art by Katy Horan (c) https://www.literaryladiesguide.com/literary-musings/artists-portraits-of-sylvia-plath/
"Even amidst fierce flames the golden lotus can be planted" (quote used on Sylvia Plath's headstone) Not the pink of a woollen wedding dress, the azaleas on a cemetery path, a bandage bloodied by a cut thumb, nor the hearse-like English cars, the men in crow-shaded suits the shadow of Devonshire slate roofs. Not the blues of the English Channel, the Atlantic Ocean that tempted drowning-dreams in her first decade. Not Spanish terracotta or Devon earth. Her red was the poppies’ papery skirts, the lust for poetry in her blood. Not quite the yellow of her bikini during that platinum summer of beaches and babysitting. Almost the yellow of daffodils, her first hive of bees (her father had written Bumblebees and their Ways). Her yellow was that of the rose – Victorian symbol of jealousy, rages that could tip her into self-loathing. The yellow of a single rose bud at the point of becoming a full bloom. Like a child forming itself finger by finger in the dark My father told me I was love. My mother said an accident, grew like a bulb in her cold womb. The grass would unload its dew on my feet as I traced the flowers the frost made and drew a star for my dead father. Pinched red mouthfuls of berries knowing sunset would bring punishment after which I’d look to the black sky, search for my father’s star. I envied the magnolia, drinking its own scent. Eternity stretched like boredom. I counted the pills, but not enough to kill this thinness, light as paper. And I became a bride. You were real, handsomely featureless, would waste afternoons starting at the sky. I gave you children. Then I drew pity from the others on the ward. I took my ring off. It caught the sun. I put it back on. This is my finger touching the photo. These are my babies. The clouds white as a wedding dress. I stayed. You’d borrowed the light. I wanted it back. I wore black. You’d buy roses, still called it love as I hid a bruise, another fracture. The children cried and I was too small to comfort their hurts. The pain they wake to is not theirs. I crushed pills, added water, watched it turn colourless, tried to drink. In the ambulance, my heart still beat so healthily it almost bloomed. This living doll was mended again for the gift of my babies’ small breaths, the smell of their sleeps. Reading Her Letters Reading Sylvia Plath's letters gave me a jolt of recognition: the strained cheerfulness, framing negatives as positives and accounts for every penny with approval-seeking justification to a mother who burdened a child with financial difficulties, who made it clear how difficult it was to be a mother, the burdens, unasked for self-sacrifice, always the martyr. She lived vicariously, demanded success to take credit for - my daughter gets her brains, work ethic from me, she'll go far. And the subtext: it justifies the pressure I put her under because I need her to achieve for me be the success I wanted for myself, what's hers is mine. Two lives entwined no boundary allowed between mother and daughter. The letters showed a way of managing contact, a boundary of grey rock, reinforced by polite words on pretty stationery. Crackle and Drag (i.m. Sylvia Plath 1932-1963) She did what she set out to do: secured Yeats' former flat with a year's rent in advance, turned summer in New York into an intense, glowing novel, flayed herself into a brilliant poet. Poetry not written by a dead, white male that school thought suitable for study. A rejection was an invitation to try again, repurpose her work, try out a short story, a novel, create a moment's monument that lives beyond a punchline, rewards re-reading, outlives the life. When some readers insist on dragging her work with the foreboding of death, they miss the crackle of static, the spark that fired her work ethic, that inspired. A Contemporary Visit to 3 Chalcot Square (home of Sylvia Plath from 1960-1961) You’d approve of the red curtains, but not the lampshade: you weren’t chintzy. In the window boxes, instead of flowers, you’d have had fresh herbs for cooking while Ted was in meetings at the BBC. You’ve have cut a rose for your dinner table from the untamed bush you ducked under, hurrying back from walks along Primrose Hill with Frieda. Whites and yellows would have brightened your flat, chock-a-block with books and baby paraphernalia, barely room for your writing desk, piled with your journal and dictionaries, plans for book launches, another baby and a scintillating literary salon that somehow got crammed into this, with just enough space to paint the sill white and stencil hearts in a burning red. Emma Lee’s publications include “The Significance of a Dress” (Arachne, 2020) and "Ghosts in the Desert" (IDP, 2015). She co-edited “Over Land, Over Sea,” (Five Leaves, 2015), was Reviews Editor for The Blue Nib, reviews for magazines and blogs at https://emmalee1.wordpress.com. Poems Inspired by Prince “A Purple Showcase” from Emma Lee 3 poems from Emma Lee Poem: Tracing a Love Song by Emma Lee
Fevers of the Mind 