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stonepicnicking_okapi) wrote2023-04-10 11:03 am
stonepicnicking_okapi) wrote2023-04-10 11:03 am
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Poet's Corner: Sexton and Plath
I am reading some essays from The Cambridge Companion to American Poets and last night read an essay about two of the so-called 'confessional poets' Anne Sexton and Sylvia Path. I can't say Plath or Sexton are my favourites but I found two that appealed, in a sort of dark, bitter way, to myself the Housewife.
The Tour by Sylvia Path
O maiden aunt, you have come to call.
Do step into the hall!
With your bold
Gecko, the little flick!
All cogs, weird sparkle and every cog solid gold.
And I in slippers and housedress with no lipstick!
And you want to be shown about!
Yes, yes, this is my address.
Not a patch on your place, I guess, with the Javanese
Geese and the monkey trees.
It's a bit burnt-out,
A bit of a wild machine, a bit of a mess!
O I shouldn't put my finger in that
Auntie, it might bite!
That's my frost box, no cat,
Though it looks like a cat, with its fluffy stuff, pure white.
You should see the objects it makes!
Millions of needly glass cakes!
Fine for the migraine or the bellyache. And this
Is where I kept the furnace,
Each coal a hot cross-stitch—a lovely light!
It simply exploded one night,
It went up in smoke.
And that's why I have no hair, auntie, that's why I choke
Off and on, as if I just had to retch.
Coal gas is ghastly stuff.
Here's a spot I thought you'd love—
Morning Glory Pool!
The blue's a jewel.
It boils for forty hours at a stretch.
O I shouldn't dip my hankie in, it hurts!
Last summer, my God, last summer
It ate seven maids and a plumber
And returned them steamed and pressed and stiff as shirts.
I am bitter? I'm averse?
Here's your specs, dear, here's your purse.
Toddle on home to tea now in your flat hat.
It'll be lemon tea for me,
Lemon tea and earwig biscuits—creepy-creepy.
You'd not want that.
Toddle on home, before the weather's worse.
Toddle on home, and don't trip on the nurse!—
She may be bald, she may have no eyes,
But auntie, she's awfully nice.
She's pink, she's a born midwife—
She can bring the dead to life
With her wiggly fingers and for a very small fee.
Well I hope you've enjoyed it, auntie!
Toddle on home to tea!
Self in 1958 by Anne Sexton
What is reality?
I am a plaster doll; I pose
with eyes that cut open without landfall or nightfall
upon some shellacked and grinning person,
eyes that open, blue, steel, and close.
Am I approximately an I. Magnin transplant?
I have hair, black angel,
black-angel-stuffing to comb,
nylon legs, luminous arms
and some advertised clothes.
I live in a doll’s house
with four chairs,
a counterfeit table, a flat roof
and a big front door.
Many have come to such a small crossroad.
There is an iron bed,
(Life enlarges, life takes aim)
a cardboard floor,
windows that flash open on someone’s city,
and little more.
Someone plays with me,
plants me in the all-electric kitchen,
Is this what Mrs. Rombauer said?
Someone pretends with me—
I am walled in solid by their noise—
or puts me upon their straight bed.
They think I am me!
Their warmth? Their warmth is not a friend!
They pry my mouth for their cups of gin
and their stale bread.
What is reality
to this synthetic doll
who should smile, who should shift gears,
should spring the doors open in a wholesome disorder,
and have no evidence of ruin or fears?
But I would cry,
rooted into the wall that
was once my mother,
if I could remember how
and if I had the tears.
The Tour by Sylvia Path
O maiden aunt, you have come to call.
Do step into the hall!
With your bold
Gecko, the little flick!
All cogs, weird sparkle and every cog solid gold.
And I in slippers and housedress with no lipstick!
And you want to be shown about!
Yes, yes, this is my address.
Not a patch on your place, I guess, with the Javanese
Geese and the monkey trees.
It's a bit burnt-out,
A bit of a wild machine, a bit of a mess!
O I shouldn't put my finger in that
Auntie, it might bite!
That's my frost box, no cat,
Though it looks like a cat, with its fluffy stuff, pure white.
You should see the objects it makes!
Millions of needly glass cakes!
Fine for the migraine or the bellyache. And this
Is where I kept the furnace,
Each coal a hot cross-stitch—a lovely light!
It simply exploded one night,
It went up in smoke.
And that's why I have no hair, auntie, that's why I choke
Off and on, as if I just had to retch.
Coal gas is ghastly stuff.
Here's a spot I thought you'd love—
Morning Glory Pool!
The blue's a jewel.
It boils for forty hours at a stretch.
O I shouldn't dip my hankie in, it hurts!
Last summer, my God, last summer
It ate seven maids and a plumber
And returned them steamed and pressed and stiff as shirts.
I am bitter? I'm averse?
Here's your specs, dear, here's your purse.
Toddle on home to tea now in your flat hat.
It'll be lemon tea for me,
Lemon tea and earwig biscuits—creepy-creepy.
You'd not want that.
Toddle on home, before the weather's worse.
Toddle on home, and don't trip on the nurse!—
She may be bald, she may have no eyes,
But auntie, she's awfully nice.
She's pink, she's a born midwife—
She can bring the dead to life
With her wiggly fingers and for a very small fee.
Well I hope you've enjoyed it, auntie!
Toddle on home to tea!
Self in 1958 by Anne Sexton
What is reality?
I am a plaster doll; I pose
with eyes that cut open without landfall or nightfall
upon some shellacked and grinning person,
eyes that open, blue, steel, and close.
Am I approximately an I. Magnin transplant?
I have hair, black angel,
black-angel-stuffing to comb,
nylon legs, luminous arms
and some advertised clothes.
I live in a doll’s house
with four chairs,
a counterfeit table, a flat roof
and a big front door.
Many have come to such a small crossroad.
There is an iron bed,
(Life enlarges, life takes aim)
a cardboard floor,
windows that flash open on someone’s city,
and little more.
Someone plays with me,
plants me in the all-electric kitchen,
Is this what Mrs. Rombauer said?
Someone pretends with me—
I am walled in solid by their noise—
or puts me upon their straight bed.
They think I am me!
Their warmth? Their warmth is not a friend!
They pry my mouth for their cups of gin
and their stale bread.
What is reality
to this synthetic doll
who should smile, who should shift gears,
should spring the doors open in a wholesome disorder,
and have no evidence of ruin or fears?
But I would cry,
rooted into the wall that
was once my mother,
if I could remember how
and if I had the tears.
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