Too Full of Passion

I have a theory about passionate poets. I think there is such a thing of too much passion, as I continue to learn of more and more authors who end up committing suicide, even while they have gained fame for their beautiful poetry.

There are two authors who I read in close proximity to each other on purpose, as they were friends, and one wrote a tribute to the other. The two authors were Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath. They both struggled with depression throughout their lives, were in and out of mental hospitals and ended up committing suicide successfully, after previously attempting and failing.

One of Anne Sexton's poems, which I read in The Complete Poems of Anne Sexton is written after Plath's suicide. You would have expected it to be focused on her sadness that her friend did this act, or something touching. Instead it was a poem of jealousy, that Plath had done it without her, and left her having to continue living while she had ended it all.
My goodreads review was

 Dark, many depressing poems, but beautifully written and there were some that really touched my heart.

Both Sexton's poems and The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath earned a 3 star rating in my opinion. They were hard to read, partially for their depressing nature, and partially for boredom at parts. Honestly, I had to force myself to get through Plath's journals (and I didn't read the appendix) and I didn't finish Sexton's poems (but gave myself a pass as far as the Gilmore Challenge was concerned after I looked it up, and found that Rory was not seen reading Anne Sexton, but mocked a silly pledge by asking if it was written by Sexton, so since I read some of her poems, I passed). But with that said, they were definitely quotable and there are portions that I will remember and savor.

My review for Plath

There were moments of brilliance in this book, quotes that were inspiring or powerful in their vulnerability, but to get to those moments I had a lot of less interesting sections to get through.

I did not read all of the appendixes, but there were some interesting parts there as well.

Would I recommend reading it? Not sure. Or perhaps yes, but give yourself permission to scan the parts that don't interest you.

I most enjoyed the first section, before her first attempt. At times, I felt almost like I was invading her privacy and throughout I admired her writing skill. 

They were clearly full of emotions, and lived lives full of passion, but in the end, they couldn't handle it. It reminds me of the people who remember everything, and don't really function well because our brains weren't designed to remember everything, we function better letting some of it go. I wonder if the same is true of the great writers who end up committing suicide, that they are such a fountain of passion that they can't handle experiencing life's emotions to such a powerful extent.

Do I recommend them? I don't know. There are such intense, powerful quotes and emotions throughout, more than I quote below, they might just be worth it. But it is so dark, depressing and hard to get through. Would you walk through a forest at night full of dangerous beasts if I told you that in the middle there was a beautiful clearing with the most amazing scenic view? If the darkness and the danger is worth it, then read them, if it isn't worth the journey, then skip it. 

Best Sylvia Plath Quotes:

From Sylvia Plath's mother, "If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter... For always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself." I really liked this reminder to try to be your personal best, not compared to anyone else.

""I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want... I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in my life."

Slyvia Plath about her husband, "he lives people, that's what he does. Very few people do this anymore. It's too risky...it is much easier to be somebody else or nobody at all."

"..."the present is forever, and forever is always shifting, flowing, melting. This second is life. " "Tonight I am ugly. I have lost all faith in my ability to attract males.""

The best explanation of her thoughts about suicide are found in her journal entry about the baby bird they eventually euthanized: "Suffering is tyrannous... Composed, perfect and beautiful in death. I wonder if she thought of herself as the baby bird when she decided to end her life..."

Most powerful Anne Sexton poems:

Courage It is in the small things we see it. The child's first step, as awesome as an earthquake. The first time you rode a bike, wallowing up the sidewalk. The first spanking when your heart went on a journey all alone. When they called you crybaby or poor or fatty or crazy and made you into an alien, you drank their acid and concealed it. Later, if you faced the death of bombs and bullets you did not do it with a banner, you did it with only a hat to comver your heart. You did not fondle the weakness inside you though it was there. Your courage was a small coal that you kept swallowing. If your buddy saved you and died himself in so doing, then his courage was not courage, it was love; love as simple as shaving soap. Later, if you have endured a great despair, then you did it alone, getting a transfusion from the fire, picking the scabs off your heart, then wringing it out like a sock. Next, my kinsman, you powdered your sorrow, you gave it a back rub and then you covered it with a blanket and after it had slept a while it woke to the wings of the roses and was transformed. Later, when you face old age and its natural conclusion your courage will still be shown in the little ways, each spring will be a sword you'll sharpen, those you love will live in a fever of love, and you'll bargain with the calendar and at the last moment when death opens the back door you'll put on your carpet slippers and stride out.

From my facebook post, "Disclaimer: I am going to share two other deeply moving Anne Sexton poems... but they aren't happy or uplifting, but sobering. They are beautiful and they are powerful. One is even highly controversial. I am not intending to be controversial, but share the poems that impact me, because I think others might appreciate them too. If you don't want to read the rest of this post. Don't. :-D I also post them as a contrast. An unwanted pregnancy typically goes one of the following two ways. I feel that Anne Sexton shows that both are tragic in their own ways. " The Abortion by Anne Sexton Somebody who should have been born is gone. Just as the earth puckered its mouth, each bud puffing out from its knot, I changed my shoes, and then drove south. Up past the Blue Mountains, where Pennsylvania humps on endlessly, wearing, like a crayoned cat, its green hair, its roads sunken in like a gray washboard; where, in truth, the ground cracks evilly, a dark socket from which the coal has poured, Somebody who should have been born is gone. the grass as bristly and stout as chives, and me wondering when the ground would break, and me wondering how anything fragile survives; up in Pennsylvania, I met a little man, not Rumpelstiltskin, at all, at all... he took the fullness that love began. Returning north, even the sky grew thin like a high window looking nowhere. The road was as flat as a sheet of tin. Somebody who should have been born is gone. Yes, woman, such logic will lead to loss without death. Or say what you meant, you coward...this baby that I bleed. (The following poem is about giving a baby up for adoption in the 60's where keeping it wasn't really an option) Unknown Girl in the Maternity Ward By Anne Sexton Child, the current of your breath is six days long. You lie, a small knuckle on my white bed; lie, fisted like a snail, so small and strong at my breast. Your lips are animals; you are fed with love. At first hunger is not wrong. The nurses nod their caps; you are shepherded down starch halls with the other unnested throng in wheeling baskets. You tip like a cup; your head moving to my touch. You sense the way we belong. But this is an institution bed. You will not know me very long. The doctors are enamel. They want to know the facts. They guess about the man who left me, some pendulum soul, going the way men go and leave you full of child. But our case history stays blank. All I did was let you grow. Now we are here for all the ward to see. They thought I was strange, although I never spoke a word. I burst empty of you, letting you learn how the air is so. The doctors chart the riddle they ask of me and I turn my head away. I do not know. Yours is the only face I recognize. Bone at my bone, you drink my answers in. Six times a day I prize your need, the animals of your lips, your skin growing warm and plump. I see your eyes lifting their tents. They are blue stones, they begin to outgrow their moss. You blink in surprise and I wonder what you can see, my funny kin, as you trouble my silence. I am a shelter of lies. Should I learn to speak again, or hopeless in such sanity will I touch some face I recognize? Down the hall the baskets start back. My arms fit you like a sleeve, they hold catkins of your willows, the wild bee farms of your nerves, each muscle and fold of your first days. Your old man’s face disarms the nurses. But the doctors return to scold me. I speak. It is you my silence harms. I should have known; I should have told them something to write down. My voice alarms my throat. “Name of father—none.” I hold you and name you bastard in my arms. And now that’s that. There is nothing more that I can say or lose. Others have traded life before and could not speak. I tighten to refuse your owling eyes, my fragile visitor. I touch your cheeks, like flowers. You bruise against me. We unlearn. I am a shore rocking you off. You break from me. I choose your only way, my small inheritor and hand you off, trembling the selves we lose. Go child, who is my sin and nothing more.

This next one is a tragedy. It is a tragedy that there are moms and sons who actually act this out, day after day, and my prayers are with the kids, and I hope the parents get caught, and stopped, but it was written so beautifully, I know it is one that will resound with me for a long time.

Tommy is three and when he's bad
his mother dances with him.
She puts on the record,
'Red Roses for a Blue Lady'
and throws him across the room.
Mind you,
she never laid a hand on him.
He gets red roses in different places,
the head, that time he was as sleepy as a river,
the back, that time he was a broken scarecrow,
the arm like a diamond had bitten it,
the leg, twisted like a licorice stick,
all the dance they did together,
Blue Lady and Tommy.
You fell, she said, just remember you fell.
I fell, is all he told the doctors
in the big hospital. A nice lady came
and asked him questions but because
he didn't want to be sent away he said, I fell.
He never said anything else although he could talk fine.
He never told about the music
or how she'd sing and shout
holding him up and throwing him.

He pretends he is her ball.
He tries to fold up and bounce
but he squashes like fruit.
For he loves Blue Lady and the spots
of red roses he gives her

Direct from facebook: I posted my favorite part of a poem from Anne Sexton, one of the many things I am reading as part of my Rory Gilmore Challenge. I know sometimes long poetry keeps people away, so originally I only posted part of it, the best part. At the end of this post, I will put the whole poem, because I imagine she would not want it only posted in part only. The idea is so simple, and so deep, and so profound, it truly spoke to me the way you hear that poetry is supposed to do. Basically, the world is an imperfect place, full of bad things, and we long to protect our child from every danger big and small. We want them to have all of their best dreams come true and none of their bad ones... but we can't. We have no power to make that happen. What we can promise is love. Love for them through the heart ache, through the tragedies, through everything that we wish we could shield them from. THE FORTRESS while taking a nap with Linda Under the pink quilted covers I hold the pulse that counts your blood. I think the woods outdoors are half asleep, left over from summer like a stack of books after a flood, left over like those promises I never keep. On the right, the scrub pine tree waits like a fruit store holding up bunches of tufted broccoli. We watch the wind from our square bed. I press down my index finger -- half in jest, half in dread -- on the brown mole under your left eye, inherited from my right cheek: a spot of danger where a bewitched worm ate its way through our soul in search of beauty. My child, since July the leaves have been fed secretly from a pool of beet-red dye. And sometimes they are battle green with trunks as wet as hunters' boots, smacked hard by the wind, clean as oilskins. No, the wind's not off the ocean. Yes, it cried in your room like a wolf and your pony tail hurt you. That was a long time ago. The wind rolled the tide like a dying woman. She wouldn't sleep, she rolled there all night, grunting and sighing. Darling, life is not in my hands; life with its terrible changes will take you, bombs or glands, your own child at your breast, your own house on your own land. Outside the bittersweet turns orange. Before she died, my mother and I picked those fat branches, finding orange nipples on the gray wire strands. We weeded the forest, curing trees like cripples. Your feet thump-thump against my back and you whisper to yourself. Child, what are you wishing? What pact are you making? What mouse runs between your eyes? What ark can I fill for you when the world goes wild? The woods are underwater, their weeds are shaking in the tide; birches like zebra fish flash by in a pack. Child, I cannot promise that you will get your wish. I cannot promise very much. I give you the images I know. Lie still with me and watch. A pheasant moves by like a seal, pulled through the mulch by his thick white collar. He's on show like a clown. He drags a beige feather that he removed, one time, from an old lady's hat. We laugh and we touch. I promise you love. Time will not take away that. Anne Sexton

The Bell Jar

I rated this book a five, for its ability to keep my interest, and make me want to read it. At the same time, would I recommend it? I'm not sure.

It definitely gave great insight into what the mind of a depressed person looks like, and the prose of her just not wanting to continue living was very well written.

The book has a silver lining ending... but Silvia Plath doesn't, as it is well known that she does eventually end her life, and that makes you leave the book on a down note, because you know that the author eventually stays stuck inside her bell jar, and I pity her.