Poems that you love

[rayheinrich]

I must confess something:

this (Lady Lazarus) is my favorite poem.

And one of mine -- with Plath it's hard for me to rate them with any consistency as their various values fluctuate
according to the instability of my emotions. And since her poems contribute to that instability, rating becomes impossible.

I'm in love with Sylvia.

When I first discovered Plath -- a book of hers found in a second-hand book store into which the original owner had pasted
newspaper photos and articles about Plath and her suicide -- it was love at first sight. The writer in me was overwhelmed by
the precise terror of her metaphor, my heart recognized her as a sister.

... but as for loving/living with someone day-to-day, sharing a life with them... that would be Emily.  

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And since my absolute favorite poems (to read or to write) are love poems:



    Eavesdropper   -   Sylvia Plath


    Your brother will trim my hedges!
    They darken your house,
    Nosy grower,
    Mole on my shoulder,
    To be scratched absently,
    To bleed, if it comes to that.
    The stain of the tropics
    Still urinous on you, a sin.
    A kind of bush-stink.
   
    You may be local,
    But that yellow!
    Godawful!
    Your body one
    Long nicotine-finger
    On which I,
    White cigarette,
    Burn, for your inhalation,
    Driving the dull cells wild.
   
    Let me roost in you!
    My distractions, my pallors.
    Let them start the queer alchemy
    That melts the skin
    Gray tallow, from bone and bone.
    So I saw your much sicker
    Predecessor wrapped up,
    A six and a half foot wedding-cake.
    And he was not even malicious.
   
    Do not think I don't notice your curtain—
    Midnight, four o'clock,
    Lit (you are reading),
    Tarting with the drafts that pass,
    Little whore tongue,
    Chenille beckoner,
    Beckoning my words in—
    The zoo yowl, the mad soft
    Mirror talk you love to catch me at.
   
    How you jumped when I jumped on you!
    Arms folded, ear cocked,
    Toad-yellow under the drop
    That would not, would not drop
    In a desert of cow people
    Trundling their udders home
    To the electric milker, the wifey, the big blue eye
    That watches, like God, or the sky
    The ciphers that watch it.
   
    I called.
    You crawled out,
    A weather figure, boggling,
    Belge troll, the low
    Church smile
    Spreading itself, like butter.
    This is what I am in for—
    Flea body!
    Eyes like mice
   
    Flicking over my property,
    Levering letter flaps,
    Scrutinizing the fly
    Of the man's pants
    Dead on the chair back,
    Opening the fat smiles, the eyes
    Of two babies
    Just to make sure—
    Toad-stone! Sister-bitch! Sweet neighbor!