Howls and Whispers

HOWLS AND WHISPERS
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Edge
Scowls and Whispers
The Minotaur
Cambridge (1954)
London (1963)
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Edge

“The woman
is perfected.”
—Sylvia Plath
“Edge,” Ariel

Poets are perfect—
When they’re dead
On the edge of things

Ancient oeuvres—
Wear a faint smile and
Have no illusions

Sapphic modernists—
Scroll down Sylvia’s
Lost Journals tonight

The Ouija Board—
Waits for the right
Planchette touch

There’s nothing—
To say until the right
Moment comes

Scowls and Whispers

“Hit him in the purse.”
—Ted Hughes, “Howls
and Whispers,” Collected
Poems
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What was poured—
Down into you ears while you
Argued with death back then
Your head in the oven?

While “Howls and Whispers”—
As well as “Birthday Letters”
Attempted to hide your Homicide
And fatten my Family Purse
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Ironically I felt like I had—
To appeal to Shakespeare
With my dreary lame Tome
“Goddess of Complete Being”

Did you feel any joy—
Ridding yourself of your
Bad dream and aborted
Pedigree poetic career?

You’d prepared a divorce—
To gratify your hellish fury
“Hit him in the purse” your
Mother & analyst both said
________________

“Keep him outta your bed—
And wave it in his face to
Make him know how much
He’s going to lose from you.”

I read all your letters—
Heard what all the manqué
Journalists, professional dopes
And confidantes had to say

What did they plug into—
Your ears about me until
Finally I hit you in the head
With an ashtray that night?
___________________________

And strangled you so—
Tenderly and lovingly while
Calmly smoking a cigarette
My placebo anesthetic rage

You were so limp and—
Drained dry of voltage after
I killed you, even as you
Were plotting my demise

The Minotaur

“I see her as a kind
of Hammer Films poet”
—Philip Larkin
Letter to Judy Egerton
10 June 1960
________________

You had this film noir—
Horror film cineaste thing
About you all the time

You sucked me into—
Your Frankenstein plot
Such a glib femme fatale
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You had a way of turning—
Even a picnic into a quarrel
Of pain and bereavement

You picked away at a scab—
Until it was bleeding again
Like a vein of runny gold
_________________

You were a drama queen—
Not satisfied with merely
Lukewarm Performances

You were always pulling—
Yourself deeper down into
The very center of things
_____________________

Where the Minotaur—
Was waiting to kill you
And finally he did

Cambridge 1954

“I’ve been watching
that young man”
—Ted Hughes
“Paris 1956,”
Howls and Whispers
_____________________

I’d been watching myself—
Unhappy there at Cambridge
Thru the rainy window of the
Saint Botolph’s Review

The Thought Fox had told me—
I was trying to kill it, coming
Out of the woods, smoldering
Right there in front of me
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I knew what it meant—
My Mytholmroyd muse couldn’t
Survive studying the strait-jacket
Queen’s English that way

My ancient Yorkshire mind—
And my latent Celtic imagination
Stubbornly resisted the Roman Wall
The Calder Valley last to succumb
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Stonehenge Phallic Monoliths—
Standing stark out on the moors
The moody sullen silence of the
Ruined post-Industrial Revolution

My new naïve unlived life—
There at Cambridge spread its hands
And started to strangle me to death
It felt like a nuke plant meltdown
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Something unlocked a labyrinth—
Some kind of gatekeeper from Hell
And I dreamed of watching myself
Out on the moors slouching alone

First as the burning Thought Fox—
Then as the Pike beneath the stream
And then as the stealthy Jaguar after
Making love to a girl back in town