A Book Called Ariel
“Fumy, spirituous mists
inhabit this place/Separated
from my house by a row of
headstones./I simply cannot
see where there is to get to”
—Sylvia
Plath, “The Moon
and the Yew Tree”
There’s this light
in my mind—
But it’s cold and
planetary
The trees in my mind are black
The trees in my mind are black
I’m black and blue
with jealousy—
Ted has left me for
Assia Wevill
My ankles bend like
graveyard grasses
There in the St.
Peter’s Cemetery—
Separated from me by
a row of old
Tombstones leaning
in the mist
I can’t see where
I’m going—
Suddenly Court Green
is dark and
Spirituous from some
ancient time
Parts of this house date from the—
Eleventh century and there was once a
Prehistoric moated hill fort in the grounds
The view from my study is bleak—
A moody and mystical landscape that’s more
Like a person than just some acres of land
It responds to the slightest touch—
The slightest thought goes through it and
Comes back through me when I write
The old churchyard’s lopsided gravestones—
Covered in lichen set back from Court Green’s
Boundary wall there on Essington Road
The back wall of the property is lined—
With gravestones which remind me of an
Ancient wall of old corpses thru my window
Court Green is walled in by a nine-foot stonewall—
And beyond the house one can see the lushly
Green hills of the Devonshire countryside
Court Green has a tremendous power and—
Magnetism and gives me a certain fecundity for
The kind of poetry I’m writing now
My imagination is what attracted me to—
Ted Hughes in the first place there in Cambridge
When I was a naïve Fulbright Smith scholar
But our marriage couldn’t last—
He was like a panther caged up in the London
Regent’s Park Zoo pacing behind steel bars
He worshipped the white goddess—
And needed a new woman constantly to stay
In touch with his moody Mytholmroyd muse
I knew this when I fell in love with him—
I felt trapped like The Bell Jar in my New England
Womanhood fried dead like the Rosenbergs
He needed discipline in his life and an agent—
I typed up his manuscripts, helped him to get
Published, guided him toward Faber and fame
But in my naïve American Mademoiselle way—
I was goaded by Olive Prouty & pushing my image
Much too much toward a Stella Dallas success story
But even as I moved into Court Green pregnant—
I sensed the taint of tragedy because even in such Beautiful surroundings Ted had begun to prowl
Court Green was a
door into the past—
It had a face all
it’s own and had seen everything
White as a knuckle and cold as a grinning skull
White as a knuckle and cold as a grinning skull
Dragging the nearby
graveyard at night—
Like some dark old
crime going on for a long time
The O-gape silent
screams of pale white skulls
I live here now in
complete despair—
Twice on Sunday, the
bells startle me awake
Soberly bonging out
the names of the saints
Dozens of devoted tongues affirm and stammer—
Fearing the
Resurrection but knowing it will
Never and has never
come about for the dead
The tall gaunt yew tree points this out—
The tall gaunt yew tree points this out—
It has the same
Gothic shape as dead ruins
Unloosening the bats
and owls at midnight
My eyes lift after them and find the moon—
The moon is like Aurelia my over-protective
The moon is like Aurelia my over-protective
Mother who I could
never ever please
My moon mother is
not like the sweet Mary—
I’m not the divine
child that the Wise Men from
The East came to
bless and worship
I’m not sweet like
Mary or Aurelia—
Not calm like
Ruth Tiffany Barnhouse Beuscher
I’m more like Esther Greenwood in The Bell Jar
I was hoping marriage and domesticity—
Would calm me down and center me rather
Than me constantly living on the edge
But I’ve fallen a
long way since then—
Clouds are no longer
flowering blue & mystical
Over the face of the
moon and stars
Inside Court Green the saints are all blue—
Floating on their
delicate feet over my cold puke
My hands and face
stiff with dry martinis
St. Peter’s
Cathedral sees nothing of this—
And the message of
the yew tree is blackness
Blackness and a book
called Ariel
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