Epitaph for Fire and Flower

My delay in sitting down to write my response to the blog number two topic has actually serendipitously allowed me to to answer it much better. Although I've read, enjoyed, and studied several of Plath and Hughes' poems, I could not say until today that one of them evoked a strong response in me. "Epitaph for Fire and Flower" stands out to me as different from most of Plath's writing, while still containing much of what makes her poetry beautiful and, at times, difficult.

If you'd like to refresh yourself on the poem:

You might as well haul up
This wave's green peak on wire
To prevent fall, or anchor the fluent air
In quartz, as crack your skull to keep
These two most perishable lovers from the touch
That will kindle angels' envy, scorch and drop
Their fond hearts charred as any match.

Seek no stony camera-eye to fix
The passing dazzle of each face
In black and white, or put on ice
Mouth's instant flare for future looks;
Stars shoot their petals, and suns run to seed,
However you may sweat to hold such darling wrecks
Hived like honey in your head.

Now in the crux of their vows hang your ear,
Still as a shell: hear what an age of glass
These lovers prophesy to lock embrace
Secure in museum diamond for the stare
Of astounded generations; they wrestle
To conquer cinder's kingdom in the stroke of an hour
And hoard faith safe in a fossil.

But though they'd rivet sinews in rock
And have every weathercock kiss hang fire
As if to outflame a phoenix, the moment's spur
Drives nimble blood too quick
For a wish to tether: they ride nightlong
In their heartbeats' blazing wake until red cock
Plucks bare that comet's flowering.

Dawn snuffs out star's spent wick,
Even as love's dear fools cry evergreen,
And a languor of wax congeals the vein
No matter how fiercely lit; staunch contracts break
And recoil in the altering light: the radiant limb
Blows ash in each lover's eye; the ardent look
Blackens flesh to bone and devours them.

This is as near to love-poetry that Plath's writing has ventured. If one just reads the first stanza, one might even be inclined to think this is a romantic poem, reflecting positive emotions and desires from one lover to another. But if the reader begins the poem before the first stanza, she will already see that the words to follow are framed as an epitaph - a short commentary to commemorate the deceased. Something, then, has died or will die. The reader already knows how the poem ends before they even begin reading it.

The first stanza exemplifies Plath's surreal imagery, a common characteristic of her writing. These surreal images and ideas are often what make readers struggle with her poems, but also are part of what makes them beautiful and worthwhile. The intricacy of the images closely mimics the true complexity of the idea she is expressing. Even when visions and ideas are almost too great, too grand, and too elusive to articulate with human language, with English words, Plath seems to find a way to pack this incredible depth and breadth of the human experience into just a few lines or phrases. The first stanza says that to keep the two lovers apart is futile. But she cannot just say "it's futile, sorry guys." The true depth and quality of that futility and the fervor of their desire can only be imagined by presenting something that one can only imagine: hanging an ocean wave on a wire or anchoring the air down. She makes something invisible and incredibly real in her mind understandable to us only by showing us something unimaginable.

Plath's choice of ocean wave and "fluent air" as her hypothetical images stands out to me. Water and air are two of the most essential needs for humans to thrive. We would quickly die without either. We need them. We crave them. We take them in, we drink in water, we breathe in air. Yet, both water and air can kill. An ocean wave is an aggressive and fierce force that is not life-giving but rather a dangerous and life-taking element in nature. In the same way, when air becomes to forceful it can cause such deadly damage. In Plath's recurring images of seaside storms, sharks washed up in gardens, and windows blown out by raging winds, ocean waves and fluent air are a foreboding sign. It's an interesting idea I'd maybe like to consider further: that which we need to live is that which kills us.

After describing just how ferociously and passionately these two lovers are, Plath goes on to describe how the pair wish to "secure in museum diamond" and "hoard faith safe in a fossil." Of course, happy lovers want to stay in a happy state. No one wants the honeymoon phase to end, a fiery romance to fade. But these descriptions don't just suggest pausing time to stay in the current state nor of keeping the passion amplified. Items secured in a museum or fossilized in rock are lifeless. They are contained. They are stifled. They can't move, grow, or change. That sounds terribly dull. Even if the lovers could lock their "embrace" up, would it not lose it's magic? I would not want a love or romance hoarded safe in a fossil. The "safe" may be gained at the expense of real, of the human.

Despite the lovers attempt to seal the permanence of their love with wedding vows, "the moment's spur drives nimble blood too quick." That intense moment drove them too quickly, as if they used up all their blood and now it's run out. When I see the word "spur" I think of the spur in which you use to make a horse ride faster or of a reward or incentive. The spur of the moment implies quick and thoughtless action, improvised, even reckless. That recklessness seems important. Recklessness ignores or never even sees consequences. One of the lovers' consequences is that the initial passion, "It drives the nimble blood too quickly." It's almost like someone was wounded and bleeding out, and their actions in the moment expedited the inevitable death.

The language in the final stanza is beautiful. "Even as love's dear fools cry evergreen, And a languor of wax congeals the vain." Nimble flowing blood is now wax. We go from an evergreen to congealed wax. A tree that has leaves in all seasons, that never dies, to a symbol of lifelessness and of imitation (wax statues that are only copies of real things come to mind).

No matter how fiercely lit. 

That line is important to me. No matter how great the initial passion, no matter the attempt, will, or determination of the lovers, there is some destiny that is bound to happen. It's presented as a natural and inevitable ordering of events. Perhaps Plath is observing that this is just the nature of relationships, of marriage, of even passion itself. It is intense, we need it, we want to keep it, it eventually destroys us. The is the way of things and she barely makes a judgement about it. Looking at the ending of the poem, "the ardent look blackens flesh to bone and devours them" we see that yes, their passion devoured them, but she doesn't "take back" the impassioned experience itself.

I have a lot of questions following a reading of this poem. The title is "Epitaph for Fire and Flower." An epitaph for whom? Do each of those represent a person (Hughes and Plath, husband and wife), two separate ideas, Fire and Flower being the idea of romance or marriage itself? Whatever we decide fire and flower are, it is they who have died. I'm interested in Fire and Flower having some kind of gender connotations. What to do with fire and flower?...

Lastly, and most interestingly to me, while this poem is primarily about a romantic relationship of some nature, a marriage in particular, there are many parallels one could draw between her description of this marriage and to her marriage to her writing, or even to the creative process as a whole. Some of Hughes' poems in Birthday Letters describe Plath's writing as an almost religious calling, a deeply rooted need she had to produce, to create. He writes that while she needed writing so badly and so ardently worked at it, her writing is also what killed her.

In the same way that we need and desire water and air, yet a horrendous ocean wave and brutal forceful wind can kill, Plath perhaps needed and desired her husband, though he diminished her as a woman in ways. Plath needed to write. She needed to delve into every dark corner of her mind and rediscover her dead father in ways that seemed to Hughes to be unhealthy. It is striking to me that Plath wrote a great deal of very impassioned material in the few years (and especially months) preceding her death, like the lovers in this poem, burning brightly and fiercely. But there was too much burning. Too much to sustain.

Though it does not conclude happily, this is still, in a way, a great love poem to me. It sheds light on the complexity of the reality of marriage for many. It speaks to me on issues bigger than marriage, not stated in the poem, but certainly in ways that are sensible and perfectly relevant. The romantic aspect reminds me so much so of a past relationship. Framing that failed relationship in this poem is almost cathartic. Issues of an artist's relationship to their art is another complex problem that this poem could question. Free will, choice, naivety, marriage vows, sexuality, lust, loss, there are so many dynamics within these few stanzas.

And I still haven't even gotten to the "fire" and "flower"...

Edna St. Vincent Millay preceded Sylvia Plath by several decades. But the ideas in "Epitaph for Fire and Flower" reminded me of this short poem by Millay. There are several readings one could do of this short poem, but I find it relevant in that the more the candle burns, the hotter and brighter the flame, the sooner the candle will melt down, dissipate, die out. But in the last line, Millay has no regrets about the reckless burning. In the same way that Millay writes not of regret, Plath never writes remorse into her poem. The dying is a part of the living, the losing is part of the loving. Not that Plath is a defeatist but perhaps there is still something beautiful to be embraced even if it ends in loss. Anyway, here's the Millay poem:

My candle burns at both ends;

   It will not last the night;

But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends—

   It gives a lovely light!

First Impressions: Unlocking Doors in the Mind's Mansion

My initial reading of Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath's poetry has left a strange but pleasant taste in my literary mouth. Prior to this course I was familiar with only Plath's "The Bell Jar" and a sparse selection of her most anthologized poems. While I loved her novel and have a great appreciation for her prose, I find myself struggling to unpack her poems and easily find meaning, connection, and understanding in them. That is not to say that I do not eventually derive my own meaning in them, connect with them, or discover my understanding of them, but that Plath is work for me. I'm not use to poetry being a task. Perhaps the challenge of peeling open the layers of her poems this semester will cause me to have a greater appreciation for her in the end. Perhaps the labor required of me will make me feel I've earned the glimpse into her mind. For now, though, Plath's early poetry as it appears in "Junevilia" remains something of "an enclosed cosmic circus" built upon "a supercharged system of inner symbols and images," as Ted Hughes expressed in his introduction to "The Collected Poems."

I think that "cosmic circus" was precisely the phrase for which I was searching after my first few Junevilia poems. While I admire and enjoy Plath's very rhythmic and clever use of rhyme, meter, and alliteration, I seemed to lose any sense of meaning in between these precise devices. An example of where I get lost in Plath's flourish imagery is seen in "Moonsong at Morning":

"O moon of illusion, 

enchanting men  

with tinsel vision 

along the vein, 

cocks crow up a rival 

to mock your face 

and eclipse that oval 

which conjured us 

to leave our reason 

and come to this 

fabled horizon 

of caprice. "

But there are certain poems in which Plath's choice in just one specific word will entice me and suggest a great depth of meaning. Her use of the word "whirlpool" in the final stanza of "Family Reunion" creates for me a brilliant image of this swirling, powerful body of water forcibly sucking in, consuming,  and destroying the person "atop the flight of stairs." What is most striking to me about this specific word is not just its implication of luring one in against one's will but also -and especially- that the cause of a whirlpool, in nature, is the presence of opposing currents. The speaker of this poem, be it Plath or an invented narrator, has described the characters and traits of the members of her family reunion. While the speaker is an "opposing current" she is inevitably absorbed into this family, or culture/society of her family. She inevitably casts off her identity (one that contradicts this greater, overwhelming culture) and "make(s) the fatal plunge." This final fatal plunge is made much more rich in meaning to me by the use of that one word: "whirlpool."

It is these select glimpses, moments, short phrases or single words that strike me and entice me to further study Sylvia Plath's poetry. Plath's poetry takes work, but I have an inclination that the journey is worth the effort.

(As a side note, I wonder if Plath ever read or studied the work of Tillie Olsen. Olsen was a phenomenal writer concerned greatly about being sucked into the conformity of an overwhelming society obsessed with sucking up any individuals who are an "opposing current." Plath's voice, or her speaker's, reminds me of Olsen's. Consider tackling Olsen's incredibly dense and moving short stories, layered with both feminist and socialist ideals. Genius writer.)

"Tell Me a Riddle" is a collection of four short stories that will never leave me. This collection shook my world and was unlike any other text I've ever read. Do yourself a favor and read all four stories.

While many in the literary world feel the need to decisively be in either the Plath or Hughes camp, I've discovered I am intrigued and would value a study of both of their works. I have heard Hughes name in passing, only ever in context as being Plath's husband. I dived into his writings with a blank slate, no predispositions, expectations, or pre-formed interpretations. Having no set expectations, I was pleasantly suprised at how much I've thus far enjoyed both his poetry and his prose.

Beginning with the very first poem in our collection, "The Thought-Fox," I was drawn in immediately by the title. I do have a predisposition to liking stories, poems, and images regarding foxes. I long ago fell in love with the fox in Antoine de Saint-Exupery's "The Little Prince" and ever since have had a nostalgic fondness for foxes in literature and art.

I won't go greatly into detail over the meaning and interpretation of Hughes' "The Though-Fox" on this entry because we dissected it pretty fully in class and I would like to avoid redundancy. I was greatly drawn to the idea of a creative thought - a poem, specifically- entering one's mind sneakily, stealthily, slyly as a fox. Comparing the capturing of animals, live and unharmed, to the penning of a "live" and "unmaimed" poem was a genius idea that Hughes delves further into in his essay, which I'll respond to below. Beyond the concept in "The Though-Fox" I truly appreciate the way the poems sounds aloud and the way it feels as it rolls off the tongue. Alliteration and scattered subtle slant rhyme is present but not overwhelming and childish, as evident in the line "Though deeper within darkness//Is entering the loneliness" and, simply but beautifully, "Cold, delicately as the dark snow." I generally appreciate poetry containing cues to change pace when reading a poem out loud. The repetition in the lines "Two eyes serve a movement, that now/And again now, and now, and now" is not without purpose. Nothing a (good) poet does is without purpose. One is almost forced to slow down and pause, and perhaps take an intentional breath, between each repetition of "and now"which builds the image of the fox actually slowing down, making a movement, stopping, making a movement, stopping, and a then a final movement. This poem is only perfectly understood when read out loud; it is only perfectly read out loud when the reader is cognizant of these delightful devices that augment so cleverly the meaning. And it seems in exploring more of Hughes' poetry that a greater depth of meaning is found in its oral recitation. 

I will conclude with my abbreviated thoughts on "Poetry in the Making." Abbreviating my response to this will be a challenge for me. As I read through his journey from youthful animal-capturer turned poet, I found in his prose content that is incredibly insightful and language that is incredibly fluid. The image of our minds as mansions containing many locked rooms really struck me as truth. His suggestion for how to deal with those locked rooms, as a creative individual, has left me with much to continually wrestle with outside of the boundaries of LITR 450. Though my printed out copy of the Hughes readings is highlighted and notated through every paragraph, every few sentences, with my favorite words circled in pen and scribbled question marks next to certain ideas, there is one idea that might stand out most paramount in my mind.

That lasting impression is that of Hughes' mastery of poetry, thinking, and observation through fishing. The idea of a fisherman staring "at his float for hours on end" being the key to opening a door to creativity really struck me. He says, "All the little nagging impulses, that are normally distracting your mind, dissolve." He says they have to or else you cannot not settle down, you'll become inevitably bored and give up. But if they do dissolve you will be reworded by entering "one of the orders of bliss." This sort of nirvana-like focus allows an alertness, an awareness, that in turn allows the mind to take in details and open up imagination.

I think this ability to s-l-o-w down and be still is increasingly becoming a diminishing skill over the generations. It was already becoming evidently problematic in Hughes' days, as I feel like he references in his poem "The Horses," and the mega-busy society we live in now has only become further problematic. Creative process, the artists eye and ear, thrives on the stillness, on simple moments, on slowing down of the mind long enough to tap in to our over stuffed, over run, over stressed human brains and retain one or more of those fleeting beautiful, creative, genius thoughts.

I have always  been fascinated by the idea of doing things the slow way and have tried to intentionally engage in some tasks that slow the body and brain down, that require a Hughes' fisherman-type of dissolving nagging impulses. I take my time preparing and cooking almost every meal I eat: I hand chop fresh vegetables, I go through the motions almost ritualistically, I enjoy the sounds of onions popping into heated oil on an iron skillet, I stir in an array of toppings and ingredients til things look just right. I make my coffee in slow-brew methods, grinding my coffee beans fresh each morning, waiting for the kettle to boil on the stove, pouring the water over the single cup filter, listening to the dripping coffee falling into the ceramic mug. It's all a drawn out process. And I don't turn the TV on while I do it. I don't turn the radio on. Other than the occasional passing car or my cat knocking something over in another room, there are no sounds. I often just let the stillness settle in around me.

The magical element to stillness, and dissolving into it, Ray Bradbury wrote about in his semi-autobiographical novel "Dandelion Wine." Within this story there is a high-tech grass invented that only grows to such a height and then stops so that one never needs to mow the lawn again. The grandfather is appalled at this and explains the importance of doing seemingly mundane activities like mowing the lawn and picking dandelions. It is not that grass needs to be mowed, but that it is in human nature to need to mow grass - to be alone, to think, to philosophize, to escape, to be, as Hughes would agree, still.

A beautifully written novel that is perfect to read as Summer ends. As the cover states, it's a "magical evocation of boyhood and summer." Even girls ought to read stories of boyhood and summer.

All this talk of embracing the stillness has ironically energized me. As Autumn is nearly upon us and Winter never long around the corner, I naturally find myself in a season in which I'm more inclined to embrace stillness over movement, silence over noise, solitude over socializing. Perhaps I'll unlock some of those rooms in the mansion of my mind and produce something beautiful for the world.