Plath

took some time to read tonight--maybe actually to figure what i should be doing when i try to write--it didn't take me long to find a poem by Sylvia Plath, one of my favorite writers--so controlled, so understated but at the same time screaming in passion--yes, i do like her writing and i would have liked to have had a chance to talk to her, a lot of writers, no, i would be just content to read-but i would have liked to have spent an afternoon with her just to listen and maybe ask a few questions--i wonder if anyone really ever listened to her when she lived--and i think my favorite of all her poems, the one tonight, is a simple poem--yeah, of course, it's anything but simple, called "Mirror"--it starts out with the quiet lines "I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions./Whatever I see I swallow immediately." And in the space of 18 lines tells the life story of a woman --from girlhood to old woman. Everytime i start that poem, it is impossible to stop until I read it several times. It is just so quiet, but in these few lines, the woman confronts her life, tries to discover its meaning, and to work out some acceptance of it all. and the mirror just reflects--"I am not cruel, only truthful-/The eye of the little god, four cornered." and in the end, it seems to me that she has found anything but acceptance. Read this poem, or not--your loss.
peace
-will-