March 21: World Poetry Day

This is probably not shocking to anyone but I love poetry. “Wow an English major that loves poetry!” is not a revolutionary statement in the slightest.

I dunno, I’m just hungry.

When I was younger, I LOVED to write poetry. I still do but I would write pages of really terrible and depressing poetry. There were so many black roses that symbolized my ~angst~ ugh it was a dark time. I would share some but it is on my old laptop and honestly, y’all will judge me.

WAIT OMG. I found my old fiction press account.

This is called “withdrawl.” All lower case. I published this on Valentine’s Day 2007. It wouldn’t let me copy and paste it so here it is in original formatting.

looooooooooooooooool

 

Anyway enough embarrassing poetry, my favourite poet of all time is Sylvia Plath. This is also not a shocking statement.

I have Ariel which is her (only?) published book of poems.

Here, read some poems.

Mad Girl’s Love Song

“I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)”

Daddy

“…Bit my pretty red heart in two.

I was ten when they buried you.

At twenty I tried to die

And get back, back, back to you.

I thought even the bones would do.”

Lady Lazarus (Fun fact: I will eventually get a stanza from this tattooed on me cause I’m ~deep~)

Out of the ash

I rise with my red hair

And I eat men like air.

I also greatly enjoy e.e. cummings. Reading his work is extremely stressful because the structure of his poems are….modern? post-modern? confusing???

Buffalo Bill’s

Buffalo Bill ’s

defunct

               who used to

               ride a watersmooth-silver

                                                                  stallion

[i carry your heart with me (i carry it in]

here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

When I studied English, I read a lot of weird stuff. This poem (“This Is Just To Say” by William Carlos Williams) is NOT the weirdest by far, but the student’s interpretation of it has made it forever memorable. The poem is the narrator “apologizing” for eating someone’s plums. It comes off satirical in tone, especially at the end when they begin to describe the delicious plums to mock the person who was planning on eating them.

One student shared that they thought it was a metaphor for rape as fruit tends to be associated with virginity and “eating the plums” was a metaphor for “zero consent.” Extremely interesting analysis, everyone in that class began paying attention as the class was as boring as those plums were delicious.

This Is Just To Say

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

If you know of any good poems, share them my way!