2015: The Year of Reading Women discussion

I'll edit this post later to something more suitable, but I did want to mention that, in case anybody didn't know, that subfolders only go down one level in Goodreads groups.

This means that we cannot, unfortunately, put this folder under Sylvia Plath, because the file structure doesn't go deep enough for that.
(I'll erase all of the above once the group gets started properly)

For now, let's test it out, and make this our discussion thread for Ariel by Sylvia Plath.

It seems that - if I understand it correctly - different editions of Ariel (the older ones vs. the post-2004 editions) seem to share ca. 75% of the material. Out of 43 poems in the pre-2004 editions 12 to 14 were selected by Hughes, most of them written in the period directly preceding Plath's suicide. The restored edition - and I beg you to correct me if I'm mistaken - eliminated them, adding 12 or 13 poems included in the Plath selection. Shoudl this be the case, I'm not sure how to handle a group reading of these two collections (provided that I'm not the only person in the group who uses the old edition - I can be flexible).

(Oh, it turns out there's one more 'restored' edition - seemingly one following Hughes' selection, with facsimiles of original poems and a foreword by Frieda Hughes.
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/... )

Since Traveller proposed that we post the list of poems in our editions, and my - definitely pre-2004 - copy of Ariel will only reach me in January, I can post the list of contents of the 1965 version as it appears in the Wikipedia entry on Ariel:

Morning Song
The Couriers
Sheep in Fog *
The Applicant
Lady Lazarus
Tulips
Cut
Elm
The Night Dances
Poppies in October
Berck-Plage
Ariel
Death & Co.
Lesbos (censored in some publications, not included in UK version)
Nick and the Candlestick
Gulliver
Getting There
Medusa
The Moon and the Yew Tree
A Birthday Present
Mary's Song * (only in US version)
Letter in November
The Rival
Daddy
You're
Fever 103°
The Bee Meeting
The Arrival of the Bee Box
Stings
The Swarm * (only in US version)
Wintering
The Hanging Man *
Little Fugue *
Years *
The Munich Mannequins
Totem *
Paralytic *
Balloons *
Poppies in July *
Kindness *
Contusion *
Edge *
Words *

(Poems marked with an asterisk were added by Ted Hughes.)

Hmm, I have the restored Faber & Faber edition with the foreword by Hughes.

It has:
Dedication
Morning Song
The Couriers
The Rabbit Catcher
Thalidomide
The Applicant
Barren Woman
Lady Lazarus
Tulips
A Secret
The Jailor
Cut Elm
The Night Dances
The Detective
Ariel Death & Co.
Magi
Lesbos
The Other
Stopped Dead
Poppies in October
The Courage of Shutting-Up
Nick and the Candlestick
Berck-Plage
Gulliver
Getting There
Medusa
Purdah
The Moon and the Yew Tree
A Birthday Present
Letter in November
Amnesiac
The Rival
Daddy
You're
Fever 103°
The Bee Meeting
The Arrival of the Bee Box
Stings
Wintering

..so obviously my copy is missing a good few, but it also seems to have one or two in addition?

Yikes, was typing and didn't see your post Trav. Looks like I have the same edition as you ;)

Yolande wrote: "Yikes, was typing and didn't see your post Trav. Looks like I have the same edition as you ;)"

It does look that way. But like you, I am also a completetist, so here's a suggestion:
I might be able to find them online; and then what I will do, is I will post them (all of them) 2 poems at a time in this thread, a week ahead of time, which will give us a week to read them and think about them, and then we comment on them the next weekend, and that weekend I, (or someone else, as you wish), will post the next two poems and so on.

In other words, I would post the first 2 poems here now-ish, and then we start discussing those poems on the official start date of January 1. (I'd suggest sooner, but I suppose we should be fair to potential newcomers ?)

What do you think?

That looks to be the best option. I love that we're all so fired up for this :-)

Well, then, the first poem would be:

Morning Song

Love set you going like a fat gold watch.
The midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bald cry
Took its place among the elements.

Our voices echo, magnifying your arrival. New statue.
In a drafty museum, your nakedness
Shadows our safety. We stand round blankly as walls.

I’m no more your mother
Than the cloud that distills a mirror to reflect its own slow
Effacement at the wind’s hand.

All night your moth-breath
Flickers among the flat pink roses. I wake to listen:
A far sea moves in my ear.

One cry, and I stumble from bed, cow-heavy and floral
In my Victorian nightgown.
Your mouth opens clean as a cat’s. The window square

Whitens and swallows its dull stars. And now you try
Your handful of notes;
The clear vowels rise like balloons.

..and poem number 2 would be:

The Couriers

The word of a snail on the plate of a leaf?
It is not mine. Do not accept it.

Acetic acid in a sealed tin?
Do not accept it. It is not genuine.

A ring of gold with the sun in it?
Lies. Lies and a grief.

Frost on a leaf, the immaculate
Cauldron, talking and crackling

All to itself on the top of each
Of nine black Alps.

A disturbance in mirrors,
The sea shattering its grey one ----

Love, love, my season.

Thank you, Traveller! :)

I own the 1965 edition, just like the one you ordered Bloodorange, with the exact poems listed in the same order, but Trav's idea to post them here is very functional as we can all know where we are regardless of the edition we have.
Excited to find two poems already published in the thread and starting to muse over the first one. Keeping my first impressions to myself until January and boiling with anticipation. Thanks for organizing this reading with your motivating implication and efficiency, Trav! :)

You're welcome, friends! :)

Thanks to Bloodorange for all her hard work on the the other threads as well.
It is a great temptation to start a bit earlier with the poetry, isn't it? ..but that would be unfair to people who assume all our reads are only starting in January, I suppose.

The Bee poems in Ariel are some of my favorites.

Not too long ago, I discovered that the Modern American Poetry website has a section devoted to Syliva Plath's bee poems. I've found it to be useful.

http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/...

Dharmakirti wrote: "The Bee poems in Ariel are some of my favorites.

Not too long ago, I discovered that the Modern American Poetry website has a section devoted to Syliva Plath's bee poems. I've found it to be us..."

That is indeed very interesting, Dharmakirti, thanks for the link!

For anyone interested who does not have this, here is the foreword by Frieda Hughes in the faber & faber restored edition:

http://arlindo-correia.com/080405.html

Yolande wrote: "For anyone interested who does not have this, here is the foreword by Frieda Hughes in the faber & faber restored edition:

http://arlindo-correia.com/080405.html"

Thanks, Yolande, very useful!

Yolande wrote: "For anyone interested who does not have this, here is the foreword by Frieda Hughes in the faber & faber restored edition:

http://arlindo-correia.com/080405.html"

That was really interesting, thanks for sharing the link.

Excellent link that I will spend some time exploring, thanks Yolande!!

Yolande, there was a lot of interesting information in the link you posted. Thank you.

The first two poems in "Ariel" are about relationships. "Morning Song" is about maternal feelings. When I read "The Couriers", the paraphrase "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned" came to mind.

In "Morning Song" Plath shows us the development of her maternal feelings by first describing her newborn as a statue, an inanimate thing, and later as a living, breathing baby. She describes conception, the start of years of life ticking down, as "Love set you going like a fat gold watch." They are seeing the newborn as a "new statue." I can picture them counting the fingers and toes, seeing if her features resemble her mother or father, as a museum patron examines a fascinating work of art. She writes: "I am no more your mother/Than the cloud that distills a mirror to reflect its own slow/Effacement at the wind's hand."

Her maternal feelings develop later. During the night she listens as the baby breathes. I love the way she describes the delicate breath: "All night your moth-breath flickers among the flat pink roses." She's on her feet immediately with the baby's cry with her breasts swelling with milk "cow-heavy" and "your mouth opens clean as a cat's." As dawn breaks, she describes the baby's cry in a happy, celebratory manner: "And now you try/Your handful of notes:/The clear vowels rise like balloons." The mother and baby have bonded.

"...the cloud that distills a mirror to reflect its own slow
Effacement at the wind’s hand."

May I jump in from my lurker mode to call attention to the words in the phrase above?
(Yeah, I know, I just did. ;-0) Anyway, won't count how long it took me to think of a mirror lying on the ground reflecting the sky and that "distill" might not mean "take the essence of" but rather "make not still" the mirror's reflection of the gently wind-blown cloud. And am not sure of this reading -- I don't "do" poetry particularly well. Any feedback appreciated.

(Appreciated Connie's interpretive remarks very much.)

Oh, today is Friday, and that counts as the start of the weekend, right? So, let us jump in with the first two poems without much more ado.

Oh wait, we already have... :D

I'll come back in more detail later, but I just want to mention that I read the poems completely cold turkey, and did not even realize at first that Morning Song is actually about an actual baby and not a metaphor for something else, ha.

But yeah, she did apparently write it in response to the birth of her first baby.

It would actually be nice to discuss this particular poem in tandem with and with reference to The Bell Jar. I haven't finished the latter yet, but some very ambivalent feelings toward motherhood is displayed in it.

Traveller wrote: "...but some very ambivalent feelings toward motherhood are displayed in it...."

Actually, one of the reasons I was grateful for Connie's interpretive remarks was that my initial reading of the poem had left me with far less positive images/feelings. Not sure I can analyze why -- always much harder to me for poetry than prose.

Hello everybody, so glad to see activity on this thread!
Connie, I found your interpretation of the first poem really envisioning and somehow much more optimistic than my own reading.
I also detected the bond between mother and child, but I read a more gloomy undertone in Plath's -I suppose- experience as a mother...and its effects of that condition as a poet.
Imagine the scene: a baby crying a morning song (loved the imagery of vowels like balloons mimicking the shape of the rounded mouth of a brawling baby) and the mother (presumably Sylvia) sensing the merciless passage of time, maybe even of mortality, maybe even of the Independence of her child as a separate entity from her, after her essential role of bringing him into life and having sacrificed her liberty to tend to her baby.
Clocks tick out, the baby cries, he reasserts his individuality and the mother devotes her time and freedom to his well-being.
Couldn't that idea be related to the artist and the act of creation? After the poem has been written, it assimilates a life of its own, which is no longer controllable by its own creator.

And Trav! I managed to locate some vibes in "The Bell Jar" regarding the insurmountable passage of time and the "tickling of that gold watch" in chapter 1 when the barriers of time dissolve in a subtle reference to the future when Esther mentions her baby playing with a plastic she cut off her sunglasses case.
Also, in chapter 6 when the visit to the hospital with Buddy occurs and Esther witnesses a childbirth in live and her description echoes the attention the newborn is given while the mother assumes a secondary role and is almost neglected, discarded, left in pain and drugged. Again, the conflicting image of devoted motherhood and the loss of autonomy as a human being crossed my mind.

I must tell you that I am going through a LOT of disillusionment reading The Bell Jar.
I had always heard so much about Sylvia Plath that a certain amine of her had formed in my mind, and maybe I had also equated her a little bit in my mind with Virgina Woolf.

But the picture of her that is now emerging of her in my mind, both as a writer and as a person, is light years removed from the picture I have of Virginia Woolf.

There is no doubt whatsoever in my mind that Virginia is extremely intelligent and an absolute master at crafting a narrative, and the there are many subtle layers to the person and to her work.

In contrast, Sylvia appears to me as a highly immature person, stunted in her emotional growth, - and maybe a bit eccentric which admittedly makes her poetry interesting.

Traveller wrote: "I must tell you that I am going through a LOT of disillusionment reading The Bell Jar. I had always assumed Sylvia Plath would be somehow more sophisticated and a nicer person, and I can't help f..."

Heh yes, maybe you should replicate your thoughts on the Jell Bar thread Trav, but I hear and see the point of what you are saying. But allow me to ponder out load. Who's not narcissistically self-centered, alienated when confronted with reality and delusions of grandeur and basically selfish during adolescence?
And if you add a mental disorder into the picture the result can be more explosive than a Molotov cocktail.
Maybe because I had previously read "Ariel" but I am more lenient and sympathetic to the predicaments of a young woman who was clearly unhappy and who chose to write what I understand as an unabashedly sincere account of her teenage years. That's of course bound to change as we advance reading in Plath's only novel. Let's see where her thoughts lead us...

Hmm, thanks Dolors, I took that comment to the other thread an adjusted it a bit in this thread...

I think I'll reply to you in the Bell Jar thread, ok?

Lily wrote: ""...the cloud that distills a mirror to reflect its own slow
Effacement at the wind’s hand."

May I jump in from my lurker mode to call attention to the words in the phrase above?
(Yeah, I know, I..."

I was confused about this line too, Lily. A reflection of a cloud in a mirror is not quite the same as the actual cloud. I wondered if Plath felt like a reflection or a picture of a mother, but not an actual mother.

Like the effacement of the cloud where it is being erased or blown away, Plath could also feel that she was being erased as a person since being a writer defined who she was. With the responsibilities of motherhood, she was going to have to change.

This does not fit the words exactly, but it was the best I could come up with. Because of her depression and bipolar condition, Plath seems to look inward more than some other poets. In the poem, she shows both reluctance and happiness about motherhood.

Connie wrote: "Because of her depression and bipolar condition, Plath seems to look inward more than some other poets. In the poem, she shows both reluctance and happiness about motherhood. "

The conflicted feelings you so well point out in the first poem Connie, appear in full force in "The Courier", where Plath uses juxtaposed symbolism to describe what I infer from the "ring of gold" expression to be married life. She seems to grieve over the artifice of a domesticated relationship, "the word of a snail" maybe referring to the slowness of conversation, the slippery routine that conquers time and annihilates substantive communication, hence the reference to lies, artifice and the disappointment that turns into bitterness in "sealed tins".
She loses me with the next couple of stanzas for she incorporates some post-modernist natural imagery which seems to contain the key to unlock the mystery of such doomed relationship. The image of frost and the Alps are reminiscent of virginal white snow, which in turn is contrasted with the black color that describes them.
We encounter a same use of colors in "The Bell Jar" when in Chapter 1, Esther describes a black woman wearing a white dress setting opposite colors against each other that echo the protagonist's changeable mental state.
The Cauldron is crackling with silent pressure and only the coldness of the natural world and prevent it from shattering the mask - artificial mirrors - into grey pieces of dim reality. I also noted the dashes and capital letters of some words, reminiscent of Emily Dickinson, which leads to countless interpretations of the last line of the poem, "Love, love, my season". It could be read as the poet's declaration to remain faithful to "love" regardless of the shifting seasons of a relationship, i.e. the passage of time, and again ending in a circular collision of contradictory terms. Hope or despair? Love or lies? Artifice or nature?

Plath's husband, Ted Hughes, was having an affair with another woman. So I can feel Plath's hurt, anger, and disappointment in this poem. I like your ideas, Dolors, and I'll add on a few more.

The snail on a leaf is going to eat the leaf and leave it all slimy, destroying the leaf so is untrustworthy. Acetic acid is going to corrode the metal of a tin container and ruin both the container and the vinegar. She thought she had the sun (warmth and happiness) in her wedding ring of gold, but all she got was lies.

Then the poem seems to have some cold, wintery images. Frost on a leaf. An immaculate cauldron is one that is empty, and it's all by itself on top of the cold Alps. (I googled the "nine black Alps" and they are the Bernese Alps in Switzerland which are black on the bottom with snow on the top.)

I wonder if the disturbance in mirrors is the change in her reflection in the mirror. Since their relationship has turned cold, she has probably been sleepless, crying, looking and feeling terrible. Like the seasons, love has changed. You expressed the ambivalence of the last line so well, Dolors.

Connie wrote: "Plath's husband, Ted Hughes, was having an affair with another woman. So I can feel Plath's hurt, anger, and disappointment in this poem. I like your ideas, Dolors, and I'll add on a few more.

T..."

Absolutely spot-on interpretation Connie and I couldn't agree more with it!
May I add that the "immaculate" cauldron suggests the image of a domestic scene, a recipient that boiled with nurturing food and normality that is now unused and empty, signalling maybe a separation?
And what about the title of the poem?
Who are the "couriers"? The symbols of deception? The Cauldron, the Frost -sudden coldness in the relationship representing the betrayed trust maybe?-, the Alps?
I note that these three words are written in capital letters...

Dolors, I would think that all the signs and symbols of deception are the couriers since they are conveying a message about the marital relationship.

Some poetry can be read without knowing anything about the writer. But because so much is known about Plath, and because the poems in "Ariel" were written during an emotionally devastating part of her life, I cannot read these poems without assuming they are autobiographical. I'll be curious to see if I get that same feeling when we read on further in "Ariel".

You know, Plath certainly can be read autobiographically, but I do think much of her work can stand on its own, just as any creation (or at least most) has an existence independent of its creator, no matter how dependent its form has been on that creator.

Hm, so an immaculate cauldron on a cold peak, would represent to me an unattainable, frigid virgin, actually. Maybe in this case, simply a frigid woman, not necessarily a virgin, (if it is to denote the coldness in Plath's marriage) but simply an indication of celibacy/sexual frigidity/abstinence, since a cauldron is of course a well-known symbol for a vagina.

Oh gosh, the poems! I am so sorry I forgot, it's been a busy week - will post 2 more poems right away.... (I had actually still planned on commenting on the first two poems, argh...)

Next up: (Apparently this one was written two weeks before her death)

Sheep in Fog
By Sylvia Plath

The hills step off into whiteness.
People or stars
Regard me sadly, I disappoint them.

The train leaves a line of breath.
O slow
Horse the color of rust,

Hooves, dolorous bells ----
All morning the
Morning has been blackening,

A flower left out.
My bones hold a stillness, the far
Fields melt my heart.

They threaten
To let me through to a heaven
Starless and fatherless, a dark water.
===== ===== ======

(It has a melancholy, desolate beauty, doesn't it?)

Sylvia Plath uses images of nature to express feeling lost, isolated, and unwanted. The title, "Sheep in Fog," gives the feeling of being lost and confused.

She depicts a fear of the unknown in the line, "The hills step off into whiteness." She feels she has little value writing, "People or stars/ Regard me sadly. I disappoint them."

She continues with the image of whiteness, a lack of color, in the line "The train leaves a line of breath." Both the train and the horse are moving objects on a journey, but it is a slow journey. "O slow/Horse the colour of rust." The rust color may show that the slow horse is old, worn out, decaying.

"Delorous bells" are ringing for a sad event. The "Morning has been blackening" shows the day going from the confusing whiteness to a darkness.

"A flower left out" is so sad. The flower is unwanted, discarded, left to wilt. She seems emotionally numb as she writes, "My bones hold a stiffness." She gives the impression of longing emotionally for happier times, a different place in "the far/Fields melt my heart."

The poem ends on a dark note describing "a heaven/Starless and fatherless, a dark water." Heaven seems a void, so desolate with no stars for light (so different than the usual picture of a bright sky with beautiful white clouds.) Heaven is also fatherless. It could be a heaven without God the Father. Or it might be referring to Plath's deceased father who died when she was eight years old. She felt than he abandoned her because he refused to get medical treatment for gangrene in his leg.

Although this poem is very beautiful, it is terribly sad. She seems to be contemplating leaving this world for a dark heaven as she writes this poem in the month before her suicide.

Connie wrote: "Sylvia Plath uses images of nature to express feeling lost, isolated, and unwanted. The title, "Sheep in Fog," gives the feeling of being lost and confused.

She depicts a fear of the unknown in t..."

I'm new to the Good Reads community and have been reading along on The Bell Jar - I would love to join this too if I may ... Connie, I love your reading of "Sheep in Fog" here and all of the readings here of the first two poems, especially the attention to colours ... I noticing as well in "Sheep" that feeling of distance pointed out by Traveller in TBJ.

"A disturbance in mirrors" - that line from "The Couriers": WOW. What a line. Does anyone have any suggestions or ideas about the title of that poem? Its relationship to the poem isn't as straightforward as some.

Obscureason wrote: "Does anyone have any suggestions or ideas about the title of that poem? Its relationship to the poem isn't as straightforward as some."

It seems like she's rejecting offers - could the image of couriers be used to reinforce the three questions the poem starts with?

Quoting from Sylvia Plath: An Introduction to the Poetry, 2E by Susan Bassnett

The three questions introduce three distinct images. The first is surrealistic – ‘the word of a snail on the plate of a leaf’, the second is impossible – ‘acetic acid in a scaled tin’ and the third, which ought to be possible is therefore made impossible by being offered after the other two – ‘a ring of gold with the sun in it’. The answer to the first two questions is in the negative and the phrase ‘do not accept it’ is repeated in each. But
the answer to the question about the ring and the sun comes in five words, without a main verb: ‘Lies. Lies and a grief’. The ring of gold, symbol of weddings, of perfection, of power and resolution, is nothing but lies and a grief.

I forgot all of my high school chemistry, so I wouldn't get the acetic acid/ tin fact. Interesting.

The key Basnett uses to read this poem is Celtic mythology and folklore, and I'm not sure I feel brave enough to post that;)

Regarding

' the immaculate
Cauldron, talking and crackling

All to itself on the top of each
Of nine black Alps.

in 'Ariel', 'the cauldron' seems to denote the sun:

The dew that flies
Suicidal, at one with the drive
Into the red
Eye, the cauldron of morning.

Connie wrote: "The "Morning has been blackening" shows the day going from the confusing whiteness to a darkness."

Plus we can have a possible layer of meaning added by the morning/ mourning homophones.

I love reading everyone's ideas about these poems. I was also wondering what "The Couriers" meant so appreciate Bloodorange's research.

Bloodorange wrote: "Connie wrote: "The "Morning has been blackening" shows the day going from the confusing whiteness to a darkness."

Plus we can have a possible layer of meaning added by the morning/ mourning homoph..."

Both of those posts are very helpful, thanks. Plath often has interesting titles for her poems. Going to keep an eye out for that.

Good observations. For me, in Sheep, "The morning had been blackening" especially has powerful force - we usually expect a morning to brighten. It would have had less of a sinister impact if she had said: The evening is blackening - but "The morning is blackening" certainly catches one's attention far more effectively.

Okay, next poem:

The Rabbit Catcher

It was a place of force—
The wind gagging my mouth with my own blown hair,
Tearing off my voice, and the sea
Blinding me with its lights, the lives of the dead
Unreeling in it, spreading like oil.

I tasted the malignity of the gorse,
Its black spikes,
The extreme unction of its yellow candle-flowers.
They had an efficiency, a great beauty,
And were extravagant, like torture.

There was only one place to get to.
Simmering, perfumed,
The paths narrowed into the hollow.
And the snares almost effaced themselves—
Zeros, shutting on nothing,

Set close, like birth pangs.
The absence of shrieks
Made a hole in the hot day, a vacancy.
The glassy light was a clear wall,
The thickets quiet.

I felt a still busyness, an intent.
I felt hands round a tea mug, dull, blunt,
Ringing the white china.
How they awaited him, those little deaths!
They waited like sweethearts. They excited him.

And we, too, had a relationship—
Tight wires between us,
Pegs too deep to uproot, and a mind like a ring
Sliding shut on some quick thing,
The constriction killing me also.

This poem is SO intense. I like (is "like" the right word here?) opening line, and how its spatial reference contrasts so dramatically with the title of the poem, catching the reader off guard. It and the first stanza immediately put you in the speaker's place/spatial position. Really affecting, with the wind, the gagging on one's own hair, voice being "torn off" by the wind, blinded by the sea's lights ... and then suddenly we're launched deep into metaphor, with the lives of the dead unreeling, spreading.

This is such an effective poem, so dark and atmospheric at its start. Then showing us the torture of rabbits being strangled, and finishing with a comparison to her own relationship.

The second stanza has images of torture and death. "I tasted the malignity of the gorse, its black spikes..." Gorse is a plant with thorns. Extreme unction is a sacrament of the sick and dying, a last annointing.

Sylvia Plath wrote "The Rabbit Catcher" in May 1962. In 1998, Ted Hughes published a book of poems, Birthday Letters. He also wrote a poem titled "The Rabbit Catcher", a response to her poem and his version of what occurred on that day. I found it interesting to read.
http://crushedfingers.tumblr.com/post...

I am a little late with this remark, since it concerns the first three poems, sorry! but I've realized this morning I find her consistent (so far) use of water imagery - or rather, bodies of water - interesting:

I’m no more your mother
Than the cloud that distills a mirror to reflect its own slow
Effacement at the wind’s hand. (Morning Song)

A disturbance in mirrors,
The sea shattering its grey one ---- (The Couriers)

They threaten
To let me through to a heaven
Starless and fatherless, a dark water. (Sheep in Fog)

Dark, passive, reflecting, focused on self. Very yin.

Speaking of collections of poems which have been tampered with - have you read Swann by Carol Shields? Fascinating.

Sorry that I'm not commenting more, this is my first time through Ariel, and a bit busy, but in any case, here is the next poem:

Thalidomide

O half moon—-

Half-brain, luminosity—-
Negro, masked like a white,

Your dark
Amputations crawl and appall—-

Spidery, unsafe.
What glove

What leatheriness
Has protected

Me from that shadow—-
The indelible buds.

Knuckles at shoulder-blades, the
Faces that

Shove into being, dragging
The lopped

Blood-caul of absences.
All night I carpenter

A space for the thing I am given,
A love

Of two wet eyes and a screech.
White spit

Of indifference!
The dark fruits revolve and fall.

The glass cracks across,
The image

Flees and aborts like dropped mercury.

Bloodorange, Swann is on my list of books to read. I'll have to move it up after reading your recommendation.

Traveller, thanks for posting the poems.

Connie wrote: "Bloodorange, Swann is on my list of books to read. I'll have to move it up after reading your recommendation."

It's a bit uneven in places, but the subject matter/plot is curiouser and curiouser as you read, in a good way:)