Sylvia Plath

[Music] Hello and welcome to Frank Skinner's poetry podcast. Listen, I was staying at someone's house and in the bedroom where I slept, there was a bookcase full of books and you know what the people's bookcases are always more intriguing and attractive than your own. So I went into it investigatively and I saw Sylvia Plath's novel, The Bell Jo, which I never read and knew very little about. I read it and I was only at the house for a week but I increased the amount of time I read the novel each day because I was desperate to finish it before the end of the week. I did so, I thought it was brilliant. It's described as an autobiographical novel which I always think is a bit of a diss. It makes it sound as if someone really has written an autobiography and then plugged it off as an awful enough and putting any of that artistry and creativity and inventiveness that one associates with the novelist. I found a lot of artistry, inventiveness and creativity in The Bell Jo. But there you go. I think Sylvia Plath's poetry suffers from a similar problem in that it's often described as confessional poetry and so again people think oh yeah well they're just churning out their life and some people love that but I think that that undermines the work. I think it's much cleverer than that and also if it was just Sylvia's life blasted out then I think it would fall into the trap that WB Yates the Irish poet identified which is all that is personal soon-rots. We need something universal to hold on to in poetry. Something that every reader can use to find themselves in the work and I think that that does happen in Plath. I don't want to drag her away from the black fingernail grasp of emo fandom but I think it's harmful to just define Sylvia Plath as a tragic figure who took her own life and had a terrible husband and terrible parents. Let's just concentrate on the brilliant poet aspect. I found myself nervous saying this. I feel I'm going to be attacked in the night by Helen of Bonham Carter or someone of that ilk. Okay so that's what I think about Sylvia Plath. I think she's a good poet. I once came across her or a quote from her in an American mall and there was a shop there that was just quotes, things with quotes on a sort of quote shop. I was looking for a a place mat with the living amelie, the dead on holiday but I couldn't lay my hands on one of those but I saw a poster of a Sylvia Plath quote and it said this and by the way everything in life is rightable about if you have the outgoing gots to do it and this is the bit I draw attention to and the imagination to improvise. So the imagination to improvise that's the bit she slaps over her life experiences and it's the bit that turns them into poetry or a brilliant novel. By the way just as a little sidebar on this I said that Sylvia Plath took her own life just a few months ago I would have said that Sylvia Plath committed suicide but I heard the mother of a young man who'd killed himself talking and she said she hated the term committed suicide because the word committed is mainly associated with sin and crime. Two things that Sylvia Plath used to be defined as and I thought that was a tremendous point and I resolved that I wouldn't use the phrase again and it just shows how life in recent years has become more and more like poetry that we think more about the words we use. Choose the words thinking about the effect they have on others just like a poet does a poet will choose a word that he knows will ring through people and I think more and more in speech we do that now and think about the effect and whether that's the effect that we want to have. A little sidebar I'm calling life imitate art okay I want to go straight into a Sylvia Plath poem and I'm choosing the moon and the utri from her collection aerial. The moon and the utri is a much analysed poem and I'm going to ignore most of that analysis until you what it does for me but I've read plenty of the analysis so don't think I'm just taking the easy way out no sir. Right I'm going to give you the first dancer brace yourselves this is the light of the mind cold and planetary the trees of the mind are black the light is blue the grass is on load their griefs on my feet as if I were god prickling my ankles and murmuring of their humility I think I'm going to stop it there that's not the end of the stanza but it's just too much to take in in a lump like that this is the light of the mind cold and planetary this I think means now the way it is now is the light of the mind this this the light of the world tonight where I am is the light of the mind cold and planetary fantastic so she's saying that that's what her mind is like cold and planetary you can see it can't you this blue in sky with the planets visible stark and cold the trees of the mind are black so in this mental landscape there's these ominous black trees the light is blue blue becomes a significant word in this and I think it's because well if we look at the title poem from aerial which is called aerial this is how it begins stasis in darkness then the substanceless blue poor of tour and distances now I think that means stasis in darkness so when it's dark when it's really dark at night you can't see much you're in stasis you're frozen then the substanceless blue poor of tour and distances so substanceless blue poor is the night gradually just slightly becoming day black becoming blue and it's a poor of tour and distances poor as in it's being poured out this light is pouring tour and distances tour being a big rocky hill distances so you're starting to see more you're starting to see elements of landscape so this substanceless blue I think is where we are in this poem I think black is becoming blue night is just inching towards day right the light is blue the grass is on low their griefs on my feet as if I were god prickling my ankles and murmuring of their humility few me spiritus mists inhabit this place separated from my house by a row of headstones I simply cannot see where there is to get to right so I think that she's taught well there's obviously there's a graveyard because there's a row of headstones I think that these the grass is on low their griefs on my feet as if I were god I think that's the idea of the dead beneath the earth beneath the grass responding to her the grass is on low their griefs on my feet as if I were god prickling my ankles and murmuring of their humility So she can hear this, humility is obviously a thing that people who pray dwell on quite a lot. So the dead seem to be speaking, praying, prickling at her ankles. So she, the speaker here, not Selvia, the speaker is, it seems in a graveyard. When it's still pretty dark, but not as dark as it was, it's blue. What about this for a fabulous piece of gothic? Fumey spiritus mists inhabit this place, separated from my house by a row of headstones. Whoa man, I love it. I simply cannot see where there is to get to. Now what is that saying? Maybe she can't see her way home, she can't see out to get out of the graveyard, but it sounds more than that, doesn't it? And one thing that this poem does a lot is mix the physical with the mental. So we never know whether this is something that the speaker is physically experiencing externally or whether it's some reference to an internal happening. Next stanza, the moon is no door, it is a face in its own right, white as a knuckle and terribly upset. It drags the sea after it like a dark crime. It is quiet with the old gap of complete despair. I live here. Okay, the moon is no door. Now some people mount about poetry because they say, "Oh God, you've got to get so deep into the thing. It goes on and on and you've got to think about this word and that word. Whereas prose, you can just race along. It's true, but to me that is it's great pleasure. So when I read a phrase in a poem like, "The moon is no door," I think, "Oh, I'm looking forward to getting talked into this. Why is it no door?" Now it could be a simple thing here. She just said the speaker that she can't find her way out of this graveyard. Maybe that's a physical problem that she actually can't find the pathway out of the graveyard. Or maybe some obsession with death that she can't find her way out of. Some state of mind she can't find her way out of. And some people could just say, "The moon is no door." So the moon's not going to be a way out. That's the simple interpretation of it. So she rejects the moon as an escape from this confusion, this being lost. But of course I had to go and investigate this a bit more. I found out there's a thing called a moon gate, which features heavily in traditional Chinese weddings. And it's a circular sort of moon shaped door that the couple stepped through for good fortune. And then I found what about this because Sylvia Plath is American, that during the period she would have been growing up in America. Outside toilets often had a crescent moon caught into the door to provide light to be a primitive air freshener. And also there had been a point where that symbolised that it was the woman's Tyler. And the men had a son type hole, which showed that that was their toilet. So God it suddenly got very mythical and mystical. And all that stuff. I don't know if either of those are at all relevant. But I've learnt so much from going down the wormholes of poems. Is it wormholes? People go down. Is it rabbitholes? The holes, anyway. I've described them before on this podcast as being like an advent calendar. You open the door and then you just keep going another door, another door. But the moon is no door as we've established here. And maybe it just means that I'm lost. I can't get out the graveyard. The moon's no help because it's not a door. The moon is no door. It is a face in its own right. White as a knuckle. And terribly upset. Okay. So of course it is a face in its own right. The moon. And you get a lot of the moon in Sylvia Plath poems. And she seems fascinated by. Well, I grew up calling the man in the moon, but I think she sees as the woman in the moon. White as a knuckle and terribly upset. That's clever, isn't it? Because when you clench your fists, your knuckles do go white and slightly circular, white, shape-ish. And if the moon is terribly upset, then of course that's what her knuckles will look like because she'll be clenching her fists in anguish. It is quiet with the o-gaype of complete despair. Oh, so good. Listen to that. The moon. Of course the moon does drag the sea because it affects the tide. But like a dark crime, something that it's done, something that it regrets, but something it can't shake off. It has to carry it everywhere like the mark of cane. Which cane got for killing able. O-gaype, capital O, hyphen, g-a-p-e. And it's that. The way the moon has got that really open mouth when you look at that thing that seems to be a face on the moon. And she is seeing that as the o-gaype of complete despair. I think one could argue there's an element of pathetic fallacy going on here, which is a literary technique I have spoken about before on this podcast. But a stanza that begins, this is the light of the mind, cold and planetary. It's saying that the world tonight is reflecting my inner feelings. And that's what pathetic fallacies about. It's sort of sympathetic and a fallacy because it's not really true. It's how we feel. It's profoundly subjective. And that is why the moon looks so sad, so despairing maybe, because the speaker might be projecting her feelings onto it. And that line ends. So with the o-gaype of complete despair, I live here. Now again, in that term, as I was saying, what's physical and what's mental in this poem, I live here. You live here near the graveyard. Or you live in this state. This state of being white as a knuckle and terribly upset. This state of having the o-gaype of complete despair. I live here. This is my life. Twice on Sunday, the bell startled the sky. Eight great tongues affirming the resurrection. At the end, they soberly bong out their names. So obviously, if she's in a graveyard, there'll be a church there. So she says, I live here. And I think she is talking about the state of mind. I think she's talking about the sort of darkness, the death obsession, the broken hearted moon that that is where she lives. She's also saying, I do live here. And I'll tell you something about living here. And that is that twice on Sunday, the bells startled the sky. So the church bells ring. So the tongues, the metal, I can't think of a word for that bit in the middle of a bell that doesn't sound disgusting. Let's call them the tongues. Those metal bits. So yes, they celebrate Christianity. Jesus rising from the dead as we all will, as the people in that graveyard will. That's what the bells are saying. not suggesting. for a second the speaker agrees. At the end they soberly bonge out their names. Now what does that mean you're wondering? Well the thing they've said this massive important thing about the resurrection, these eight great tongues and then they soberly bonge out their names. And what often happens in church bells is they send out this it's like playing a scale I believe it's it's either lightest to heavy spell or heaviest to lightest. This is not Frank Skinner's Campanology podcast. But it sort of goes dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun. So it's an octave you will have heard it and that's what she's talking about and they bonge out their names because it's sort of identifying them as the heaviest bell the next heaviest next heaviest after that. So it's a sort of a after the grandeur of celebrating the resurrection. It's quite a mundane ending to that. And I think this poem is partly about a sort of a disillusionment with Christianity. So here I guess it's kind of saying yeah it started grey and then it just went a bit ordinary. Next answer the utree points up it has a gothic shape the eyes lift after it and find the moon the moon is my mother the utree points up so at last the utree from the title makes an appearance in the third stanza it points up and it has a gothic shape so it feels a bit like a church of course I went off to research utree's and it's fascinating reading. Apparently get this there are about 500 church yards in England that have utree's that are older than the actual church next to them. So they were their first and that sort of puts them it makes them feel very pre-Christian doesn't it? I mean apparently they live about 2000 years. Utree's all they can do again amazing I know but the idea there are a lot of them 500 of them in England are older than the church building that they're at the side of I think that's interesting there's even more interesting stuff they are seen as a symbol of the resurrection because sometimes when the branches drop off utree's they grow again as little individual trees which I understand is quite unusual in the in the tree world so life they renew life symbol of resurrection but also the utree is very poisonous so it's also seen as a symbol of death I go into this symbol scene because Sylvia loves a bit of that a bit of symbolism but the utree yeah it's a really interesting thing and the way it the way it reaches up here and it says it points upwards I don't know if I should tell you this but I will do apparently in ancient Roman literature there's quite a lot of suicides who kill themselves by taking you poison but I'm trying to keep this out of the biographical as much as I can it's not easy the utree point so it has a gothic shape so it's a bit church like the eyes lift after it and find the moon so I think at first because it's in a church child because it's pointing upwards because it's gothic we think it's pointing to God but it seems to be pointing at the moon this old mysterious utree with all its symbolism of death and resurrection it's almost like yeah it was there before the church and maybe it's a sort of a bit of a spy on the inside a pagan spy that lives in a Christian church actually just tries to encourage us to look up at them the moon this this tragic goddess yeah I'm going to do this as well there's a book called The White Goddess by Robert Graves it was very fine poet and also wrote I think I Claudius and those things I haven't read the whole book I got about halfway through and then I had a desperate desire to light a joystick so I put it down but it's a very mythical magical book in which Graves says that poetry used to be the language of magicians magicians who presided over these ceremonies in which they worshiped the white goddess and she's like a muse and poetry had magical powers and this I'm going way back now obviously and this threatened people like the Greek philosophers and a Christianity and so they sort of kept it down and suppressed it and turned it into a nice manageable friendly little thing but occasionally according to Graves when you read poetry and it makes the hair stand up on the back of your neck it's because it is indeed in touch with the white goddess it is a celebration a magical prayer to the muse and that's why it affects you I mention this because Sylvia Plath and yeah I'm going to mention the bad guy if that's how you see him Ted Hughes they both loved loved that book and found some truth in it I suppose any poet likes the idea that the poets used to be the great sort of pre-strope magicians of an ancient time when they conjured up the muse the white goddess the moon goddess right I think I've got that out my system there's more there's a lot more I could tell you but I mean for example the goddess is married to two they're sort of kings the king of the waxing year and the king of the the waning year and it's to do with the waxing and the waning of the moon and they sort of take it in turns to be her consort if you like but there's a rivalry they like blood brothers and the king of the waning year is quite a sort of a dark frightening figure but I want to imagine if you will and yeah we are going into biography but it's imaginary biography imagine Sylvia sitting with a husband Ted Hughes is a tall thin dark brooding figure of a man and they read the white goddess together and then they talk about the sort of the dark side the god of the waning year and this is what Graves says about him the king of the waning year often appears in nightmare as the tall lean dark head bedside specter oh that Sylvia couldn't look him in the eye after they'd read that together okay so the utree points up it has a gothic shape the eyes lift after it and find the moon the moon is my mother now this has caused lots of critics to say that this poem is about Sylvia's mother which was actually a very fine song by Dr Hook but to check it out it's about Sylvia's mother as the moon and it's about Sylvia's father who's the utree there's a lot of this usually everything in the poem is either Ted Hughes or Sylvia's mom or Sylvia's dad or Ted Hughes is mistress and people enjoy pulling apart not Frank the moon is my mother I think means that I feel a strong attachment to the moon as we've already established this terribly upset creature with the old game of complete despair it drags the sea after it like a dark crime. I mean yes I think the speaker does identify with the moon and sees it as her mother. The moon is my mother and here again we're going to get this contrast between Christianity and a sort of a darker, deeper, more Robert Graves white goddess pagan, earthier nature worshipping world. Okay. The moon is my mother she's not sweet like Mary. Her blue garments on loose small bats and owls. How I would like to believe in tenderness the face of the effigy gentle by candles bending on me in particular it's mild eyes. So she compares the this tragic moon with Mary the blessed virgin the mother of Jesus and she says the moon is my mother she's not sweet like Mary so she's not sweet. I don't think pagan goddesses tend to be sweet they tend to be scary. Now Mary the mother of Jesus always wears blue. The sky is blue at the moment the light is blue so they are like the moon's garments. Her blue garments on loose small bats and owls and of course the moon does seem to release not turn or creatures like bats and owls to shake them from its garments. I would like to believe in tenderness back to the virgin Mary now the face of the effigy remember there's a church near by almost certainly a some image at some statue of Mary the face of the effigy gentle by candles what a fantastic phrase that is gentle by candles. Bending on me in particular it's mild eyes so she's sort of part of her aches for that kind of warm loving not so scary crazed desperately upset pagan moon like mother. I have fallen a long way this is the next stands are the last dancers in fact I have fallen a long way clouds of flowering blue and mystical over the face of the stars so I've fallen a long way I don't know if she means I don't think for a second she means that she has physically fallen I think again this is an internal thing I have fallen maybe she means that she was Christian but not anymore she's fallen from grace if you like and fallen into something more earthy and pagan maybe she means that maybe she has just fallen she's broken she's on the floor clouds of flowering blue and mystical over the face of the star so maybe that again is the morning starting to happen clouds flowering blue and mystical over the face of the stars that strange one in television they call on the blink when it's neither light nor dark inside the church so now we're thinking about the church building in this graveyard inside the church the saints will be all blue floating on their delicate feet over the cold pews their hands and faces stiff with holiness so she's imagining in the church now again with this light inside this deserted church deserted because it's you know it's virtually night time there's no one in there except the statues and the pictures and that's what I think she means when she says inside the church the saints will be all blue these figures around the church floating on their delicate feet over the cold pews now it sounds quite mystical I think it means the statues are raised and they seem to be floating on their delicate feet over the cold pews cold pews again they probably are cold at this time of the night but it also seems like a dissatisfaction and a rejection of formal Christianity their hands and faces stiff with holiness well of course if their statues they will be stiff but also that suggests a lack of freedom a lack of wild expression and passion that the speaker clearly wants from religion but doesn't feel she can get from Christianity okay last two lines the moon sees nothing of this she's bald and wild and the message of the utree is blackness blackness and silence few the moon sees nothing of this she doesn't go inside the church in that way she's not off that world she's bald and wild and of course the moon does look bald and its face it's terribly upset face with that that o-gaype of complete despair it does look wild and clearly otherworldly as it is sort of another world the moon sees nothing of this is bald and wild which contrasts as well with that image of Mary who was gentle by candles and as mild eyes rather than than wild eyes and the message of the utree's blackness blackness and silence so the speaker a despairing figure it seems in many ways looks to the utree but I don't know if she's aware of the image of of resurrection that's associated with the utree the image of immortality because of its great age she chooses its poison its connection with death and the message of the utree is blackness blackness and silence okay I was going to do another self-eoplast poem but I just got engrossed to be honest forgive me for that but I enjoyed it I have to say and like I say feel free obviously to impose or release the biographical elements of this poetry if you must and if you want to make the moon all my plath and the utree potentially Nazi father um go for it I think that's it's you know it's whatever whatever you need from a poem for me I'm just happy with a weird crazy mystical Robert Graves white goddess ordnance and just the beautiful language the beautiful phrasing the great skill of Sylvia Plath thanks for listening to Frank Skinner's poetry podcast don't forget to follow so you never miss an episode and you can also catch me every Saturday at 8am on absolute radio there'll be less poetry in that but more jokes see you next week