Plath’s Prosopopeia II

Stella Vine “Snow White in the Forest”

Plath’s Prosopopeia II
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“in the elegy
longing is always
erotically charged”
—Claire Raymond
The Posthumous Voice in
Women's Writing from Mary
Shelley to Sylvia Plath
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Text as theater—
“The Rabbit Cather”
As the longing in
Elegy for the dead

Jacqueline Rose—
Interpreted the poem
As encoding lesbian
Erotic longing

Ted Hughes—
Irate widower and
Literary executor said
“Grounds for Homicide!!!”
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Don’t Ask Don’t Tell—
Applied to the sacrosanct
Masculine tradition of
Elegy excluding women

The male elegy genre—
Guarding itself against
Interpenetration with
The feminine genre

A place of force—
Keeping out Sylvia
From mourning for
Herself or another
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The smokescreen—
Of slander thrown up
Attempting to reclaim
Str8t sanctity of marriage

The intensity of a Poem—
To generate the problematic
Of maligned maternity and
Gay perverted parentage

A shocking homicidal Poem—
Highlighting the role of both
Literary Executor and hardly
Divine pastoral Executioner
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The Hunter haunts us—
Encouraged by the flap between
Rose and Hughes emphasizing
The male rule over the pastoral

The Hunter is written into—
Plath’s poem seemingly to
Perform the role of impresario
To the rabbit’s dead Voice

The narrator speaking—
Is the aphasiac whose
Voice had been torn out
By the roots & gagged
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It’s a place of force—
That threatens the speaker
And forces her voice out,
Forces her to speak

Voicelessness suffers—
Gagging and tearing
Following the trajectory
Of the Voice in the text

Down thru the—
Rabbit hole & labyrinth
Of “The Rabbit Catcher”
The Voice torn out turns
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The Speaker is speaking—
With a voice that has been
Violently taken away from
Her, shoved into her

How does the Speaker—
Speak since she too is a
Rabbit catcher, catcher
Of her own Voice?

The Speaker is chasing—
Her own Voice, the chase
Is the text of her poem,
Surviving her Voice’s death
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The Rabbit & Speaker’s voice—
Merge in “The Rabbit Catcher”
Opening up Plath’s landscape
Aboveground while down below…

Each of us as Rabbit Catchers—
Chase our own Speaker Hunter
Voices uncannily tied to our own
Underworld suppressed prey

Plath’s poem stages the—
Subterranean recuperation of our
Already dead posthumous Voice
Prefiguring escape thru trope
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The poem’s trap thru trope—
Posthumous speech becoming
Plath’s trap door, a trope door,
Escaping & reaching the Reader