‘I am a garden of black and red agonies.’

In a maternity ward, three women contemplate their lives, the brutality of childbirth, and matters of the heart. This is the premise of Sylvia Plath’s play for voices, Three Women, written after she saw Ingmar Bergman’s 1958 film, Brink of Life (known in the U.K. as So Close to Life). In the late ‘50s and early ‘60s, the physiological process of having a baby was largely kept from women. Nowadays, we understand the purpose of contractions, the early signs of labour, and so forth. The pain of it would have come as quite the visceral shock to women who have been long since told that reproduction is their only purpose.

By the time Three Women was complete, Plath had not long since given birth to her second child, Nicholas Fararr Hughes, which happened to be the most difficult as she described in one journal entry:

‘I lifted my head and saw my first son, Nicholas Farrar Hughes, blue and glistening on the bed a foot from me, in a pool of wet, with a cross, black frown and oddly low, angry brow, looking up at me, frown-wrinkles between his eyes and his blue scrotum and penis large and blue, as if carved on a totem.’

A play for voices is a theatrical piece that does away with staging, focusing solely on the dialogue. And when you read Three Women, Sylvia Plath’s poetic stamp is crystalline. Each of the three voices are distinct, full-bodied, and powerful. They speak in verse, as opposed to a natural way of communicating, but this doesn’t make the play less effective. In fact, images such as ‘A dead sun stains the newsprint’ and ‘I am a garden of red and black agonies,’ illustrate the close relationship between birth and death. It is said that a woman is never closer to dying than when she is in the throes of labour, and plenty of mothers have gone so far as to say how they felt they would surely expire from the pain. As a woman myself, I experience excruciating period pains, which are said to be merely a fraction of what comes with having a baby.

Plath was heavily influenced by Dylan Thomas whose own play for voices, Under Milk Wood, is perhaps one of the most renowned pieces of literature in the world. But while he explores a broader landscape, Three Women is much more focused, almost claustrophobic.

‘This is a disease I carry home, this is death.’

None of Plath’s voices have names. Instead they are simply voices one, two, and three. This decision is quite a poignant one as it is common for many mothers to feel a loss of identity when they become mothers. As we have already established, some believe reproduction is all women are fit for. Throughout Sylvia Plath’s creative life, the problems of women were central to her work. She often spoke about her feelings in their clearest form in her journals:

‘Being born a woman is my awful tragedy. From the moment I was conceived I was doomed to sprout breasts and ovaries rather than penis and scrotum; to have my whole circle of action, thought and feeling rigidly circumscribed by my inescapable femininity. Yes, my consuming desire to mingle with road crews, sailors and soldiers, bar room regulars — to be part of a scene, anonymous, listening, recording — all is spoiled by the fact that I am a girl, a female always in danger of assault and battery.’

Though unnamed, each voice has a unique story. The second voice is the most agonised, which makes sense given it’s the apparent conduit for the author. The first voice belongs to a woman who has given birth to a son. She imagines the future life she will lead with this new prospect. The third voice decides to adopt her new daughter. Critics later assigned marital statuses and job roles to the second and third voices: a married secretary and a student respectively. However, I would like to posit a theory that all three women are simply different facets of Sylvia Plath herself. Could this not be a different version of the famous fig tree analogy from her novel, The Bell Jar?

First of all, she did indeed have a son and daughter, though there was no apparent intention of adoption with Frieda Hughes. In letters to Dr. Ruth Beuscher (her psychiatrist), Plath appeared to accuse her husband, Ted Hughes, of hitting her shortly before the miscarriage of her second child in 1961. Taking all of these facts into account, and the fact that there are three trimesters in a pregnancy, Three Women could simply be a disguise. When she was a student at Newnham College, Plath stayed at the Whitstead boarding-house. It was here that hers and Hughes’ relationship quickly developed.

Discussions of childbirth were taboo in the ‘50s, ‘60s, and even later. Even today, the notion of a woman choosing to forego pregnancy and childbirth is viewed by some as ‘unnatural’. But Sylvia Plath didn’t shy away from these types of conversations, evidenced not only by the play for voices I discuss here, but throughout her entire body of work. Her portrayal of mental illness in The Bell Jar was revolutionary. The relationship between Bergman’s film and Plath’s play for voices illustrates the gender gap. It was frowned upon for a woman to give credence to the horrors that befall her, but it was seemingly ok for a man such as Ingmar Bergman to portray them on screen. I suppose it was one of those ‘what you don’t know can’t you’ moments.

‘How shyly she superimposes her neat self / On the inferno of African oranges, the heel-hung pigs.’

Three Women was originally broadcast by the BBC on the 19th of August, 1962. Due to two of the original voice actors dropping out, the poetic voices were not as distinct as Plath intended, as evidenced by the audience feedback received after the broadcast. Over a decade later, another recording was made by KPFA Radio. In order of voices portrayed, the cast included: Judith Binder, Ann Bernstein, and Rachelle Towers. Following the performance, the three women discussed their own experiences of pregnancy and childbirth, effectively using Plath’s play as a springboard.

Overall, Sylvia Plath’s Three Women is one of her lesser known works, but certainly deserves to be read and heard. Since its conception and original broadcast, there have been various iterations and versions; something I suspect would have surprised Plath. Though, the world has certainly changed a good deal since 1962. There will no doubt be greater insights into the piece in years to come, as is the case with literature. Today, a play for voices seems old-fashioned, especially as there are plans to cut down on radio plays. I should like to think that poets such as myself will endeavour to carry the torch by writing our own. In doing so, we will mine the patchwork for the germs and gems of our bardish elders to stitch into us.

After falling ill at the famed Chelsea Hotel, Dylan Thomas was taken to St. Vincent’s Hospital where he succumbed to pneumonia in November 1953. Known for his incessant drinking, poor diet, and general malaise, Thomas is a staple figure among the literary canon. Many will know him for his Villanelle, Do not go gentle into that good night, or his play for voices, Under Milk Wood. Both of these works have permeated the membrane of our collective consciousness since they were published in 1951 and 11954 respectively.

In 1946, Dylan Thomas wrote and published the poem, Love in the Asylum, in Deaths and Entrances; his most famous collection. The poems included predominantly deal with the aftermath of the war. Dylan Thomas did not fight at the front due to a lung condition, but he was able to find employment at the BBC. His job was to write scripts for propaganda films at the behest of the Ministry of Information. While he was not seeing the devastation first-hand, it wouldn’t be a stretch to assume that Thomas would have learned about it through BBC broadcasts of the time. Is it beyond comprehension that he would call the collection—in which the poem is housed—Deaths and Entrances?

At its heart, Love in the Asylum deals with the conflicts of turbulent relationships. Its alternating line lengths show this indecision—as does the title itself. People who had loved ones committed to asylums likely believed it was out of love. While we have the benefit of hindsight, a lot of these places led family members to believe it was the best place for the mentally sick. Our first glance may lead us astray, sending us down the path of confusion, but don’t be misled. This conflict is what remains at the very heart of the poem.

The opening line, “A stranger has come,” establishes a strong subject and sets the uneasy tone. What is so unusual about this is the subversion. If a stranger turns up at your door, I would suspect that most of us might feel a little on edge, but this isn’t the case for our speaker. But he goes on to clarify that they are to “...share my room in the house not right in the head”. The literal reading would be a room in the asylum, but taking the title into account, the speaker may be switching out “heart” for “room”.

We are not sure of who the stranger is until the third line of the first stanza:

“A girl mad as birds…”

This metaphor is oxymoronic because of its associating birds with madness. When I think of birds, I think of them chirping as the sun comes up. In Welsh mythology, the Adar Rhiannon (Birds of Rhiannon) are magical birds who can “wake the dead and put the living to sleep”. A welshman himself, Dylan Thomas would have been aware of this myth.

“…Bolting the night of the door with her arm her plume.”

The girl keeps the light for the speaker, blocking out the darkness. The image of “her arm her plume” evokes something grand and decorative. While she is “mad as birds”, she offers protection. Right now, we are under the impression that the girl is a positive influence on the speaker. Though it would be a mistake to get comfortable, for the following line “Strait in the mazed bed” would indicate otherwise. Is this a strait jacket? A narrow passage of water?

According to our speaker, the girl “deludes the heaven-proof house with entering clouds”, further alluding to her protective nature. The house as “heaven-proof” conjures a dark image, but the clouds—associated with serenity—deceive what is harming him. By now, the girl becomes an almost magical figure, which is further evident in the third stanza: “She has come possessed…”

Dylan Thomas makes use of repetition by bringing up the struggle between light and dark:

“Who admits the delusive light through the bouncing walls, / Possessed by the skies…”

She commands nature at her will; showing the speaker she is something grand. He both fears her and adores her. The word “delusive” means to give a false impression, which in this case, is in reference to the light. This takes us back to the entire premise of the poem; codependency and toxic relationships. While the concept of a toxic relationship is a very modern term, this turbulence is ever present.

“She sleeps in the narrow trough yet she walks the dust…”

A “trough” is a long, shallow container that animals such as pigs eat and drink from. Without knowing this, one could be forgiven for thinking of a coffin. Perhaps this was the author’s intention? We associate coffins with the gothic, and taking what we already know about the girl in the poem, this would match up quite nicely. The speaker goes on to say:, “yet she walks the dust,” which provokes a lot of questions. Where is the dust? What is the dust? Yet is an intriguing conjunction; then repeated with the following “Yet raves at her will,” indicating unbridled rage.

The last line of the fifth stanza is the first time we have a direct reference to the title:

“On the madhouse boards worn thin by my walking tears.”

For every poem, the last stanza is arguably the most important. It’s the bow on the present, the cheese on the spaghetti, or the top-coat of a manicure: it ties it all together. Again, we are treated to bouts of repetition in “And taken by light in her arms at long and dear last,” which shows the pull and sway the girl has over the speaker. In a draft of Love in the Asylum, Dylan Thomas toyed with the last line, adding:

“Suffer the first madness that moved the earth and the stars.”

This more literal approach gets the job done, but it almost deflates the rest of the poem. The coy suggestions and allusions are what make the poem so compelling. The finished line, which reads, “I may without fail / Suffer the first vision that set fire to the stars,” points towards a final explosion. Throughout the poem, we have witnessed the conflicts of the speaker; questioning if this girl—“mad as birds”—is a positive or negative influence. But I wonder if there is a different reading that others may not have seen? What if the “first vision that set fire to the stars” is a reference to the creation of the universe? If this is the case, the girl would act as a catalyst for the end of the world. Just like the reader, our speaker isn’t sure if he likes that.

Dylan Thomas married Caitlin Thomas (née Macnamara) on the 11th of July, 1937. Their marriage was stormy, as is noted in a myriad of places. Caitlin later admitted that she was likely jealous of Dylan Thomas’ success. Acquaintances and friends of the pair noted how they were afraid of Caitlin. But this isn’t the full story. And this is perhaps reflected in Love in the Asylum. According to Caitlin’s diary, she spoke fondly of him after his death, writing:

“Oh God, oh Dylan, it must be cold down there; it is cold enough on top, in November: the dirtiest month of the year that killed you on the ninth vile day. If only I could take you a bowl of your bread, and milk, and salt, that you always drank at night, to warm you up.”

The girl in the poem resembles Caitlin Thomas, but with such biographical information, we must be careful not to shoehorn the poet’s life into the poem. Another poet whose relationship was infamously controversial is Sylvia Plath. Her marriage to Ted Hughes is the subject of many arguments amongst academics today, with some erring on the side of Hughes.

Her poem, The Jailer, uses nature in a similar fashion to Dylan’s Love in the Asylum:

“I imagine him / Impotent as distant thunder…”

Both poems evoke the struggle of loving someone you know is bad for you but find yourself willing to ignore. Plath calls her jailer “the keeper of keys,” similar to Thomas’ girl who is “mad as birds” and “Bolting the night of the door with her arm her plume”. But in their similarities there are differences. In Plath’s poem, there is an anger that is absent from Love in the Asylum:

“I wish him dead or away / That, it seems, is the impossibility.”

Our speaker does not wish the girl “mad as birds” dead at all; in fact, he likely wouldn’t cope without her. This codependency is what makes the poem so disturbing. As outsiders, we can only watch the perceived helplessness. By the final lines, the speaker is wholly devoted to the girl who has “come possessed”. Though The Jailer and Love in the Asylum share an overbearing figure in angelic disguise, they differ in their approach: with Plath taking the more verbose approach as opposed to Thomas’ rather stark poesi.

On the whole, Dylan Thomas’ poem seeks to express the inner conflicts of a lover torn between being alone and settling for a rather tumultuous relationship. During a time where keeping your loved ones close was paramount, it is no surprise that he was toying with such ideas. In my view, Dylan Thomas successfully portrays ideas of codependency and manipulation in this six stanza verse. His usage of nature and the elements bolsters these ideas. Thomas’ real relationship with Caitlin provides us with a window into the poem that takes us far beyond the first reading. The initial reading of a poem can provide a lot of answers, but understanding what you will never know for certain ensures a clear head when tackling the root. And if we are to truly understand Love in the Asylum, we must give ourselves the greatest chance by gaining the most information, whether that be biographical, historical, or documented.

Author’s Note: If you would like to / can support my work, I have an Amazon Wish List. You can also become a paying subscriber. There are three of you currently, and I greatly appreciate you guys! Your contribution helps me continue to grow as an artist and give my work to the world.

Thank you all for reading, and do leave your comments and thoughts below!

Donate

Author’s Note: The Poetry Postmortem is where I take a poem I or someone else wrote and I discuss it in a non-workshop way. I am of the opinion that academics and critics have a tendency to suck the life out of poetry. They talk of “critical eyes”, but they are blind to the heart of a poem.

begins The Tears of Things by establishing a location the reader can jump from:

“In a restaurant with mandolins affixed
to the ceiling, which you remembered
visiting at intervals in childhood,
the drive from Stroud into London’s
bright heaving with a hunger more
than an aptitude for hope…”

Location plays an important part with the ongoing mentions of “Stroud” and “London's”. Personification is a literary device used by Popa to make a familial connection between the speaker and the reader. “London’s bright heaving,” evokes an image of a city buzzing with life. Already we can see the theme of nostalgia coming into play.

“…we spoke of school days, ink stone
dark as grackle, lines for baths
in winter’s thinning light, then fumbled
towards the past that’s part invention,
the town whose mills were powered
by rivers, fields that froze like strangers…”

Further on, Popa utilises simile to propel the feeling of nostalgia. “dark as grackle” plays upon the mind. The most interesting part about this stanza is the notion of how we see places we’re fond of through a sparkly lens. “towards the past that’s part invention” brings T. S. Eliot’s ‘Little Gidding’ to mind. Eliot’s poem is the last of his ‘Four Quartets’, a collection that discusses the passage of time in different ways.

“Dust in the air suspended,
Marks the place where a story ended.”

—Little Gidding, T.S. Eliot

Eliot and Popa illustrate the foolish nature of nostalgia, and how it blinds us to the less tasteful reality. Additionally, both have their roots firmly in a sense of place. The rhythm in Popa’s poem is offset by enjambment. Just as a fool’s errand is never smooth, a poem is not without pause.

“…hearing their names called. Weddings
took their cue from funerals, the locals
bouncing home from hedge to hedge,
though not without its charms, you said,
the grouse stone-heavy come July.
A life forged out of spent alternatives…”

The line, “Weddings took their cue from funerals,” makes for an interesting contrast. The path between birth and death is not a straight one. Could the speaker perhaps be comparing this old-town nostalgia to something circular? Our old stomping grounds, while dull, can actually be full of light in a weird way. The speaker feels a fondness for something they once revered, as expressed through the line, “though not without its charms, you said.”

“…enchanting as a liquor brewed by moonlight.
All night, I listened for my cause
in words blue-shifted under longing’s reach
until slow aerated rain began at last,
and we set out in the shadow of an
unnamed thing. We saw, in an absent-…”

In this stanza, the speaker alludes to the waiting for rain to come. In life, we sometimes find ourselves looking to reinforce our negative beliefs. In a sense of irony, a tsunami usually falls upon us. A reader might wonder if the speaker is yearning for a reason to leave a dead-end that has long since been comfortable. “…we set out in the shadow of an unnamed thing,” leaves us feeling just as unsure as the speaker might be.

“…minded wish, a loose stitch, the mind
in the velvet of the matter. No —
it was the sort of seeing that unfastens
the lacrimae rerum, tears of things.
We drowned, not knowing we stood in water.”

In the final stanza, we learn the relevance of the title. The Latin phrase, “lacrimae rerum,” essentially means the tears of things. The two agreed meanings are sorted into the objective and subjective. For those who align with the objective, “lacrimae rerum,” means that our human experience is defined by our sorrows. For the subjective, the term means the universe is capable of feeling our pain, as opposed to being defined by it.

All of this, coupled with the last line, “We drowned, not knowing we stood in water,” alludes to a sense of progress. The speaker has long been in their comfort zone, refusing to see past their necessary pain. Just like Eliot’s poem, Popa conveys the passage of time through the ability to see clearly. The glitter has faded and our speaker can regain control of their life, free from the burden of saccharine nostalgia.

While the usual background context would expand on these points, Popa is quite private, so we must work a little to uncover this poem without our helping hand. For me, this poem is the definition of walking down memory lane. However, as the speaker discovers, it’s important we don’t find ourselves trapped there.

Support Me on Ko-fi

Author’s Note: The Poetry Postmortem is where I take a poem I or someone else wrote and I discuss it in a non-workshop way. I am of the opinion that academics and critics have a tendency to suck the life out of poetry. They talk of “critical eyes”, but they are blind to the heart of a poem.

For those who love the weaving of language, the knitting of speech, will be no stranger to the great Seamus Heaney. The first of nine children, Heaney was born on the 13th of April, 1939. The first thing he saw was Mossbawn, the family farmhouse. A staunch Irishman, he carried his hometown of Tamniaran through his life like a latchkey. Heaney claims he first discovered he wanted to write poetry when he picked up a copy of Ted Hughes’ Lupercal (an ancient Roman festival of purification and fertility). Heaney’s first collection, Death of a Naturalist, faced fairly positive reviews. In said collection, he presented many of the ideas borne out of The Belfast Group, a writer’s workshop spearheaded by Philip Hobsbaum.

The Underground—the poem we’ll be discussing today—comes from Heaney’s 1984 collection, Station Island. There were many poems I almost chose for the purpose, but I found this one particularly intriguing. We can really get our teeth into this poem. A task such as this one should be viewed through the eyes of a solver. A poem is its own puzzle. When you’re at school, a coffee-breathed teacher grabs you by the hair and steers you toward one specific meaning, ensuring that you understand you are overruled. The art of analysis is delicate; if misused it can put you off for life. 

If we begin with the title, we can see how such a simple one can convey so many ideas. There is the literal meaning of the underground system—where one gets from A to B. What is another word for “under”? If you said “bottom,” or something vaguely similar, you would be correct. We associate being at the bottom with negative feelings such as jealousy, misguided ambition, and depression. Now let’s separate the word “underground”. We have added the word “ground,” which we could associate with soil, concrete, and gravity. When you glue these elements back together, you might have a picture of what the poem is about to say. 

The first stanza reels us in with a stomping rhythm: “There-we-were / in the / vaulted-tunnel-running.” The speaker establishes the location right away. He also tells us that he is not alone in what he describes. While a vault is a kind of tunnel, “to vault” means to spring. This adds further to the quickening pace of the poem and its subjects. To say “tunnelling,” could refer to a journey towards something greater. Just like a train journey, the poem decreases in pace from time to time. “You / in / your / going-away / coat / speeding ahead,” is far slower than we began. Heaney provides us with some information on our subject. We now understand they wear a particular coat for “going away”. The concluding lines, “And me / me then like a fleet god gaining / Upon you before you turned to a reed,” provide the reader with allusion. Heaney is referencing Pan, the God of nature. After returning from her hunt, the wood-nymph of Arcadia, Syrinx, stumbled upon Pan who was insistent on his advancements. To evade him, she was turned into a reed by her sisters. By using this myth, Seamus Heaney gives us a clue as to the potential meaning of this poem. 

The second stanza begins much like the first one, with a kind of staccato rhythm: “Or / some-new-white-flower / japped with crimson.” The word “japped” means a splatter, therefore we can only but assume the “crimson splatter” might refer to blood. However, given the lines before it, this could be a reference to lipstick. Heaney writes, “As the coat flapped wide and button after button / Sprang off and fell in a trail,” telling us that not only is the poem moving, but our subjects are too. We see Pan’s myth play out in a modern setting. The last line establishes a precise location: “Between the Underground and the Albert Hall.” The Royal Albert Hall is in South Kensington, London. Illustrating this kind of information enables the reader to place themselves directly into the poem. For myself, I have been to these places, so I can throw myself into the tapestry. 

In the second stanza, the line, “Honeymooning, moonlighting / late from the Proms,” not only re-establishes the location, but it provides an opposite image. We associate honeymoons with weddings and love, but we associate moonlighting with pretending to be someone else. This gives us something to question. Has the subject been cheating? Is our speaker stalking our subject? In the next line, Heaney shows us that the speaker recognises his actions as futile: “Our echoes die in that corridor and now / I come as Hansel came on the moonlit stones / retracing the path back / lifting the buttons.” Incorporating another tale into this poem, the image of a man looking hopelessly at what is left of his run-away lover is fresh in our minds. 

The concluding stanza is arguably the most difficult for any poet. It is the final lick of paint—the bow on a gift. The Underground is a poem that ends with a reluctant defeat, not just for the speaker, but for the writer. As a poet, I can sympathise with the feeling of ending a poem. “To end up in a draughty lamplit station / After the trains have gone, the wet track / Bared and tensed as I am, all attention / For your step following and damned if I look back.” Somewhat wounded, the subject is left standing in the station. He is alone with but the hope to hear the subject’s footsteps one last time.

Now we have dug into the poem’s individual make-up, we must put it back together. As a whole, I might argue that The Underground is a poem about a love who doesn’t want to know. What is key in poetry analysis is understanding what the poet is trying to convey. For this particular poem, we are lucky enough to have Seamus Heaney himself tell us his intentions. An article in The Guardian details an evening from the night before (18th March 2009), in which he chose two poems to portray his entire career. 

Speaking about the poem we just analysed, The Guardian wrote,

“But he decided instead to plump for The Underground, which sees he and his wife "Honeymooning, moonlighting, late for the Proms", running down the corridor from the underground to the Royal Albert Hall, Heaney imagining himself as an Orpheus who won't look back, and therefore keeps his bride. "Marie and I were then on our honeymoon and as well as calling with my editor in Russell Square, we went to a Promenade concert in the Albert Hall, by the underground, of course, Marie in her white going away coat that had received a beetroot stain in the Museum Tavern the night before, both of us late and running down the corridor," Heaney said, telling guests he was reading it "in gratitude for all that London and the people I have known in London have given by way of literary inspiration and confirmation."

Heaney’s intentions are in total opposition to what we discussed. This should be encouraged because there will always be a certain disconnect between the author, their work, and the reader. However, knowing exactly what he was going for helps us inextricably. Where we discussed the potential of blood and lipstick, Heaney was actually referring to his wife’s white coat that had been stained by beetroot the night before. Discovering authorial intent allows us as readers to compare our findings to the poet’s. Ultimately, a poem will mean something different to all, and that goes for the multiple readings you might commit to. There might be a particular Historical context that elevates the piece to new heights. Meaning is like the ocean: the tide may come in and go back out, but we will never know what is at its core.

Author’s Note: The Poetry Postmortem is where I take a poem I or someone else wrote and I discuss it in a non-workshop way. I am of the opinion that academics and critics have a tendency to suck the life out of poetry. They talk of “critical eyes”, but they are blind to the heart of a poem.

Frank O’Hara is a name on many lips. I first picked up his Lunch Poems when I was in New York back in 2015. O’Hara sadly died when he was just forty years old when a jeep struck him on Fire Island.

Most famously known for his poem ‘Having a Coke with You’, Frank O’Hara was part of the New York School of Poetry. While his time on this plane was tragically cut short, Frank O’Hara certainly made his mark. One of his poems was even used in an episode of Mad Men.

Today, we are going to be looking at his poem, Present.

The poem itself is scattered across the page. There are no clear stanzas, nor are there clear endings to each line. You can kind of guess where the next sentence begins, but this is quite the chaotic set-up for a poem.

I completely adore the first line. “The stranded gulch below Grand Central” is such an unusual turn of phrase, but it is fairly effective at conjuring an image. From the very first line, we are aware of the setting. We understand where the speaker is coming from.

Now, in this poem, O’Hara frequently refers to the weather in the scenes he’s describing with “snow,” “city’s moisture,” and “flakes”. Usually, when a poet utilises the senses, it brings the reader into the poem a lot easier. Most of us know what rain feels like, so we can empathise with the speaker.

Regarding the enjambment used, O’Hara uses white space to achieve this seamless transition. There are no pauses for breath in this poem; the feverish pace conveys the passion of the speaker. This is shown in the line, “…so our cross of paths will not just be muddy footprints in the morning.”

The poem goes on to use oxymora such as “gentle” being followed by “dark”. This opposition adds to the sprawling visuals we are being provided. Staying on the language, while there are more advanced words in this particular piece, O’Hara is known for his simplicity. He gives life to the ordinary details, thus personifying them.

Frank O’Hara was a gay man, and I believe this poem was potentially inspired by Vincent de Paul Warren, his long term partner. Many of his poems were inspired by his partner, such as the poem I mentioned at the beginning, Having a Coke With You. As I always say, if you really want to understand a poem to its core, look to the author.

‘Present’ is a free verse poem. This gives the language room to move and transform itself into something entirely different. While form can sometimes be useful, being able to go wild really takes a load off your mind. Form can be quite restrictive, so you aren’t always able to say what you want to within the confines of a Sonnet or a Villanelle.

Concluding, Frank O’Hara’s ‘Present’ poem is filled with striking imagery that conjures various imagery. It is full of passion and a clear love for the subject of the poem. O’Hara really made his mark on the poetry world in the short time he was alive.

Author’s Note: The Poetry Postmortem is where I take a poem I or someone else wrote and I discuss it in a non-workshop way. I am of the opinion that academics and critics have a tendency to suck the life out of poetry. They talk of “critical eyes”, but they are blind to the heart of a poem.

As discussed previously, Robert Lowell taught Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath at Boston University back in the late ‘50s. From what other students have said, the classes provided some interesting discussion. Lowell, Plath, and Sexton would all go on to be committed to McLean’s Mental Hospital in Belmont.

We often associate poets with wild follies of madness. Pain comes with great creative output, and I know that this is certainly true for me. Family often wish that I would write less depressing poetry. This poem by Lowell is one of passion and a moment caught in time.

The first two lines set the scene for the rest of the poem, but it would appear that the speaker is submissive in the situation. The choice to list the time-frame in which the speaker left the party draws you in to the very heart of the story. When we are present in a moment, we remember the little details.

“…To live a million years, and a million years,” further explores the dreams of passion; thinking of this imagined future ahead. The use of the word “tarnish” naturally alludes to an insecurity. The speaker sees themself as beneath the subject.

“…The Gods, employed to haunt and punish husbands, have no eye for trigger-fine distinctions,” makes you think that the speaker believes himself to be a distinction in a bad bunch. He is essentially saying that he is being punished for things he has not done because the higher powers cannot see nuance. It would appear that the speaker feels stuck.

The next few lines are beautifully poignant. Lowell describes the subject as a “…prickly hedgehog of the hearth, cherries, hairshirt, pinks and glass,” which is an interesting way to describe someone you are fond of. The subject is portrayed as strong-willed, as someone who takes no nonsense.

The concluding lines read as follows: “…when we drank in the first blindness of courtship, loving lost half its vice with all its virtue. Who wants a second life and two more wives? Cards will never be dealt us fairly again.”

In 1970, the year the poem is set, Lowell left his second wife for his third wife, Caroline Blackwood. This detail is important because I believe this is what the poem is about. He is potentially talking to the wife he left about his decision, but he could also be talking about Caroline. There really may never have been a party at all. Instead, the party could be a metaphor for his previous marriage, and his leaving the party is Lowell requesting divorce. Like the poets he taught, Lowell also references the mystical with the final line, alluding to Tarot Cards. He feels that his life is littered with bad fortune.

1970 New Year is a poem that feels weighed down with helplessness. This provides more questions than it does answers, but that’s all part of the fun. It is a poem filled with emotion, and if you don’t look closely, you might even say it is a simple one.

Author’s Note: The Poetry Postmortem is where I take a poem I or someone else wrote and I discuss it in a non-workshop way. I am of the opinion that academics and critics have a tendency to suck the life out of poetry. They talk of “critical eyes”, but they are blind to the heart of a poem.

Anne Sexton studied under Robert Lowell, much like her fellow poet, Sylvia Plath. If you take a look at Robert Lowell’s own poetry, you can see how his influence seeped into Sexton and Plath’s work.

While Plath and Lowell use nature in their poetry, Sexton tends to stay away from that. Anne Sexton had quite the tumultuous life, sadly committing suicide when she was forty-five years old. The parallels between Sexton and Plath are indeed well known.

The poem we’ll be looking at today is Sexton’s The Kiss.

On my first read, I hear a distinct voice. It breaks free of his restraints and calls from the rooftop. I believe this poem to be about the body coming alive after feeling the effects of a passionate kiss.

The first line, “My mouth blooms like a cut,” conjures a strong image of a bitten rose birthing itself. An opposite image would be one of a kiss that drew blood.

The rest of the stanza feels very Bridget-Jones with its talk of “nothing but rough elbows” and “delicate boxes of Kleenex.” Sexton talks of her year as “tedious”. Nothing much has been happening to her. There has been no excitement.

She continues in the second stanza with, “Before today my body was useless,” again perpetuating this statement of Sexton feeling she has been made by love. In the next few lines, we are offered symbols of virginity. The use of the word “square” is particularly interesting because one of its meanings is to be stiff or strait-laced. This is backed up by the following mention of “old Mary”. Is this the Virgin Mary?

Anne Sexton is trying to tell us that this kiss has reinvigorated her. Like the tin man, she has been freed from her frozen state. To further reinforce this, Sexton uses onomatopoeia with “Zing!”. She suddenly feels electric.

In the third stanza, she reminds us of what things were like before. She describes her body as “a boat, quite wooden and with no business,” implying this sense of stiffness even further. Later in the stanza, she speaks directly to the giver of said kiss in the lines, “But you hoisted her, rigged her. She’s been elected.”

In the fourth and final stanza, she continues to inform the reader of this electricity: “My nerves are turned on. I hear them like musical instruments.” She utilises the different senses. In its final lines, she again speaks directly to the object of her affections by saying, “You did this. Pure genius at work. Darling, the composer has stepped into fire.” These final lines really tie up the entire poem. Sexton calls the person who kissed her (it is important to mention that the poem indicates that Sexton is a passive party in the kiss) “the composer”.

When you read this poem, I think it is important to be aware of some of the details of Anne Sexton’s life. She was controversially diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder by therapist Martin Orne (her poem You, Doctor Martin is about him). The diagnosis was controversial because of the use of hypnosis and sodium pentothal. It is said that in the various institutions Sexton was committed to, Anne would take on the symptoms of the other patients around her.

Ultimately, I think most find it unsettling that two poets who both wrote under the direction of the same man had similarly tragic lives. They both died of Carbon Monoxide poisoning, subsequently turning to different methods with Anne Sexton using her car and Sylvia Plath using a gas oven.

Both women performed almost ritualistic tasks before their deaths. Sexton donned her mother’s old fur coat, removed her rings, and poured a glass of Vodka. Plath placed a tray of food and drink in her children’s room, sealed herself in the kitchen (making sure none of the gas could affect her children) and rested her head in the oven. Sylvia Plath was thirty-years old when she died and Anne Sexton was forty-five.

With poetry, it is often advised to research the poet to find context clues that may help you understand their angle when it comes to their poetry. Anne Sexton is certainly no exception. She was a troubled woman with an extraordinary talent.

The Kiss is a beautiful poem with enriching images that evoke a myriad of thoughts and implications about its author. With its acute mixture of rich and simple language, Sexton has managed to portray a moment in all our lives that we would be sure to remember.

Author’s Note: The Poetry Postmortem is where I take a poem I or someone else wrote and I discuss it in a non-workshop way. I am of the opinion that academics and critics have a tendency to suck the life out of poetry. They talk of “critical eyes”, but they are blind to the heart of a poem.

I went through a period of extreme stress for the first five months of 2022, so I didn’t write very much. After I moved house (the cause of the stress), I had a breakdown. I eventually got myself together in the summer, and this was the first poem I wrote.

I didn’t really have a solid idea in mind, but at that point in time, I had a short fuse. I was beginning to build a resilience against people picking on me. I have been quite the pushover in previous years, but not anymore.

I talk of society as an egg, and how “…I was formed from the yolk”. I thought this was an interesting metaphor to use, and as an extension of society, it symbolises life.

There is a distance in this poem, as demonstrated by the line: “Mother grew my bones and guts in her cauldron belly.” My choice of using “Mother” instead of “Mum” is an intentional choice. The process of growing a baby is a form of magic in a sense, so using the word “cauldron” brings this idea to the forefront.

As the poem goes on, there is a lot of eluding to fire through words such as “atom,” “spark,” and the very direct “fire”. The line, “I play with fire, and I save myself from this obscene jelly,” is a reference to the author Mark Fisher. In his book, The Weird and the Eerie. I occasionally sprinkle references to things throughout my poetry.

What I also often do is take a situation and reimagine it through verse. This poem reimagines a relationship as though it happened. The person in question died before it could, so this is my way of immortalising people.

I express my feelings through hyper-specific metaphors such as, “I found it hard to breathe within the rapture of skeletal misery”. There is a mixture of simple and complex language that I use in this verse. I think this gives the best of both worlds.

If we take a look at the themes expressed, there are notes of existentialism and the Gothic. I am very much a big fan of the darkness in life. Ultimately, this is what shows up the most in the poem. Every feeling is conveyed through the lens of mysticism.

Again, I wasn’t sure of what the poem was going for, but given the context, I was struggling with my personal identity. I was also very depressed, so all of these elements contributed to how the poem came to be.

If anything is to be said about this poem, it can be through the final line: “Seven jagged pieces, vertically persistent in their feline ambivalence.” The use of seven would make one think of the Bible, and in some ways it does. The number seven is prevalent in numerology. It is associated with intuition and creativity, and is ruled by the planet Ketu.

Concluding, the process of trying to disassemble your own poetry is not as easy as one might think. I work on 90% intuition. When I write a poem, it comes from a sudden moment. I don’t plan anything. All I can do is provide you with the context of my feelings at the time of writing the poem, and hope that it provides some valuable insight into the mind of Courtenay Schembri Gray.

Mother Cauldron was published by JMWW, and it is also featured in my poetry collection, The Maggot on Maple Street.

Author’s Note: The Poetry Postmortem is where I take a poem I or someone else wrote and I discuss it in a non-workshop way. I am of the opinion that academics and critics have a tendency to suck the life out of poetry. They talk of “critical eyes”, but they are blind to the heart of a poem.

Blossom Hibbert’s ‘eat it up’ was published by earlier this year. Anthropocene is a journal I have yet to crack (I have tried numerous times).

The overall impression I get from the poem is that the speaker simultaneously admires and fears whoever/whatever she is talking about. This is backed up by the first line: “My god, you really were going to eat me whole.”

The form is choppy, but we are aware that the lines blend into each other. “Teaspoon of earth stirred into morning,” conjures an image in my mind of a gigantic spoon stirring the sun. This is where I think people who don’t read poetry often get confused.

When you read a poem, you have to suspend disbelief. Picture yourself as though you are trying to entertain a child by creating characters out of thin air. The stories are based on reality, but they are presented in a fantastical manner.

The internal rhyme of, “…hold on tight, there is a dead stallion in the field and looks like i’ve been held up tonight by your incisors,” provides a lyricism to the poem. It amplifies the modernity.

The unusual imagery feels like being sucked into a television screen. I can see what the speaker sees. I smell what they smell. Everything is easily dreamed of, and that is a testament to Blossom’s intuition.

Leading us to the end of the poem, “…the poet is synergistic with defeat in retrospect,” is such a unique line. It reminds me of a planet that is obscured by sun, moon, and stars. There is a cosmic quality to it.

The final line, “…i never did enjoy peeling your oranges,” is like a punch. It ends on a powerful beat. It brings us back to the thing/person the poem is about. It is obvious that the speaker feels consumed by this entity, and this last line is their way of fighting back.

Overall, this is a relatively short poem, but it packs a lot of symbolism in a short space. The usage of the different senses serves to place the reader directly in the scene. We are a keen observer to the emotions of the poem. We are witness to the speaker taking the power back.

Blossom Hibbert: @BlossomHibbert

Anthropocene: @anthro_poetry

Author’s Note: The Poetry Postmortem is where I take a poem I or someone else wrote and I discuss it in a non-workshop way. I am of the opinion that academics and critics have a tendency to suck the life out of poetry. They talk of “critical eyes”, but they are blind to the heart of a poem.

Under watch of Sirius, I choke this bloodied bough.

It takes me back to that slick, terracotta night.  

Who is this person baring their teeth, bitter as a sow? 

I hold out my cupped hands, heavy as a cow. 

My face shimmers with the magma of sprites.

Under watch of Sirius, I choke this bloodied bough. 

Her finger lures my skull with more pressure than I allow. 

I am a monsoon: a shaven down kite. 

Who is this person baring their teeth, bitter as a sow?

They say the moon is nothing but chow; a grubby seed the canon finds so contrite.

Under watch of Sirius, I choke this bloodied bough. 

They underestimate me and all I avow.

Purple-faced, I give my all to fairy’s firelight.

Who is this person baring their teeth, bitter as a sow?

Eden’s breath is slowing; she must go now. 

My clock comes apart like ham-fisted graphite. 

Under watch of Sirius, I choke this bloodied bough. 

Who is this person baring their teeth, bitter as a sow?

My first encounter with the Villanelle form came with Sylvia Plath’s Mad Girl’s Love Song. For as long as I have been writing poetry, I have been against restrictive form. I am a bit of an anti-authority, so anything that feels like it stifles my freedom is what I will fight.

I start out by writing the letters corresponding to the rhyme scheme in the document. This provides me with a neutrality that I can work from. It eradicates the workload so that I can focus on the lines themselves. Writing a Villanelle takes more thought than any other because you have two lines that will be repeated, so you want to make sure you are happy with those first before anything else.

There is no editing with me. I am an organic poet who believes in instinct and knowing what is true. Once I get in the swing of it, the lines will stay. The only difficult thing is finding end rhymes, but there are lots of online resources to help.

With this poem, I veered towards the foreboding. If you know me, you know I love the Gothic. I also bring in the cosmic with the use of Sirius, which is the Dog Star. The moon also features, and that is a given for a poet.

If this were a stuffy classroom or workshop, there would be some arbiter of knowledge asking why I wrote what I wrote. The truth is that most poets don’t truly know what they mean when they write a poem. The words are born from feelings, and plenty of poets will (wrongly, in my opinion) then cut words as a way to ‘refine’ them, but what they are doing is curating their own emotions. If you get angry about something, you don’t become a funnel and beautify your fury, do you?

One of my favourite lines from this poem is: “My face shimmers with the magma of sprites.” It exudes myth and magic in a way that gives light to the darker elements of the poem. When I look back at this Villanelle, I can see that I am perhaps talking about my quest for greatness: my need to be somebody in life.

The line, “I am a monsoon: a shaven down kite” shows this juxtaposition I find within myself. The gentility I was born with is often overshadowed with the fierce drive that came out of being ignored. The opposing metaphors serve to inform the reader of a Gemini’s nature.

One of my repeated lines, “Who is this person baring their teeth, bitter as a sow?”, is a rhetorical question. I think this can be a unique quality for the Villanelle form. It amplifies the uncertainty of the speaker.

The language in this poem is of a classical nature. I would say that the form enhances the erudite nature of the language. Words such as “contrite”, “bloodied”, and “bough” all conjure images of a time passed by.

While the Villanelle form has a lot to offer in terms of poetics, I don’t think it’s quite right for every single poem. There have been times where I planned to write in the form, but I come to discover the words breaking out of their chains. Writing poetry is based on instinct, so go with your gut.

Leave a comment