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!!!