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| pointlessforever (profile) wrote, on 6-4-2005 at 3:01pm | |
| For graduation, I received The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. It was very good. As I read it, I felt like I wasn't reading about Esther Greenwood's experiences in college and, later, in the state mental hospital, but Sylvia Plath's. Everytime Esther got really depressed (she was manic-depressive, it was sad) she'd become eerily aware of her heartbeat and say something about it pounding out "I am, I am, I am". That weirded me out because I could've sworn I'd heard it before. And I had. Four years earlier, Sylvia Plath wrote those words in her poem Suicide off Egg Rock: "And his blood beating the old tattoo/I am, I am, I am." Behind him the hotdogs split and drizzled On the public grills, and the ochreous salt flats, Gas tanks, factory stacks- that landscape Of imperfections his bowels were part of- Rippled and pulsed in the glassy updraught. Sun struck the water like a damnation. No pit of shadow to crawl into, And his blood beating the old tattoo I am, I am, I am. Children Were squealing where combers broke and the spindrift Raveled wind-ripped from the crest of the wave. A mongrel working his legs to a gallop Hustled a gull flock to flap off the sandspit. He smoldered, as if stone-deaf, blindfold, His body beached with the sea's garbage, A machine to breathe and beat forever. Flies filing in through a dead skate's eyehole Buzzed and assailed the vaulted brainchamber. The words in his book wormed off the pages. Everything glittered like blank paper. Everything shrank in the sun's corrosive Ray but Egg Rock on the blue wastage. He heard when he walked into the water The forgetful surf creaming on those ledges. Katie, I think you'd like the book. Esther is like Holden, only not so over the top. I think my sister would like this book too. Esther thinks getting married and having children would get in the way of having a career and becoming a writer. She can have a family or be a poet, not both. She has some crazy Holden-esque sexual feelings too. It's pretty interesting. Totally awesome book. It made me want to read Sylvia Plath's poetry again. And again. I really wish she hadn't killed herself. |
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