This is a favorite anthology of mine. I used it a few years ago when I was teaching a course on Modern American Poetry. It's as heavy as a brick and pretty expensive, and I haven't taught that course again, so I haven't used it in class again. However, this anthology contains poems I have found in no other anthology, so I keep tapping it for its riches. For example, here is a poem Richard Wilbur wrote, remembering his early meeting with Sylvia Plath:
Cottage
Street, 1953 by Richard Wilbur
Framed
in her phoenix fire-screen, Edna Ward
Bends
to the tray of Canton, pouring tea
For
frightened Mrs. Plath; then, turning toward
The
pale, slumped daughter, and my wife, and me,
Asks
if we would prefer it weak or strong.
Will
we have milk or lemon, she enquires?
The
visit seems already strained and long.
Each
in his turn, we tell her our desires.
It
is my office to exemplify
The
published poet in his happiness,
Thus
cheering Sylvia, who has wished to die;
But
half-ashamed, and impotent to bless,
I
am a stupid life-guard who has found,
Swept
to his shallows by the tide, a girl
who,
far from shore, has been immensely drowned,
And
stares through water now with eyes of pearl.
How
large is her refusal; and how slight
That
genteel chat whereby we recommend
Life,
of a summer afternoon, despite
The
brewing dusk which hints that it may end.
And
Edna Ward shall die in fifteen years,
After
her eight-and eighty summers of
Such
grace and courage as permit no tears,
The
thin hand reaching out, the last word love,
Outliving
Sylvia who, condemned to live,
Shall
study for a decade, as she must,
To
state at last her brilliant negative
In
poems free and helpless and unjust.
He wrote this in 1976, in hindsight. I am haunted by this poem. It connects , for me, with Seamus Heaney's words on Plath, quoted in a post here a few weeks ago.
No comments:
Post a Comment