Google Answer? – Fahgettabout it!

[Zlatko Waterman]

Dear Still, old friend:


I'm not certain which remark of mine you might be referring to about Sylvia Plath, but if I hinted she was "irrelevant" ( as a poet), I should be clubbed for it.

What I probably said, and say often, is that the soap opera of Sylvia Plath's life, as opposed to her art, is irrelevant.

As an artist, she was strong, careful and imaginative-- sharp-tongued and meant to be that way-- effective.

The "irrelevant soap opera" aspect of Anne Sexton ( another very strong poet) and Sylvia Plath and their suicides gets in the way of seeing their poetry.

Elizabeth Bishop and Louise Bogan, their slightly ( but very slightly) earlier contemporaries, are poets I often point to whose powerful and brilliant work is not obscured by their recurrent depressions and alcoholism. But I could name many more female poets whose lives would not make "dramatic" movies with "moving" scenes, but nevertheless are first-rate artists.

I have mentioned Marianne Moore. I could mention Adrienne Rich, Muriel Rukeyser, Amy Clampitt, Jane Kenyon, Shirley Kauffman-- I could go on and on.

It's the poetry, not the life, which ought to be the primary focus.

Hart Crane was a forlorn, love-torn homosexual with impossible longings who floated in alcohol until he sank in the Gulf of Mexico, commiting suicide by drowning .

But he was a great poet, his lines still seem original ninety years after he wrote them, and the art comes first, that's all.

There's a new book out on Whitman's alleged "homosexuality", but it's the brilliant parts of "Leaves of Grass" and WW's best prose work that really matter.

Peace,


Zlatko

[stilltrucking]

Dang me kind Professor
they ought to take a rope and hang me
I suppose I have twisted your words again what you said was

We just hear too much of Anne Sexton, Sylvia, and Virginia ( Woolf).

To me that is an oxymoron
Like saying too much Mozart

But I could name many more female poets whose lives would not make "dramatic" movies with "moving" scenes, but nevertheless are first-rate artists.

As far as the Plath movie, I have not seen it, do not plan to read it. Frieda Hughes comment about it being part of The Sylvia Plath Suicide Doll industry about sums it up I think. The Bell Jar and When Jesus Suckled came along at traumatic moments in my life. If they did not save my life they at least saved my sanity. When I first started to post to litkicks summer of love I had the absurd idea for a romance story between Ester Greenwood and Sal Paradise.

got to go talk at you later
dam I really hate when I get sloppy with my scholarship
sincere appologies for mis quoting you again



late for work again edit later please excuse typos