Sunday, July 29, 2012

Phantom Texts


Phantom Texts

“Might it be that, after all this
time, our poetry detectives
have been looking in the wrong
places for these phantom texts?”
—Anna Journey, After Ariel:
An Argument for Sylvia Plath's
Phantom Third Poetry Collection,
Plath Profiles 5

Later on when he was dead—
The phantom texts were silent

The frisson of that event—
Meant all-too-human victims

Stumbling out onto the—
Mythic arena transformed

Transforming mere human beings—
Into characters in a melodrama

It takes time though—
A dead husband’s poetic persona

Ted my Alchemical Husband—
My Demon Slave

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