I really dislike how Sylvia Plath's name is immediately equated with her death, and her poetry - a remarkable body of work - a dark script of her depression. What is always overlooked in these assertions is her skill and prowess in figurative language. Her description is always accurately sublime, capturing its subject matter luminously, taking it over the edge of of being into vivid meaning.
Here is one example - not only an accurate detail of a coral reef, an aquatic scape - but also something much richer and deeper: the mind.
Aquatic Nocturne - Sylvia Plath
deep in liquid
turquoise slivers
of dilute light
quiver in thin streaks
of bright tinfoil
on mobile jet:
pale flounder
waver by
tilting silver:
in the shallows
agile minnows
flicker gilt:
grapeblue mussels
dilate lithe and
pliant valves:
dull lunar globes
of blubous jellyfish
glow milkgreen:
eels twirl
in wily spirals
on elusive tails:
adroir lobsters
amble darkly olive
on shrewd claws:
down where sound
comes blunt and wan
like the bronze tone
of a sunken gong.
turquoise slivers
of dilute light
quiver in thin streaks
of bright tinfoil
on mobile jet:
pale flounder
waver by
tilting silver:
in the shallows
agile minnows
flicker gilt:
grapeblue mussels
dilate lithe and
pliant valves:
dull lunar globes
of blubous jellyfish
glow milkgreen:
eels twirl
in wily spirals
on elusive tails:
adroir lobsters
amble darkly olive
on shrewd claws:
down where sound
comes blunt and wan
like the bronze tone
of a sunken gong.
I like the onomatopoeia at the end. Overall, the colors, motions. Not crazy about the lobster personification, but I have the sense of fleeting perceptions not something I'm supposed to adopt as indicative of character. Even there I like the olive as that's not usually the associated color.
ReplyDeleteWords meant for the mouth. Best, Christy