Sylvia Plath


POET LAUREATESS


“I see her as a kind
of Hammer Films poet”
—Philip Larkin
Letter to Judy Egerton
10 June 1960
__________________

It wasn’t pretty—
It was tres messy
And rather bloody….

But it had—
To be done and
That’s what I did…

I killed Big Daddy—
Fucking there in the
Old cold graveyard
___________________

I waited behind—
A tilting old gravestone
As he fucked away

I even invited—
Assia to come and
Visit that weekend

The Yorkshire prick—
Couldn’t wait to sink
His Pike inside her
_____________________

That’s when I—
Heard my tall
Handsome husband

Moan & groan—
The way he did
When he lost it

That’s when—
I snuck up &
Shot them dead
____________________

I used his own—
Rabbit-hunting
Stinking killer rifle…

I buried them—
Both down deep in
Court Green Cemetery

And reported—
Them gone and
Poor me all alone
_______________

An abused abandoned—
Wife of an adulterous
Gigolo husband

Everybody nodded—
Knowingly, he’d always
Been a Lady’s Man

Ever since his—
Randy Cambridge days
People shook their heads
_______________

I played the sad—
Distraught abandoned
Widow game rather…

Cool & nicely—
I thought & stayed
There at Court Green

I played it well—
The grieving widow poet’s
Sad bitter Violin
___________________

Faber felt sorry—
Miss Eliot took me
Under her wing

After all, my dears—
His marriage wasn’t
The happiest thing either

And so I published—
While the Fox, Hawk
Whore rotted slowly
_____________________

Down there beneath—
The Yew tree in my own
Backyard cemetery

I skipped London—
Yeats’ flat and all
That cold winter angst

Mommy Dearest—
Wanted me to come back
To America, of course
____________________

Why teach there—
At Smith though with
Prouty & the dykes?

I was British now—
With a stiff upper lip
And poetry to write

Big Daddy Lit—
It grew & grew
I became famous
_________________

Women’s Lib—
Was just beginning
The BBC loved me

I sneered at men—
Especially Mytholmroyd
Male putrid Pricks

My oeuvre grew—
I became famous
And infamous too
_________________

When Larkin turned—
The poet laureateship
Down, it was mine

Rather than—
Carol Ann Duffy
Or my tacky husband

From then on—
Butchy Britannia did
The Big Turnaround
___________________

I relished it—
The very first Lady
Poet Laureate

Lesbos reborn—
Founder of British
Sapphic Modernism

My pen sang—
While Ted & Assia
Rotted down below
___________________

So much for—
Big Daddy finally
Gone at last

And me, my dears?—
I didn’t even bother
To say Achoo!!!              

Instead I became—
Who I’d always been
Ariel the Goddess at last!!!



2 comments:

Carl Rollyson said...

Or Isis. My biography: AMERICAN ISIS: THE LIFE AND ART OF SYLVIA PLATH will be published in late January by St. Martin's Press.

Carl Rollyson said...

Or Isis. My biography, AMERICAN ISIS: THE LIFE AND ART OF SYLVIA PLATH will be published in late January by St. Martin's Press.