13 Jul 2020: "Cut" by Sylvia Plath
"Cut"
What a thrill -
My thumb instead of an onion.
The top quite gone
Except for a sort of hinge
Of skin,
A flap like a hat,
Dead white.
Then that red plush.
Little pilgrim,
The Indian's axed your scalp.
Your turkey wattle
Carpet rolls
Straight from the heart.
I step on it,
Clutching my bottle
Of pink fizz. A celebration, this is.
Out of a gap
A million soldiers run,
Redcoats, every one.
Whose side are they on?
O my
Homunculus, I am ill.
I have taken a pill to kill
The thin
Papery feeling.
Saboteur,
Kamikaze man -
The stain on your
Gauze Ku Klux Klan
Babushka
Darkens and tarnishes and when
The balled
Pulp of your heart
Confronts its small
Mill of silence
How you jump -
Trepanned veteran,
Dirty girl,
Thumb stump.
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" I am ill./I have taken a pill to kill"
ReplyDeleteThese lines really tie into The Bell Jar.
In an interview, one of Plath's best friends commented how she couldn't work or write at all when she was sick/depressed/wanting to kill herself. You read this poem, and think these are the words of a sick person and no wonder she killed herself. But these are the words of a person who knows what it's like to be sick and want to kill yourself.
Plath has me looking at artistic depressed/sick people differently.
How interesting. Your comment almost reminds me of the David Foster Wallace and the first 300 pages of INfinite Jest i have read 4 times now, but fail to continue. There is an outsiderʻs view on the perspective of pain. An almost different person....different part of the mind. The perfect poet. To do and then to write....to feel and then to truly know. I wonder what part of the mind holds these different places of our Being- because I have felt it too, a daft reckoning of where I go to write....and why itʻs been so long since I have been there???!!!
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