I know, what is it with me and woman poets? Especially the tortured, crazed, and suicidal ones? Not sure, but I go through these moods where I tend to go off and read along a given theme. This would be one of those times…Sexton, Millay, Dickinson, and now back to Plath.

On a previous Poetry Monday I submitted her poem “Daddy” which I always find to be vivid and emotional, a bit of a window into that dark part of her psyche that lead to her suicide. This week I’m going with the no less vivid piece below that always puts me in mind of spending an afternoon on the porch during a hard rain. She starts out with the rook, wanders around the landscape, and then brings it all back together in the end. To me, it speaks of how the miraculous can flow from the ordinary. That and how sometimes we may need to redefine the miraculous. Of course I’m probably totally at right angles to what she was trying to get across, but I still love it.

Ahhh, Sylvia….if only you’d been able to fight off your demons and stay with us longer. Who knows what great works died with you.

As a complete aside, I do want to point out that the woman Sylvia’s husband Ted Hughes left her for also committed suicide (and murdered their child). Ted also destroyed a number of Sylvia’s papers. So draw your own conclusions on Mr. Hughes, but I for one think he’s probably a bit of a dick. Although I do like his epitaph for her grave, Even amidst fierce flames the golden lotus can be planted.

Black Rook in Rainy Weather #

On the stiff twig up there
Hunches a wet black rook
Arranging and rearranging its feathers in the rain.
I do not expect a miracle
Or an accident

To set the sight on fire
In my eye, not seek
Any more in the desultory weather some design,
But let spotted leaves fall as they fall,
Without ceremony, or portent.

Although, I admit, I desire,
Occasionally, some backtalk
From the mute sky, I can’t honestly complain:
A certain minor light may still
Leap incandescent

Out of the kitchen table or chair
As if a celestial burning took
Possession of the most obtuse objects now and then —
Thus hallowing an interval
Otherwise inconsequent

By bestowing largesse, honor,
One might say love. At any rate, I now walk
Wary (for it could happen
Even in this dull, ruinous landscape); sceptical,
Yet politic; ignorant

Of whatever angel may choose to flare
Suddenly at my elbow. I only know that a rook
Ordering its black feathers can so shine
As to seize my senses, haul
My eyelids up, and grant

A brief respite from fear
Of total neutrality. With luck,
Trekking stubborn through this season
Of fatigue, I shall
Patch together a content

Of sorts. Miracles occur,
If you care to call those spasmodic
Tricks of radiance miracles. The wait’s begun again,
The long wait for the angel.
For that rare, random descent.