To begin with, I think Plath changed her notion of what a poem ought to be. But something in the techniques developed after The Colossus makes the late poems important to us, important in ways that go beyond formidable expertise or alliterative low-tide dolor. If Plath had written nothing else, she would still have a place in anthologies for a generation or more. They were somber, formidably expert in stanza structure and had a flair for alliteration and Massachusetts low-tide dolor.” 1 I don’t plan to use The Colossus as the “before” picture in a poetic body-building ad. She showed us poems that later, more or less unchanged, went into her first book, The Colossus. Her humility and willingness to accept what was admired seemed at times to give her an air of maddening docility that hid her unfashionable patience and boldness. “She was,” Lowell remembers, “a brilliant tense presence embarrassed by restraint. I want to know what Plath was doing in making the dynamic Ariel poems that she was not doing, say, in 1959 when she used to drop in on Robert Lowell’s poetry seminar at Boston University. More specifically, I want to discuss a few of her techniques of style, tone, and structure that seem to me responsible for what I think are Plath’s most characteristic effects. Instead I want to try to analyze her power to terrify us and, less often, to comfort. They are only meant to terrify and comfort.Īs my epigraph suggests, I am not writing to “understand” Sylvia Plath’s poems, or not that primarily. These Songs are not meant to be understood, you understand. She was my best friend and the time spent iat college one of the best in my life.The shape of the psyche: vision and technique in the late poems of Sylvia Plath I loved our years together, our studing together and the humour we shared. We both loved the clay room and did our finals in clay work. Although different in many ways Sharon and I complimented each other. We had both chosen Art as our main study and it was to be the beginning of a long and wonderful friendship. Anyhow I met Sharon over the words ' between the apiary and topiary.' Not knowing the meaning of either I was very grateful for Sharon's grammar school education and hours doing the cross word with her husband Chris. I was not particularly good at quizzes and my vocabulary far from well developed. We had to do a quiz to familiarise ourselves with the buildings and the grounds of the college. I looked around me at all the new faces and it was on this day that I met Sharon Trigg. Remembering the first day sitting for our year photograph in my cream leather jacket and neat skirt and shoes. Having just received my A level results and O level Mathis at the age of 34 I embarked on a Teacher Training Course at Wall Hall in Radlett. This room of activity was where we shared family gatherings. A square, extendable, table resided by the French doors, often with a vase of flowers from the garden, or the Frister and Rossman sewing machine or papers from the previous night's children's homework bedecking the surface. Here we watchet cricket and football on the small television set which stood in one corner away from the light. Here Dad slept in the evenings after work. Here Richard and I played Cheat and Lexicon and Scrabble, which we did not like as we both read little at that time. Here, Grace would listen to Woman's Hour on the radio with Fluff our large, long haired, cat on her lap. In this south facing room was a pale blue carpet, an open fireplace with white mantlepiece. Our house in Penwortham Road was a three bedroomed terrace.There were two separate living rooms with the front kept for best.The back room, always sunny, with French doors opening onto the garden.
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