Re-reading Miss Plath's 84 page The Colossus and Other Poems ( Random House, 1960 ). A gorgeous construction of pieces - "for Ted" - in the same way religious passages are gorgeous.
I am lulled by the acute attention to rhythm of the short line and the manner by which single sentences are skewed/tugged into three, four, five shorter lines, pulsing along, prompting a series of re-reads, evaluating a re-surging connectivity ( the entire of "Man in Black" joins three line stanzas to exhale 21 lines from a single sentence ). Stabilizing this trail of impression is always a period at the end. Always a capital letter begins the flushed-left line. One is placed within the poem, directed to sense, intuit from the conditions, on the terms, of the poem.
The manner in which simple lists of noun become surreal landscapes through an exact diction akin to meditation spurring epiphany. Lulled by the corset of the stanzas. They are trim. There's a taxing and archaic, but/therefore genuine, quality to the poetry. I don't use the word surgical, or deliberate, or reasonable ( though the poems are all of these things ), I say painful, and that which is painful deserves to be considered directly in composition, post-composition. That Sylvia informs me how to engage and disengage my own aggressions and maddenings is only one compliment.
"The Eye-mote," "Suicide off Egg Rock," and "Full Fathom Five."
