I jut heard (literally minutes ago via an email) that a never-before seen/newly-discovered Sylvia Plath poem is to published in an upcoming edition of the online litmag Blackbird.

[www.blackbird.vcu.edu]

Another fine source of literary information is available from the WEST Virginia University press: [www.wvupress.com]


Les

I am unclear what the point is of posting a rumor about something that may possibly happen sometime in the unspecified future. On the other hand, I have to share a rumor I heard that the sun will likely explode before the end of the next trillion years or so. Stay tuned for more on this as it develops.

You can read some of the works in her latest released work here: [oldpoetry.com]


Les

“Nothing stinks like a pile of unpublished writing.”
Sylvia Plath quote

Well I think it's interesting and lucky for those writers that get to be published in the same issue.

I doubt that there's much carryover, between one author and another, Talia. I could read a ton of Ginsberg, and it wouldn't make me sway from the Billy Collins if printed on the same page.

But, here's a Plath I hadn't seen before:

Metamorphoses Of The Moon
by Sylvia Plath

Cold moons withdraw, refusing to come to terms
with the pilot who dares all heaven's harms
to raid the zone where fate begins,
flings silver gauntlet of his plane at space,
demanding satisfaction; no duel takes place:
the mute air merely thins and thins.

Sky won't be drawn closer: absolute,
it holds aloof, a shrouded parachute
always the same distance from
the falling man who never will abstain
from asking, but inventive, hopes; in vain
challenges the silent dome.

No violation but gives dividends
of slow disaster: the bitten apple ends
the eden of bucolic eve:
understanding breaks through the skull's shell
and like a cuckoo in the nest makes hell
for naïve larks who starve and grieve.

What prince has ever seized the shining grail
but that it turned into a milking pail?
It's likely that each secret sought
will prove to be some common parlor fake:
a craft with paint and powder that can make
cleopatra from a slut.

For most exquisite truths are artifice
framed in disciplines of fire and ice
which conceal incongruous
elements like dirty socks and scraps
of day-old bread and egg-stained plates; perhaps
such sophistry can placate us.

But yet the perverse imp within will probe
beneath the fringes of forbidden robe,
seduced by curiosity,
until in disenchantment our eyes glut
themselves on the clay toes and short clubfoot
which mar the idol's sanctity.

The choice between the mica mystery
of moonlight or the pockmarked face we see
through the scrupulous telescope
is always to be made: innocence
is a fairy-tale; intelligence
hangs itself on its own rope.

Either way we choose, the angry witch
will punish us for saying which is which;
in fatal equilibrium
we poise on perilous poles that freeze us in
a cross of contradiction, racked between
the fact of doubt, the faith of dream.


=========================================================================================
Some of her lesser known works can be found here: [www.stanford.edu]


Les



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 09/28/2006 01:51PM by lg.

But I don't think the poets printed in Blackbird are quite as big as Plath, Ginsburg, or Billy Collins. I'm talking about the break-through ones.

You are probably right about that Talia, I've discovered some gems while researching other poems:

Hold You In My Smile
--Ernestine Northover

Sweet moment, stay with me,
and pray do not flee so soon,
Let me enjoy the bliss of that
first kiss beneath the moon.
I wish to cradle this feeling,
that has only just been found,
A feeling that has unexpectedly
turned my world around.
Do not depart, Oh please remain
within my heart awhile,
So that I can savour you once more,
and hold you in my smile.

Les

The newly discovered Sylvia Plath poem is at www.blackbird.vcu.edu (published today). There's a New York Times article about it, as well as hundreds of articles in most states and countries now. It was discovered by a grad student researching Fitzgerald. And the writers who are published on this site are certainly on par with Billy Collins. (See Gerald Stern, Claudia Emerson, Charles Wright, George Garrett...) We're talking Pulitzer Prize winners here...check it out. Poets and Writers calls it the best online mag around.

For those of us less bent on scholarship, here's a link to the poem itself: [www.blackbird.vcu.edu]


Les

For years, I thought that was pronounced Enn-you-eye

and not On-wheeee!

You beat me to it.

My professor David Dodd Lee is also published in this issue.

[www.blackbird.vcu.edu]

some comical things here Re DDL

[www.emule.com]

Ennui

Tea leaves thwart those who court catastrophe,
designing futures where nothing will occur:
cross the gypsy’s palm and yawning she
will still predict no perils left to conquer.
Jeopardy is jejune now: naïve knight
finds ogres out-of-date and dragons unheard
of, while blasé princesses indict
tilts at terror as downright absurd.

The beast in Jamesian grove will never jump,
compelling hero’s dull career to crisis;
and when insouciant angels play God’s trump,
while bored arena crowds for once look eager,
hoping toward havoc, neither pleas nor prizes
shall coax from doom’s blank door lady or tiger.


Gadzooks! The dame rhymes occur with conquer!? And she enjambs unheard/of? Tsk. Eager/tiger? Crisis/prizes? Shudder. Still, an intriguing sonnet construction, all in all.

Be generous have charity
We all can't be Hugh Clarity

I think they could have picked a better picture of Sylvia.

[www.blackbird.vcu.edu]

> And she enjambs unheard/of

I noticed the enjambment too, Hugh, often word play is a factor in many poets' works. I think that is true here as well.


Les

The photo makes her look like Olivia Newton John before she was 'madeover' in Grease - hardly appropriate to Plath!!

from the yearbook:

"Babs" Plath has a cheery outlook on life and is a real gas at parties

Tsk, tsk...that's terrible, Johnny.

If I've killed one conversation, I've killed two