I really liked Plath when I was younger. Then I was studying her one year on college, and I realized that I don't really like her anymore. I do not think she is particularly good and I'm really tired of hearing all about WHY I should appreciate the bi-polar breaks in her poetry in Ariel, etc.

Same here with me, except all my illusions shattered when I did my sophomore term paper on her...
She just kind of annoys me now. I still love some of her poems, but she just seems so... over the top. I can't really describe it.

hey, do you remember the movie Sylvia? well the poem that's spoken at the beginning, with the tree analogy, what's it called?? I've looked and looked and haven't been able to find it. Thanks.

you do know that frieda hughes refused any of plath's work to be used in that movie, right?

if I knew would I be asking the question??



so I assume it's not a sylvia poem but something made up for the movie=?

logic would lead us to assume that.

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I thought she said Lady Lazarus or something like that in the beginning, but it's been a while since I've seen the movie.

Sylvia Plath's daughter and literary executor, Frieda Hughes, not only refused to cooperate with the producers or allow them access to her mother's poetry, but also publicly denounced the project in a published poem of her own.
- IMDB

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can anyone post what she says at the beginning? does anyone remember?

that's what i recall too. they were able to use snippets of the poems, just not as much as i'm sure they would've liked. dunno.. sylvia had brown eyes.
anyway, hch, here's the script http://www.script-o-rama.com/movie_s...h-paltrow.html

That opening narration is from Lady Lazurus. I don't see a tree analogy though? I can't remember if there is one in that poem, although I can think of others. If you're interested in her poetry, I would suggest just buying Ariel.

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do you mean the fig tree analogy about choosing the figs before they whither and die, with the figs representing poetry, marriage, etc.? it's from the bell jar when esther is thinking about her career and her possible life with buddy. i can't remember if a similar monologue is spoken in the movie?

The beginning of the movie opens with Plath's most quoted "Dying is an art/Like everything else" lines, from Lady Lazarus.

no that's not it. She said something along the lines of "my life is a tree on one branch is my marriage, another my poetry, another my children, etc and the leaves fall as I hesitate" or something like that.

it sounds like paraphrasing from the bell jar and the fig tree analogy that alterity mentioned.

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but it doesn't appear on that script transcript, and the movie starts with that passage. where can I find it?

Sylvia Plath is one of the greatest poets and writers of american history(in my opinion) lets share our love of this troubled but talented woman

I love her too. Sylvia is one of my favorite poets, and The Belljar is one of my favorite novels.

Elm

I know the bottom, she says. I know it with my great tap root;
It is what you fear.
I do not fear it: I have been there.

Is it the sea you hear in me,
Its dissatisfactions?
Or the voice of nothing, that was you madness?

Love is a shadow.
How you lie and cry after it.
Listen: these are its hooves: it has gone off, like a horse.

All night I shall gallup thus, impetuously,
Till your head is a stone, your pillow a little turf,
Echoing, echoing.

Or shall I bring you the sound of poisons?
This is rain now, the big hush.
And this is the fruit of it: tin white, like arsenic.

I have suffered the atrocity of sunsets.
Scorched to the root
My red filaments burn and stand,a hand of wires.

Now I break up in pieces that fly about like clubs.
A wind of such violence
Will tolerate no bystanding: I must shriek.

The moon, also, is merciless: she would drag me
Cruelly, being barren.
Her radiance scathes me. Or perhaps I have caught her.

I let her go. I let her go
Diminished and flat, as after radical surgery.
How your bad dreams possess and endow me.

I am inhabited by a cry.
Nightly it flaps out
Looking, with its hooks, for something to love.

I am terrified by this dark thing
That sleeps in me;
All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity.

Clouds pass and disperse.
Are those the faces of love, those pale irretrievables?
Is it for such I agitate my heart?

I am incapable of more knowledge.
What is this, this face
So murderous in its strangle of branches? ----

Its snaky acids kiss.
It petrifies the will. These are the isolate, slow faults
That kill, that kill, that kill.

i used to love her stuff when i was younger, the bell jar is one of my favourite books, but i can only handle her work in small doses now.

Me too. I didn't decide she sucked or anything, I'm just no longer a teenager.

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We are sorry, the mind you have reached is not a working mind.
Please hang up and die again.
Please hang up,
And die again.