I'm a riddle in nine syllables.
An elephant, a ponderous house,
A melon strolling on two tendrils.
O red fruit, ivory, fine timbers!
This loaf's big with its yeasty rising.
Money's new-minted in this fat purse.
I'm a means, a stage, a cow in calf.
I've eaten a bag of green apples,
Boarded the train there's no getting off.
Sylvia Plath
March 20th 1959
This is more of an exercise than a poem, but a delightful thing it is. Plath was at Yaddo then, and on the verge of a poetic breakthrough; one that would give rise to a nascent
Ariel voice that would later provide her with a torrent of good poems.
But first she produced this aptly titled little nine-by-nine square poem.
Another work from this period, the seven-part Poem for a Birthday, and in particular its last section, The Stones, generally are considered to be the marking-point of something new and original arising in Plath's work. Coincidentally, it's dated "4 November 1959."
Let us hope.
1 comment:
"Metaphors" has been a favourite of mine for years. It's a wonderful poem, I think, and, for me, it's formal symmetry neither intrudes nor detracts from it.
I was, incidentally, in Heptonstall churchyard (where Plath is buried)only last week.
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