Bitch Goddess

Stella Vine, "Sylvia Plath" (2004)

Bitch Goddess
__________________

“The danger was not that she
would lose control or surrender
to the impulses of the raging
bitch goddess within herself
but that the stiff outward
features would become recog-
nizable as parts of a mask.”
—Edward Butscher, Sylvia Plath
Method and Madness
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The Murder Trial

After Ted & Assia Wevill—
Got put away for life having
Attempted murder most foul!!!

What could the Queen—
Possibly do to mitigate the
Horrible Public Relations fiasco?
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The simply filthy Tabloids—
Were full of trashy tacky Scandal
The American press even worse!

“SEX!!! SLEAZE!!! SCANDAL!!!—
The embarrassing Headlines blared
The National Enquirer scandal sheet
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Ted and Assia get thrown rudely—
Behind bars of the Tower of London
Down goes the sluggish Thames

Trashy Poet Laureate

Parliament was pissed off—
The House of Lords all paunchy
And periwigged tres aghast!!!

Prince Philip smirked—
“Let the Bourgeois Apocalypse
Finally fucking begin!!!”
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Only one Solution was possible—
Shutting the Scandal up with
The Royal “Order of Merit”!!!

Awarding Sylvia Plath—
The grand Poet Laureateship
For her tacky kitschy Killer Fame!!!

Plath Reborn

"It was only when she gave up
that effort to 'get outside' herself,
and finally accepted the fact that
her painful subjectivity was her
real theme, and that the plunge
into herself was her only real
direction…that she suddenly
found herself in full possession
of her genius"—Ted Hughes,
Introduction, Johnny Panic
and the Bible of Dreams
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Arbitrary surreal symbols—
Plath's Ariel poems rather
Overly impassioned and
Too Rosenberg electroshock

Sylvia’s surreal shorthand—
Actually impassioned fast
Reorganizations of the quick
Relevant mental events
________________

Sylvia gave up trying—
To get outside herself
And finally accepted her
Painful subjectivity

But she had to make up—
A quick shorthand jumping
In & out of her Johnny Panic
Bible of Dreary Dreams
__________

Miss Yeats suggesting—
There in the Fitzroy maisonette
The sleek Arielesque trotting
Of terrible sleek Tercets

After the Reading

“the heavy hammy
American cheap slang”
—Sylvia Plath
The Unabridged Journals
May 19m 1958
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I’ve got the bitch itch—
Caught between two worlds
One dead and the other
Powerless to be born

It’s like a vulgar rejection—
From Ladies’ Home Journal
So humiliating the way
They question my sanity
__________________

Who knows who I’ll—
Dedicate my next poem to
Instead of the usual Ted
Maybe Miss Auden?

Her navel, her penis—
Her vain smile or her
Ugly bleeding bung-hole
After that sailor got done
________________

And then there was—
Chester all snail-faced
And ashamed of something
Another cute Greek soldier

And then there was—
That heavy too jocular
Jocularity one sees in
Sulky spoiled males
______________

Smelly with their own—
Inner corruption and
Greasy unkempt hair
Picking their noses

Their smarmy love of—
Corruption, their slick
And unctuous schmooze
So what else is new?