma sig själv på blod á la To The Devil a Daughter. Nej, det är för långsamt. Dränka sig själv är ren panik, men vi är överens om att frysa ihjäl kanske är ett alternativ? Ungefär som när man råkat kissa på sig är det skönt i början, fast tvärtom. Hur vore det med en bil och ett garage? Är det en tillfällighet att just min lägenhet är utrustad med el-ugn? Två stycken soppåsar då, att kvävas, är det lika läskigt som att drunkna? Får jag plats i två soppåsar och hur försluter man dem bäst, och hur lång tid tar det innan någon märker något och vem vill ta hand om min katt? Det är ungefär där jag kommer fram till att all planering kräver mer av mig än att bara bita ihop och ta tag i det här jävla skitlivet jag har ordnat till mig själv. No worries, jag blir kvar ett tag till.

After my previous post on a few things Book Group orientated and The Riverside Readers I said that I would come back with a post on my personal top Book Group reads as well as discussing my top Book Group tips. Those two things would actually make a bit of a Bible of a post and so I will do the top books today and a few tips and my own experiences for and of Book Groups on Thursday, so hopefully you are all still interested in all things Book Group related. Could I fit the words Book Groups in these previous sentences if I tried?

After seeing Novel Insights wonderful post on her personal top twelve books a group could read in a year I thought I would have a go. This isn’t plagiarism it’s simply joining in, ha. Having been in a few book groups (in fact I am currently in two though one is rather rogue and we only do one every so often when the whim takes us) I realised that I had a list of 38 books that I could choose from. Some of the books haven’t worked (Tales of the Jazz Age – we all had different editions which all featured a different selection of short stories), some have received indifference, some have been disliked and some have been loved, more on those in my list.

Though I haven’t featured the books that were indifferent or went wrong I have included one book which I didn’t care for but caused great discussion and that’s one thing I have noticed from book groups, I might not always like a book but that in itself when lots of people do can make for a great book group read as it causes debate. So what five things do I do in order to make a book group choice now, I may not have always done this in the past mind;

1. Books you wouldn’t normally read – one of the main points of a book group in my mind – but which are accessible, you don’t want to alienate your other group members.
2. Books which have been received with strong reviews/thoughts both positive and negative way when they came out, this could cause great debate.
3. Books that make you think and cause all sorts of discussions with yourself in your own head though you can’t always predict these in advance.
4. Authors you love and admire who other people might not have tried, though don’t be precious on these as they could get ripped to shreds.
5. Books that challenge and push you as a reader, if they are going to do this to you they probably will be to others.

Looking back at all the book groups I have been part of in the past which book would I recommend the most? Well after some whittling of the 38 I have read with book groups I came up with the final twelve (like Novel Insights I have chosen a years worth) that I think have caused the greatest discussion in no particular order.

• Nineteen Eighty-Four – George Orwell
• The Bell – Iris Murdoch
• In Cold Blood – Truman Capote
• On Chesil Beach – Ian McEwan (close tie with Atonement to be honest)
• The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
• To Kill A Mockingbird – Harper Lee
• Half of a Yellow Sun – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
• The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
• Animal’s People – Indra Sinha
• Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck (the one I didn’t like – discussion was great)
• The Book of Dave – Will Self
• Kafka on the Shore – Hariku Murakami

So there it is. You can see the full list of all 38 books now on the “new and improved” Book Group page where you can also see what the next book group read is. You may be wondering why some of the above list are in bold. Well my Gran wants a list of five books, as I mentioned on a previous post, she could put forward for her book group. I am actually going to send her a list of new books she and her group are less likely to have read along with the five above in bold. More book group musings on Thursday when I will be discussing Book Group decorum and what made me sensationally (love the drama of that word) leave a book group I started after two years! Let me know what you think of the final twelve too can you spot any themes in them? Also please do tell me of any great books you have done in a book group in the past.

P.S Sorry no picture on today’s post I am not a big fan of posts with no images, if it drives me to crazy will be the shot of The Riverside Readers again!

“Yes, I was infatuated with you; I am still. No one has ever heightened such a keen capacity of physical sensation in me. I cut you out because I couldn’t stand being a passing fancy. Before I give my body, I must give my thoughts, my mind, my dreams

… and you weren’t having any of those.”

oh how i love you miss sylvia plath.

“And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise.  The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”

-Sylvia Plath-

To cudowne!

To cudowne uczucie obudzić się rano całkowicie wolnym
i planować dzień tak jak się chcę.

To cudowne nie czekać na pierwszego i każdego kolejnego sms’a,
wiedząc, że ten ktoś i tak nie napisze.

To cudowne nie czekać na telefon,
który i tak nie zadzwoni.

To cudowne nie starać się kiedy wiadomo,
że tej drugiej stronie nie zależy.

To cudowne mieć wolny weekend,
który zawsze był poświęcany komuś.

To cudowne wyjść na wódkę na tory z przyjaciółmi,
których ktoś nie akceptował.

To cudowne zaczynać wszystko od początku,
wiedząc, że są osoby w których ma się wsparcie…

***

Pierwszy raz napisałem coś w stylu wiersza. Tak mi sie przynajmniej wydaje. Ja to traktuje jak wiersz.

Magia Sylvii Plath działa,  a ja z każdym Jej listem do matki coraz bardziej zakochany. W Niej oczywiście…

.

Si la luna sonriese, se te parecería.

Das la misma impresión de ser algo hermoso,
Pero aniquilador. Las dos brilláis con una luz prestada.
Su boca en forma de O manifiesta su congoja
Por el mundo, la tuya, tu indiferencia,

Y tu primer don es el de trocarlo todo en piedra.
De repente me percato de que me hallo en un mausoleo:
Ahí estás tú, tamborileando con los dedos en una mesa de mármol,
Buscando cigarrillos, rencorosa como una mujer, aunque no tan nerviosa,
Muriéndote por decir algo a lo que nadie rechiste.

También la luna doblega a sus súbditos,
Pero a la luz del día resulta ridícula.
Por otro lado, tus insatisfacciones llegan
A mi buzón con afectuosa regularidad,
Blancas y anodinas, expansivas como el monóxido de carbono.

No hay día en que no tenga noticias tuyas,
Mientras deambulas, quizás, por África, pero pensando en mí.

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Julio de 1961

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The rival

If the moon smiled, she would resemble you.

You leave the same impression
Of something beautiful, but annihilating.
Both of you are great light borrowers.
Her O-mouth grieves at the world; yours is unaffected,

And your first gift is making stone out of everything.
I wake to a mausoleum; you are here,
Ticking your fingers on the marble table, looking for cigarettes,
Spiteful as a woman, but not so nervous,
And dying to say something unanswerable.

The moon, too, abuses her subjects,
But in the daytime she is ridiculous.
Your dissatisfactions, on the other hand,
Arrive through the mailslot with loving regularity,
White and blank, expansive as carbon monoxide.

No day is safe from news of you,
Walking about in Africa maybe, but thinking of me.

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Sylvia Plath

La rival

De Poemas de 1961

Poesía Completa, Bartleby Editores, Madrid, 2008. Traducción de Xoán Abeleir

a

You know you’re an English major if you think this is one of the most hilarious ideas ever…

For those of you with a life, Sylvia Plath was a poet. She lived from 1932 to 1963. Most of the time she was depressed. This is her happy face:

Sylvia Plath wasn’t really a good poet, but this was at a time when there weren’t that many women poets worth reading (I guess, although I can think of a few), and literary critics thought Sylvia Plath was okay by comparison, so that’s why we still have to read her in lit courses. She reps the gloomy sort of poet who is real deep because she thinks the world sucks and her daddy was mean to her. So she was suicidal: “Dying is an art, like everything else. I do it exceptionally well. I do it so it feels like hell. I do it so it feels real. I guess you could say I’ve a call.” Good poetry, eh? It’s what’s called “confessional poetry,” the kind that you basically want to answer with a loud, Oh shut up already and pull yourself together!

The best thing Sylvia Plath did in her life was marry the Poet Laureate of England, Ted Hughes:

Apparently they didn’t get on so well. It’s basically a test whether you’re a real feminist poetry critic that you have to think Ted Hughes is a bastard and poor Sylvie was whatever the opposite of a bastard is. Of course, it could just be that Ted Hughes showed poor judgment by marrying someone as unhinged as Sylvia Plath.

Sylvia Plath mostly moped about a while and wrote more bad poetry and boring books and had some children, and then one day she turned on the gas oven in her kitchen and put her head in it and gassed herself. That’s what’s called a poetic ending. And that’s the other reason we have to read her in lit courses. Lit professors like morbid things to happen to poets and writers because that means they must be at least as good as John Keats, obviously, even if they aren’t. And that rescued Sylvia Plath’s reputation and made her the poet all the people love who also paint their fingernails black.

And that’s why those mits are hilarious.

The End.

h/t L.D.

‘ve recently become connected with Our.City.Lights. both on Twitter and on Etsy. So, of course, I took full advantage of procrastination-from-grading and had way too much fun poring through her blog (which is awesome, by the way — please go forth and visit HERE). And that’s when I found the freakin’ holy grail of literary/library/typewritten/handwritten/nerdy awesomeness that is known as: THE CATALOG CARD GENERATOR.

Oh yeah, that’s right.

I plan to use it rather excessively. Consider yourselves warned.

For example…

#1: Sylvia Plath’s “Mad Girl’s Love Song” (featured in my last pog), the abbreviated catalog card version:

#2: Excerpts from one of my own works in progress, called “Four Rings”:

#3: In honor of the upcoming Oprah-SarahPalin interview, which I cannot freakin’ wait to see, strictly because of the new quotes that will be immortalized: