The Poetry Project

Before I get into the August topic, I wanted to give kudos to the city of Minneapolis for commemorating the collapse of the I-35W bridge five years ago with poetry.

Welcome to the August Poetry Project. This month's theme is Pulitzer Prize winners. There are some mighty fine poets on that lengthy list. But of course, I have to turn to one of my faves. Sylvia Plath is the only poet to win the Pulitzer posthumously, in 1982 for The Collected Poems. As I mentioned in my introductory post for this project, I especially love the poems she wrote to and about her children. Some are heartrendingly sad, particularly the ones written during her separation from her husband. Others are more awestruck at the enormity of having a child, such as this one:

Morning Song

Love set you going like a fat gold watch.
The midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bald cry
Took its place among the elements.

Our voices echo, magnifying your arrival. New statue.
In a drafty museum, your nakedness
Shadows our safety. We stand round blankly as walls.

I'm no more your mother
Than the cloud that distills a mirror to reflect its own slow
Effacement at the wind's hand.

All night your moth-breath
Flickers 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 floral
In my Victorian nightgown.
Your mouth opens clean as a cat's. The window square

Whitens and swallows its dull stars. And nowyou try
Your handful of notes;
The clear vowels rise like balloons.

Comments

[Snowball]

Her poetry is so beautiful. It's so full of life and emotion, and read through the knowledge of her suicide, evokes a kind of double exposure in my mind.

I recently bought the restored edition of "Ariel," but I haven't made the time to sit down with it yet. I guess I should make time.

[Snowball]

Oh. thank you for the tip about the 35 Poems for the 35W. It was moving.

[Amy Rea]

I just thought it was so cool that they used poetry as part of the memorial.

[Lu]

I read the 35 poems for I-35W and they are so moving. I just recently read this quote from WS Merwin: “Poetry goes back to the invention of language itself. I think one of the big differences between poetry and prose is that prose is about something, it’s got a subject… poetry is about what can’t be said. Why do people turn to poetry when all of a sudden the Twin Towers get hit, or when their marriage breaks up, or when the person they love most in the world drops dead in the same room? Because they can’t say it. They can’t say it at all, and they want something that addresses what can’t be said.”

I haven't read a lot of Sylvia Plath's poetry, but what I have read I have loved. There are so many things to love about this poem, but I am especially enamored with the last two stanzas. Thank you for sharing!

[Amy Rea]

Lu, I think you are on to something there. Poetry really does not have to be about something. Sometimes, the words themselves, in unexpected order, clarify and enlighten without solving a problem.

[Trish]

Her sentiments about waking up in the middle of the night sound hauntingly familiar. She has such a beautiful way of writing about some of the harsher or harder points in life.

[Amy Rea]

Trish, have you read her poem By Candlelight, which is set while shes nursing her young son late at night? Absolutely beautiful. I think it might be my favorite of hers, or at least in the top two or three.