Poetry Monday

After a month of Ted Hughes, I thought that for the sake of fairness I should choose Sylvia Plath to be this month's poet. You might remember that I mentioned in this post that Hughes was married to Sylvia Plath and had two children with her. Plath was, of course, a poet and author in her own right. Her style is quite different from Hughes', most of it falling into the category of 'confessional poetry'. This style rose to prominence in the 1950s and is characterised by the use of the first person and a highly personal way of sharing thoughts and feelings. Because so much of Plath's work relates to events in her life, I thought I'd share a bit of her life story each week, along with a poem that goes with that part of her life.

Plath was born in Boston in 1932 to Otto and Aurelia Plath. Her father, was a Professor (with a focus on apiology - study of bees). Otto met her mother when she was one of his Masters students at Boston University. When she was 8, he died of a treatable disease, which he had misdiagnosed and tried to treat himself. Her relationship with her father and his death affected most of her other relationships in life and much of her poetry (most famously her poem 'Daddy', written in 1962).

Here is another poem that harks back to early memories and struggles with the complexities of her relationship with her father.

The Beekeeper's Daughter
by Sylvia Plath

A garden of mouthings. Purple, scarlet-speckled, black
The great corollas dilate, peeling back their silks.
Their musk encroaches, circle after circle,
A well of scents almost too dense to breathe in.
Hieratical in your frock coat, maestro of the bees,
You move among the many-breasted hives,

My heart under your foot, sister of a stone.

Trumpet-throats open to the beaks of birds.
The Golden Rain Tree drips its powders down.
In these little boudoirs streaked with orange and red
The anthers nod their heads, potent as kings
To father dynasties. The air is rich.
Here is a queenship no mother can contest ---

A fruit that's death to taste: dark flesh, dark parings.

Photo: Rollie McKenna