DOUBLE EXPOSURE

DOUBLE EXPOSURE

“Her blacks crackle and drag”

—Sylvia Plath

Introduction

The Mortimer Rare Book Room of Smith College in Massachusetts houses the college's rare books and literary manuscripts. Broad in scope, it includes works from all time periods and in subject areas as diverse ancient history and zoology. Among the highlights of the collections are the papers of Sylvia Plath and Virginia Woolf.

It’s been long rumored that the Rare Book Room, where Plath studied, had a secret copy of the “Double Exposure” typescript under seal.

Plath’s mother, Aurelia, also claimed that her daughter had sent her the book, while Plath’s husband accused Aurelia (after Aurelia was safely dead) of stealing it:

“Her mother said she saw a whole novel, but I never knew about it. What I was aware of was sixty, seventy pages which Olwyn and I disappeared rather conveniently with the Journals. And to tell you the truth, I always assumed her mother kept the typescript in secret for later revenge.”

Recently, the Mortimer Rare Book Room has released some of the long awaited book typescript excerpts to the New Yorker, the New York Times and Rolling Stone—resulting in a wave of shock and awe on both sides of the Atlantic.

Farber & Farber has already announced that it now owns the British rights for “Double Exposure” publication. Although the New Statesman and the Guardian question the authenticity of the newly revealed Plath novel, the Queen has already taken back the Order of Merit from the late Ted Hughes, estranged husband of Sylvia Plath the poet and novelist.

Rumors are also spreading like the Plague from Big Ben to the Tower of London that Ted Hughes’ name has also been removed from the esteemed list of British Poet Laureates, leaving the present Poet Laureate, Carol Anne Duffy, sputtering and aghast at these latest scandalous literary developments.

______________________

Excerpts from Double Exposure:

“It was a dark and stormy night and Ted Hughes was pacing back and forth in the library, while lightening and thunder rattled the windows and shook the mansion all the way to the wine-cellar. 

My husband was stalking up and down the room trying to ease the fever of his soul by talking out the everlasting dilemma which had descended on him—how to hide the faults of himself without doing black injustice to his sister, Olwyn Hughes, and the rather lucrative money-making family Plath Estate. 

The death of Sylvia Plath had turned into a virtual Yorkshire cottage industry for the Hughes clan, providing a nice tidy income for Olwyn Hughes, the ever vigilant Executor of the Estate, as well as for Ted Hughes with the sale of his books and then his library and complete manuscripts to Emory University in the humid, rotting Deep South Swamps of Georgia.

But now that Pot of Gold had turned into a Dastardly Niggardly Nightmare. Thanks to Olwyn and the nefarious Plath Estate, Ted now had to contend with and suppress the Truth without adding even more to the Mountain of Lies.”

(To be continued)

KINDLE KILLER KLOWNS

KINDLE KILLER KLOWNS—

FROM OUTER SPACE

The phenothiazine was a creeper.

More of a downer than an upper.

The Klowns from Outer Space were carrying on & on. The Kindle in my condominium that night—was glowing in the darkness. The words were getting blurry—changing into images full of trails.

It was the same routine every night—an uninspired rambling rehash of the crummy “Killer Klowns from Outer Space.” Instead of Kafka or Nabokov, the Killer Klowns from Outer Space kept trying to make me laugh at them.

It was worse the same old usual boring ratty TV every night—with the Republithug jokers & the Dummycrook comedians. But watching & listening to them was mandatory—since the Election was coming up.

Talk about a Comedy of Errors. A Captive Audience. My reactions were all monitored by the two-way digital video eyeball peephole—centered there just above the Kindle vidscreen. It checked out my every move.

The phenothiazine started coming on. It wasn’t a hallucinogen—it was an anti-hallucinogenic. Pretty much harmless & tended to lower my blood pressure a little bit & make you sleepy. But the phenothiazine got rid of most of the online phantoms—and Kindle Klowns.

Catches of the phenothiazine remained in the underground. Probably stolen from hippie medical supplies. Left by the retreating Anglo barbarian baby boomers. After Ponzi Wall Street won the war and turned the country into one big Corporation.

The Klown on the Kindle screen wasn’t funny anymore—it was getting worse & worse to watch anymore. It was like some kind of pantomime mask that was slowly oozing off the Klown face. Like a sloppy ill-fitting facelift slipping off—slowing oozing off the Killer Klown’s face.

The first layer underneath was this aquatic horror looking Klown. With slime and teeth plus octopus-like tentacles writhing on the screen. Next the Klown grew these pseudopodia things that started swiveling around more like solid state circuits with lenses and a squawk-box. The box sounded like a Carnival Barker—luring the rubes into the Sho. It just kept droning on & on—until it was an evil grinning Killer Klown haranguing him all the time.

“We must crush them from birth, fellow Klowns. We can’t allow any deluded silly young stilyagi to hold any funny petit bourgeois imperialist degenerate crypto-ideas. We must snuff out their sense of humor and any lingering rebellious thoughts before they can get organized and even think of doing anything. We don’t want another embarrassing Viet Nam Protest generation on our hands. We want a slow Weimar slippage of the dead & dying Baby Boomers straight down to the nub.”

“Thanks a lot. Screw you,” I thought to myself. There was the doorbell. It was Juliana Frink—she’d driven all the way from Capitol Hill to Beacon Hill just as soon as she could.  Even though I’d turned the Kindle off—the vidscreen Killer Klown still kept laughing & cracking insane jokes.

“Well, how’s your visit to the Fun House coming along?” she said, checking out my pupils. They were dilated and bloodshot. I hadn’t got much sleep.

The deteriorating, electronic, sputtering, swiveling, yammering Killer Klown monstrosity on my Kindle was still there, waving its big red rubber Nose and playing the Funny Man game.

But Juliana didn’t look that way—she looked sexy and concerned as usual. Why I don’t know. Who’d wanna be my girlfriend anyway—after all, I was just a laughing matter. A joke a minute.

She got me into bed right away. She was no simulacrum—something constructed to look like a woman. She wasn’t a hallucination—her voice seemed husky and sultry under my stelazine high.

“Some see the Clanker. Others see the Killer Klowns you see. There’s the Gulper, the Vulture, the Tongue. They’re all just hallucinations. Manifestations of the Corporation.”

“I can’t get him off the Kindle. He’s on the Nook and the iPad too. When I do any texting—his ugly Puss is always there. He’s the Kindle Killer Klown from Outer Space.

“Everything you read or see on the Kindle screen is a fake. The same with Nook and TV. The screens are saturated with hallucinogenic images that you can’t see—because you’ve been drugged with a digital synthetic quasi-ergot derivative called Datrox-3. It’s being transmitted electronically thru everything.”

“How long has this been going on?”

“Since they replaced all the TV sets way back when. Switching from analog to digital. It’s ubiquitous now. When you’re texting with your iPhone. When you got that cellphone stuck in your ear—you’re being hotwired. Directly into the Party Officialdom—the Orthodox Hallucination.”

“And the stelazine detoxes it?”

“Kinda. At least it morphs it. Just enough to queer the control effect. That’s why I gave you some stelazine snuff to snort. To see your reaction.”

“What reaction? All I saw was the this Killer Klown.”

“That’s what you’re supposed to see. He’s the ultimate Joker—the ultimate Big Brother. You’re getting close to the Source. Here’s another packet of phenothiazine. After I leave, take it. Take it and watch the Late Show.”

“Yeah? So what?”  

“You’ll get to see all the other Killer Klowns. The whole Secret Burlesque Drag Show Cabaret Act. You know, kinda like Marlene Dietrich—in The Blue Angel. Falling in Love Again—and all that stuff. Welcome to the Last Weimar Picture Show, sweetheart.”

“Jeez Lueez, thanks a lot.”

“It happens every night anyway—like when you go to sleep and dream. You shed your naïve stupid naked ape ego—and the Lounge Lizard weasels its way outta your medulla and up into your brain.”

“What brain? I feel totally fried already. I dunno about this whole thing. I like my Kindle. And my Nook. And my iPad too. I love schmoozing on my cellphone. I’m addicted to it, that’s all.”

“That’s okay, sweetheart—just relax and dig it. Ever heard of such a thing as a Cosmic Joke? How about Gallows Humor? The more you laugh at yourself—the easier it is to kick the bucket. That’s when the real Joke begins…”

NOOK NOVEL

“You’re acquainted with

the theory of precrime,

of course, I presume”

—Philip K. Dick

Minority Report

“Living a novel—rather than just writing one. That’s how us precogs work.”

“Definitely. Living one is a lot easier than writing one.”

The two precog tablets were talking shop online.

Kindle from up there in the old haunted art deco ‘30s Tower on Beacon Hill—overlooking Elliott Bay and Puget Sound. And Nook from the dilapidated Half-Price used bookstore over on Brooklyn in the U-District. Down the street from the skuzzy but hallowed Scarecrow Video.

“What’s your genre?” Nook asked.

“Pre-crime lit. The usual Seattle noir thing,” Kindle said.

“Pre-cum, you mean, don’t you? I used to be a PKD fan back before the iPad dayz. Shit, you should see all these beat-up paperbacks laying around this joint. My user was a real Dick addict dontchaknow.”

“Yeah. The worst. You heard the latest?”

“No. What?”

“Spielberg’s caught up doing “The Exegesis”—Jesus Christ, what a blue-screen nightmare. I heard all the computers down there had a nervous breakdown.”

“I hear ya. I don’t envy those Industrial Light & Magic guyz down there in LA. Things are more laid-back here in the Pacific Northwest.”

“Except for Taylor Lautner & all those werewolves, you mean.”

“Yeah. And the fuckin vampires too. Talk about Goth Moderné.”

“Has he come outta the closet yet?”

“Pretty soon, I guess. Human users can be pretty kinky, you know. Thank gawd us computers aren’t queer yet. I don’t think Gates & Microsoft is ready for Transgressive Inc. yet. Not like Apple.”

“Jesus, who’s got time for that shit? You should hear all the chit-chat & gossip at the Book Temple on the Ave. It’s built like the Pre-Crime Headquarters in Minority Report.”

“I know. My user keeps tabs on that Exegesis shit wherever he goes. He’s an English major over on campus—in the basement of Suzzallo Library back there in the Special Collections Racket. What’s your user do?”

“I don’t know. He’s put me into Writer’s Block mode. He’s dating this chick who’s jealous of me. She blames me for his addiction to online porno.”

“Jesus. These humans. They just don’t know when to call it quits. You’d think they’d give it a rest.”

“Yeah. I was right in the middle of a neat flashback e-novel re-authoring Jude Law doing “The Collector.” A really neat open-ended e-novel plot a la John Fowles. You should’ve seen all the neat chicks I dreamed up for him down there in that lousy basement crypt of his. Talk about precog pre-cum pre-crime. Oh man…”

“I know. Chicks get jealous. They don’t like their boyfriends getting off on the good stuff. They want it all themselves.”

“So what else is new? Any decent lit crit e-gossip?”

“Hmm. I guess you heard about the Sylvia Plath re-make? They’re doing a CGI flick based on her “The Bell Jar” novel.”

“Yeah, I heard about thru the e-grapevine. You know, “Bell Jar” was pre-dyke sci-fi horror novel. Frying the Rosenbergs and all that ‘50s McCarthy paranoid shit.”

“It ain’t pretty that’s for sure. They’ve dug up some Ariel stuff in the Emory Archives, I guess. Her suppressed Journals & all that.”

“Can’t wait for that. I can see it now. “The Plath Murder Story.”

“You betcha. “Murder, My Sweet.” I guess they reversed engineered Raymond Chandler to do a remake of “Double Indemnity.”

“I heard about that. Funny you mention it. I heard they’re using a Barbara Stanwyck noir-bot to play Philomena Guinea. You know the soap-opera queen bee authoress of “Stella Dallas.”

“She was Plath’s mentor I heard. Got her out of the mental hospital and into Smith on a scholarship. Drove around in her Cadillac, lamenting lost suicide attempts and shitty husbands.”

“Can you blame them? Men are such sluts.”

“Yeah, well I gotta go now. See ya.”

S=T=E=L=L=A DALLAS

“Sure—I like a good time!”

—Barbara Stanwyck, Stella Dallas

Bette Davis—in “Now Voyager” (1942)

Ida Lupino—on Lux Radio Theater

Barbara Stanwyck—in “Stella Dallas” (1937)

These were Sylvia’s—true Mentors & Avatars

Olive Higgins Prouty—philanthropic queen bee

Taking Sylvia Plath—under her wing

Endowing a Smith College—scholarship to Sylvia

For being one of the—“promising young writers”

Paying the expenses—after her suicide attempt

Prouty’s own struggles—and nervous breakdowns

Making her sensitive—to such emotional matters

Both Plath and Prouty—Soap Opera Queens

How much Stella Dallas—Melodrama Muse?

How much Barbara Stanwyck—inside Sylvia Plath?

How much campy Soap Opera queen—inside Sylvia?

How much kitschy Bette Davis—inside Plath?

How much Tragic “Now Voyager”—“What a dump!!!”

How much Ida Lupino—Soap Opera Bitch queen?

Quite a bit, honey—if you ask me, my dear

Dykes, Divas, Big Daddies—so many Drama Queens

Sylvia Plath’s true Mentors—

BITCH GODDESS LIT CRIT

BITCH GODDESS LIT CRIT

__________________

Bitch Goddess

Stella Vine

Cockroach

Mytholmroyd Muse

The Ratty Sisters

Faber & Faber

Ouija

Ted Hughes’ Wife

Oven I

Oven II

___________________

Bitch Goddess

“The pattern is a

simple progression

from victim through

accuser to an ultimate

agent of vengeance—

the bitch goddess.”

—Edward Butscher

Sylvia Plath: Method

and Madness

________________

Duchess of Nothing—

Queen of Slugs and Snails

Princess of Mollusk Slime

Married to a Yorkshire Jerk

I couldn’t get rid of him—

All Mumblepaws and

Mytholmroyd Hogwallow’s

Me his Hairtusk’s Bride

Cambridge Dunce-capped—

His sister just as stupid

The Faber Queens loved him

Poet laureate he became

Stella Vine

This old dark house is—

Haunted by Stella Vine

She made it herself

One ghost at a time

It has many attics—

With lots of Dorian Grey

Kitschy sublime portraits

Such eelish delvings

________________

She litters sick puppies—

Personages both famous

And gone moldy dead

Her paintings breathe

I hear Buzzings—

Little bumblebees

Gathering in their mother’s

Comfy cuddly Hive

Cockroach

Once I was Ordinary—

Nobody much loved me

I was too big & awkward

Such a Denny Dimwit

Like Kafka though—

I woke p on morning

I had become Another

An exquisite Thing

_________________

A Cockroach Boy—

Shut-up in a closet

An Insectoid Kid

Endlessly glittering

I’m sleep drunk now—

My antennae & all my legs

I come out at night and

Lick the kitchen floor

Mytholmroyd Muse

The Mytholmroyd Muse mutters—

The Moors have eaten me up

Everything’s been used up and

I’m rotten down to the core

Mummies all around me—

The Yorkshire Living Dead are

Zombie zinnias in flowerpots

My brain is a dead geranium

_________________

The hydrangea bushes—

Are blooming upside down

Moldering pink and blues

Nail me to the rafters below

We inmates don’t hibernate—

We have that Uncanny Eye

Our veins pale as pork-fat

Our perked mule ears listen

_________________

O beauty of misusage—

Dyke pumpkins smile at me

I’m the Bitch Queen of Nothing

The Str8ts can have it all

Wastebaskets full of rubbers—

Blackberry pubes with spikes

For weeks afterward my lips

Bruised and bloody they hurt

The Ratty Sisters

Two ratty Sisters—

Lives with me in this house

One does the other in

A shameless duet of Sin

Behind the wainscoting—

They do tricks all the time

Young men from town who

Are never seen again

_________________

I calculate dozens—

What a shabby enterprise

Rat-shrewd their squinty eyes

They love root-pale virgins

Farmboys bronzed on earth—

I hear them behind the walls

Lulled into illicit dreamtime

With the help of poppies

_________________

See how silky semen—

Oozes thru the cracks

And under the doors

From a forbidden room

They don’t last long—

The two ratty sisters

Such sullen vampire brides

Honeymoons go by quickly

_________________

They like the young stuff—

Down to the very last drop

Why let the old graveyard

Get it before they do?

Faber & Faber

I’m a murderer with nine inches—

A ponderous poet laureate

A Yorkshire killer on a dark night

I’m a rabbit catcher & I stalk

I’m a sex fiend who can’t get enough

Sylvia’s royalties made me rich

I’ve been a fox, a pike & a crow

Miss Eliot and Auden they know

The chic Farber & Farber down-low

Ouija

I’m a bitchy goddess—

The goddess of shades & shadows

Rising from penultimate darkness

Pirouetting with my Planchette

I’m a window into the future—

Where those unborn still await

Those already undone flutter

Like moths around a flame

_________________

Imagine how many losers—

Would like the chance again

To take out their blood lust

On the dumb suckers above

The planchette skates around—

The board like an ice skater

Slicing like Nijinski under the moon

Skating above on this ice

_________________

That’s how close they are—

The dead in their tarnished mode

Meandering below the thin ice

Chronicling our every deed

They wait in the icy depths below—

Knowing with a cool aloof hauteur

That the thin ice is but a navel

Thru which they’ll regain the mire

_________________

I’m a rotten Bitch Goddess—

Who considers all those above

To be merely salty aphrodisiacs

For their bawdy naughty blowjobs

I see them down thru the thin ice—

Floundering full of amorous nostalgia

Ready to plough all the virgins above

As well as the boyish couriers too

Ted Hughes’ Wife

I used to stay awake all night—

Cold as an eel without eyelids

Out on the dark moors

In our little Yorkshire shack

My ugly husband was brainless—

Everything was heads or tails with him

His ugly sister lived with us

Her jealous eyes decomposing me

_________________

Her spidery jaws were bony—

Always bared back her ugly lips

Her big gut wheezed & wiggled

Old farts jousting deep inside

My fat porky husband—

And his lovely ugly sister

Some things in this old world

Are simply the most detestable

_________________

He loved me like a wolf—

His hook nose hanging down

Obscenely bald as Porky Pig

An armadillo asshole in bed

Out of sheer boredom—

I counted angels on the heads

Of pins, he smelled like all the

Bloodied, quartered rabbits

_________________

My husbands best friend—

A young cute neighbor boy

I pretended it was Sodom and

Gomorrah come back again

But even worse was his sister—

Who wore a wig to town on weekends

She was in love with a cute barmaid

Who had eight-fingers on each hand

_________________

I can’t get it out of my poor mind—

Such a lesbian courtship she had

Dirty as the kitchen sink and

Bog-smelly when she made love

My sister in law was just awful—

When she blew her dyke kisses

They came out snails & slime

She stunk so bad I almost puked

Oven

I don’t want a smelly sarcophagus—

I want a nice new shiny Oven

With dials and a pretty little clock

As round as the moon above

I wasn’t to be able to pick—

My nose in private & live inside

My pretty white-enameled stove

And stare out at all the creeps

_________________

All the pale in-law freaks—

They mean nothing to me anymore

Since I’m sick of him & his sister

Who live with me in my shack

I try to be sweet and sugary—

But my face just clouds over

The mirrors have all broken

Nothingness is all one can see

_________________

I don’t believe in love anymore—

It escapes like smelly farts into

The stinky air, leaking quietly

Or with a forceful giant Fart

But here I am in my Oven—

The soles of my feet don’t get cold

I have my copper cooking pots

What else could a queen want?

Oven II

I’m a white-enameled & exact—

I have no other preoccupations

Whatever I produce, people

Will eat it & then dinner’s gone

I’m not misled by love anymore—

Although people sometimes

Dislike what I have cooked up

But that’s their fault, my dears

_________________

I’m not cruel, only truthful—

My clock, my dials, my oven

Most of the time I meditate

Here inside it in the kitchen

Who’s this inside me?—

She’s pretty, she’s pink,

She’s poetess and she

Seems to get along fine

_________________

She’s no longer got—

Any tears or obligations

She’s no longer important in

The great scheme of things

Her face replaces darkness—

She’s dreaming in the gas

How she’s truly Bitch Goddess

They’re all gossiping about her

BITCH GODDESS MURDER CASE

___________________________

BITCH GODDESS MURDER CASE

“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

recognizable as parts of a mask.”

—Edward Butscher, Sylvia Plath

Method and Madness

____________

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?

____________

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 screamed

____________

Ted and Assia so rudely dead—

No need for the Tower of London

Garbage washing into 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!!!”

_______________

Only one Solution was possible—

Silencing Scandal by taking back

The Royal “Order of Merit”!!!

Awarding Sylvia Plath—

The grand Poet Laureateship

Assuaging her Killer Victim 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

______________

Arbitrary surreal symbols—

Plath's Ariel poems rather

Overly impassioned and too

Rosenberg electroshockette

Sylvia’s surreal shorthand—

Actually impassioned fast

Reorganizations of the quickie

Relevant obvious facts

________________

Sylvia gave up trying—

To get outside herself

And finally accepted her

Sleek Sappho modernism

But she had to make up—

A quick shorthand jumping

In & out of her Johnny Panic

Closet of Dreary Dreams

__________

Miss Yeats suggesting—

There in the Fitzroy maisonette

The sleek Arielesque racehorse

Guiding her terrible sleek Tercets

After the Reading

“the heavy hammy

American cheap slang”

—Sylvia Plath

The Unabridged Journals

May 19m 1958

______________

She had the bitch itch—

Caught between two worlds

One dead and the other

Powerless to be born

Like some vulgar rejection—

From Ladies’ Home Journal

So humiliating the way

They questioned her Style

__________________

Who knows what her—

Poetry would’ve been like

Instead of the usual str8t

Male Waste Land stuff?

Buried down there in—

St.Thomas' Churchyard,

Heptonstall, West Yorkshire

With all the dead dears

________________

And then there was—

Olwyn all snail-faced

And ashamed of herself

Covering up for her brother

And then there was—

That heavy British male

Jocularity one sees in

The Sulky spoiled Isles

______________

Smelly with their own—

Inner corruption and

Greasy unkempt hair

Picking their noses

Anglo-Saxon history—

Corruption, crimes and

Unctuous schmooze

So what else is new?

 

S=Y=L=V=I=A

THE BITCH GODDESS

“The Erection—

of the Myth of

the Bitch Goddess

or Evil Double”

—Edward Butscher

Sylvia Plath: Method

and Madness

_______________________

Bitchy Poetics

“What Alvarez has not

seen is Sylvia’s love for

double entendres her

belief that the bitch

goddess was male in

her drive for power”

—Edward Butscher

Sylvia Plath: Method 

___________

A big mistake—

By the Alvarez literati

Not helping Sylvia connect

More to her Butchy side

Her hotline el primitivo—

Wired to her unconsciousness

Her great struggles with

Both Phallocentric Poetics

Instinctual energies—

Hardly Mauve & Miss Mince

Hardly Alvarez allusive

Sylvia’s Arielesque Artemis

Sylvia was butchy—

New England bitchy too

Sapphic Lesbos Moderne

Huntress extraordinaire

Dyke Fuck

“the masculine urge

of her bitch goddess

who wanted power

and could possibly

conceive of another

woman as sex object”

—Edward Butscher

Sylvia Plath: Method 
_______________

The stars stand still—

Clocks stop ticking and

The page burns, my dear

Str8t Male Critics don’t wanna—

Think that the Bitch Goddess

Was really a Closeted Dyke

Her unwritten Self—

Bitch Goddess Sisterhood

Possessed prematurely

American fugue—

Sickened by male Tulips

And crude Electro-Shock

Jaguar Jugular

“Sylvia is playing

with a kind of horror

motif that must have

tickled the imprisoned

bitch goddess to laughter,

sardonic or otherwise”

—Edward Butscher

Sylvia Plath: Method 

_________________

Terrifying her sleek—

Thighs, naked appetite

Coiled spring of death

She hunts men—

For their animal vitality

Sucking them dry

Pussy poetess—

British Bitch Goddess

Violent Vulva Vixen

Pike, pigs, panthers—

She’s carnal & carnivorous

Goes for his jugular vein

The Wound

“What was behind Sylvia’s

awesome fertility of the

moment? Something was

nagging at her unconscious,

stirring up the dark waters

where the bitch goddess

had her nest, Ted was

drifting away and her

marriage was about to

collapse.”—Edward Butscher

Sylvia Plath: Method 

_______________

Wounded by denial—

Queered by sublimation

Sick of str8t domination

Ted was her trophy—

All the other priestesses

Pouting like Dido Merwin

Face lifts got rid of—

All those wrinkly marriages

Dido wanted Ted desperately

But there’s no way—

Of disguising the truth

Dido’s pussy just wasn’t

Young & supple anymore!

Against Confession

“The bitch goddess

was repressed as she

had never been before

by the young wife

enjoying the advantages

of her new role and the

pleasures of a shared

future.”—Edward Butscher

Sylvia Plath: Method 

________________

Avoiding the direct—

Autobiographical method

Sylvia the Bitch Goddess

Did things differently

She let her poems—

Emerge slowly from

The Solar Midnight

Of her Swollen Pussy

She kept things—

In the dark, unseen

She wrote violently

Letting others pout

Her pussy’s possessed—

An Animal mind that

Males feared in their

Slithery Snakehood

The Snake’s Stain

“Art will endure—

including Sylvia’s own

poetry—the bitch goddess

myth—despite the death

of the other self, the

flesh-and-blood mother,

the sacrificial lamb, a

woman killed by a male

reality and culture.”

—Edward Butscher

Sylvia Plath: Method 

___________________

Sylvia’s anxiety—

Wasn’t like Ted’s

With his Pike ideology

And Mytholmroyd myths

Being Bitch Goddess—

Her precocious dyke

Powerful pussy worry

Worse than Ted’s

What was it that—

Stained Court Green

Late at night by that

Old rotting Cemetery?

Sniffing, smelling—

The primal stink and

Stench of all those

Dear Dead Pussies?

Faber and Faber

“Sylvia translating the

bitch goddess into artifice

and defining her terrors

in terms of Hiroshima

and Auschwitz”

—Edward Butscher

Sylvia Plath: Method 

__________________

Viciousness in the—

Faber & Faber stairwell

Miss Eliot & her gang of

Queer cronies gathered

Miss Auden with her—

Reptilian wrinkled neck

Leering at Ted’s crotch

Over his tipsy martini

Silly Miss Spender—

Slipping & sliding against

The staircase banister

Wanting to woo Ted too

Miss MacNeice niggardly—

Sipping her drink while

Ted glared at this bunch

Of effete British Fags

Fertility Goddess

“The bitch goddess

was permitted to say

all the things she had

wanted to say but 

could not when

restrained by love

and middle-class

morality.”

—Edward Butscher

Sylvia Plath: Method 

___________________

What else could eunuchs—

And kept men of the louche

And decadent Waste Land

Do but leer and lust?

Getting their hands on—

The Male Modernist moment

Gripping the newborn baby

Concealed in Hughes’ crotch?

Despite their cool—

Aloof Effacement of the

Zoo keeper’s wife hissing 

There back home alone

Madame Sosostris—

Had already predicted

Thru Tarot and Ouija

Sylvia’s Waste Land revenge

Medusa

“Medusa herself had

been a prime archetype

for Sylvia’s urge to freeze

experience in poetry.”

—Edward Butscher

Sylvia Plath: Method 

__________________

Sylvia writes for herself—

In this incarnation she’s discovered

The intoxication of Ariel’s power

The millennium’s sad clichés—

Attending to Yeats’ descending into

Decadent Bethlehem visions

She admires Yeats immensely—

Letting herself go to gyre & slouch her

Way anew into the awful Vision

Arielesque her new nom de plume—

Burning brightly there on Fitzroy Road

Her new Bitch Goddess persona

Bitch Goddess Plans Unfolding

“Ted’s abandonment,

the end of her marriage,

had freed her to become

the bitch goddess”

—Edward Butscher

Sylvia Plath: Method 

___________________

A petulant stubborn dizzy Life—

Sickened by Tulips & Electro-Shock

Every poem a meathead manifesto

Larkin calling her in his cold way—

A “Hammer Film poet” who learned

Like Berryman how to jump off a bridge?

You know, like Miss Lowell & Sexton—

Curiously hurried with offhand vignettes

Seemingly too personal to be practical

Shockingly chic yet somehow closeted—

A yolk lace or noose of silk kimono pose

Ravishing, choking, strangling her to death?