Plath’s Prosopopeia

Stella Vine “Snow White in the Forest”

Plath’s Prosopopeia
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“A. Alvarez famously
commented that some of
Plath’s Ariel poems seem to
have been written after her
suicide” —Claire Raymond
The Posthumous Voice in
Women's Writing from Mary
Shelley to Sylvia Plath
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Plath seems to be already—
Dead in her Ariel poems
As if she were already one
The Living Dead

She seems posthumous—
As if she’s deploying her
Voice purposely away
From just Biography

Plath’s disembodied—
Posthumous Voice so
Very much like Brontë
Dickinson and Shelley
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How can a dead poet—
Speak and why does she
Have to be dead in order
To be able to speak?

Sylvia is subversive—
She focuses on the
Bodilessness of the
Dead feminine Voice

She shifts the ground—
Of the project of elegy
And reclaims it for a
Feminine speaker
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Sylvia’s self-elegy—
Steals into the male
Exclusive realm of
Elegy makes it hers

Staging this feint—
Of elegy spoken by
A dead narrator for
Herself is radical

Plath inscribes her—
Posthumous poetry
Historically not for
Female mourning
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But rather to turn—
The pastoral topos
Into self-elegy that
Isn’t ruled by males

Invoking as well as—
Problematizing the
Voice of death lets
Her speak for herself

Plath mocks & mourns—
The traditional role of
Tragic poetess by making
Self-elegy her own
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A critical vestige of—
Enlightenment feminism
Like the sublime work of
Mary Wollstonecraft

Arguing against the—
Notion that women are
Naturally only concerned
With self-decoration

Using Jacques Rousseau—
To shift the scandalous
And surreal dislocation of
Feminine beyond décor
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Ditching the hysterical—
Woman displacement of
Grief into ironic death
Spoken thru Ariel poetry

Lady Lazarus doesn’t—
Return to life but haunts
The text speaking from
The Land of the Dead
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Plath uses her Voice—
Spectral & disembodied
To posthumously speak
Even before she’s dead

Plath speaks as one—
Of the Living Dead before
She dies thus sustaining
The resurrected Poet