You do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot
For thirty years, poor and white,
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.

ludicrous metaphors (a white foot in a black shoe) are paired with grave meaning (a living entombment), just as she later pairs Luftwaffe and gobbledygoo (42). I suppose it is odd to say that Plath is my favorite poet because of her humor since she is known for her depression; she is the poster child of tragic writers, having tried to kill herself once or twice (accounts vary) and then succeeding that cold London winter of '63. But born of her wry, acerbic wit and her lost, empty sadness is a manic energy that instills in every cryptic metaphor, every beautiful line, every evocative image an overwhelming sense of the writer.

When first faced with the question of my favorite poet, my thoughts flitted quickly over scrambled lines in the rusted archives of my memory - T. S. Eliot, Emily Dickinson, Wallace Stevens flew by - and I came to rest on:
The moon has nothing to be sad about,
Staring from her hood of bone.

She is used to this sort of thing.
Her blacks crackle and drag. (Plaths "Edge" 19-20)

Though Eliot, Dickinson, and Stevens all lack the specific energy and force that appeals to me so much in Plath's poetry, they all share with her the curious quality of reading like riddles. The first time actually the first many times I read Plath's "Youre," which curiously succeeds "Daddy" in her Ariel collection, I had absolutely no idea what she was describing. But and here's the really special thing about Plath's poetry - I didn't need to know the subject of the poem to tap into the speaker's feelings of elation, hope, and anticipation, and the metaphoric images are all so arresting that I continued to read and enjoy the poem even before fully understanding it. And one day something clicked in my mind and I instantly saw what was there all along. I suddenly realized what is "Gilled like a fish" and "looked for like mail" (3, 10). It is curious that "Youre" should follow "Daddy" because the latter is addressed to her father and deals with the suicidal depression his death rendered her and the former is addressed to her unborn child and deals with the joy and freshness of life. I remember being struck by the perfection of the metaphors, as lines like "a common-sense / Thumbs-down on the dodo's mode" suddenly shifted into the light (3-4). I might never understand exactly what Plath meant by "Her blacks crackle and drag" at the end of "Edge," but the sense of superior finality, detachment, and a welcomed end is clear as crystal.

The level of energy in Sylvia Plath's poems varies from cold perfection as in "Edge" to breaking hysteria as in "Daddy," but in the climax of "Fever 103°" it seems to hit an all-time high. Electricity and heat and light are all throughout this poem; the speaker grows increasingly bright, and the fever becomes a metaphor for a force both creative and destructive. Her fever is a light; it consumes her, making her pure, allowing her to reach Paradise:

Darling, all night
I have been flickering, off, on, off, on [...]

Three days. Three nights.
Lemon water, chicken
Water, water make me retch.

I am too pure for you or anyone [...]

Does not my heat astound you. And my light.
All by myself I am a huge camellia
Glowing and coming and going, flush on flush.

I think I am going up,
I think I may rise -
The beads of hot metal fly, and I, love, I

Am a pure acetylene
Virgin
Attended by roses,

By kisses, by cherubim,
By whatever these pink things mean.
Not you, nor him.

Not him, nor him
(My selves dissolving, old whore petticoats)
To Paradise. (28-54)

Alvarez said that Plath's self-destructiveness was "the very source of her creative energy... it was precisely a source of living energy, of her imaginative, creative power," and we can see that precise idea here in the fever (Hal Hager, author biographer). She is freed and purified, but the fever is simultaneously destructive, taking its toll on the body and the mind, as evident in the pink spots the speaker sees. These lines also show how Plath uses poetic techniques, specifically enjambment and ellipsis, to make the climax of the poem read with increasing energy. Reading these lines, my mind always jumps to finish them; "I may go up" in flames, "I may rise" from the ashes? on the third day? I often cannot stick with a single interpretation. And thus, to me, Sylvia Plath's poetry can mean everything at once in a strangely illuminating way.

Ultimately what I enjoy most in Sylvia Plath's poetry is the odd sense of triumph that rounds off even her most tragic poems. Especially her most tragic poems. "Daddy" ends in her putting to death her pained turmoil and preoccupation with her father. "Fever 103°" ends with the speaker reaching Paradise. "The box is only temporary" in "The Arrival of the Bee Box" (36). "Stings" ends on a very similar image, a resurrected queen bee ("Is she dead, is she sleeping?"), now flying "more terrible than she ever was, red / Scar in the sky, red comet" (56-5. "Lady Lazarus," a poem that details Plath's several suicide attempts even more gruesomely than "Daddy," has perhaps the most triumphant ending. Early in the poem, Plath writes of a failed suicide and the pain of realizing she's still alive.

Soon, soon the flesh
The grave cave ate will be
At home on me

And I a smiling woman.
I am only thirty.
And like a cat I have nine times to die.

This is Number Three.
What a trash
To annihilate each decade. (15-24)

She continues on to describe her subjugation as a freak show curiosity to people who "just wanted to see what a girl who was crazy enough to kill herself looked like" (The Bell Jar). Obviously a very low point in anyone's life. And yet her last two stanzas are the most powerful and most triumphant in all her poetry.

Herr God, Herr Lucifer,
Beware
Beware.

Out of ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air. (79-84)

Yes, I realize the irony of appreciating Sylvia Plath for her humor and her triumphant endings. And, yes, I realize the inadequacy of the term "hysteria" as applied to Plath, who used words with such cold efficient precision. But these elements are there in her poetry, the humor, the hysteria, the triumph. As I said above, the sense of the writer is front and center in these poems, and she is empty and sad, laughing and triumphant.

Kat was born in the California Bay Area in 1983; she has been living in exile in Davis for the past four years while finishing her B. A. in English at the University of California. Her sad exile will end in her move to San Francisco, where she looks forward to beginning her Masters in English Literature and being told what to read for at least two more years.
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