Afternoon Viewing: Sylvia Plath
The poet reads her work “Nick and the Candlestick”:
Sylvia Plath Reads "Nick And The Candlestick" - More amazing videos are a click away
I am a miner. The light burns blue.
Waxy stalactites
Drip and thicken, tears
The earthen womb
Exudes from its dead boredom.
Black bat airs
Wrap me, raggy shawls,
Cold homicides.
They weld to me like plums.
Old cave of calcium
Icicles, old echoer.
Even the newts are white,
Those holy Joes.
And the fish, the fish—-
Christ! They are panes of ice,
A vice of knives,
A piranha
Religion, drinking
Its first communion out of my live toes.
The candle
Gulps and recovers its small altitude,
Its yellows hearten.
O love, how did you get here?
O embryo
Remembering, even in sleep,
Your crossed position.
The blood blooms clean
In you, ruby.
The pain
You wake to is not yours.
Love, love,
I have hung our cave with roses.
With soft rugs—-
The last of Victoriana.
Let the stars
Plummet to their dark address,
Let the mercuric
Atoms that cripple drip
Into the terrible well,
You are the one
Solid the spaces lean on, envious.
You are the baby in the barn.
AuthorScoop
December 17th, 2008 at 8:51 pm
I’ve listened to this twice, once while reading along, once without. I have no idea what this poem is talking about and it’s frustrating. If I were cleverer, I’d just shrug and let it go, but when someone says ‘Plath’ you’re supposed to swoon, not just stand there looking stupid.
These are the things that vex me.
December 17th, 2008 at 10:03 pm
it is a mother speaking to her infant child. a decent analysis can be found here:
http://www.sapphireblue.com/writing/plath.html
December 17th, 2008 at 10:35 pm
I believe both you and the article, but can’t understand why I sometimes read these things and come up empty-handed (headed?) I don’t generally feel stupid, but nothing can do it for me like a celebrated poem that I have to have crib notes for.