I am in love

I think I am in love with Sylvia Plath, her poems are glorious!

"Lady Lazarus"

I have done it again.
One year in every ten
I manage it-

A sort of walking miracle, my skin
Bright as a Nazi lampshade,
My right foot

A paperweight
My face featureless, fine
Jew linen.

Peel off the napkin
O my enemy.
Do I terrify?-

The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?
The sour breath
Will vanish in a day.

Soon, soon the flesh
The grave cave ate will be
At home on me.

And I a smiling woman.
I am only thirty.
And like the cat I have nine times to die.

This is Number Three
What a trash
To annihilate each decade.

What a million filaments.
The peanut-crunching crowd
Shoves in to see

Them unwrap me hand and foot-
The big strip tease.
Gentlemen, ladies

These are my hands
My knees.
I may be skin and bone,

Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.
The first time it happened I was ten.
It was an accident.

The second time I meant
To last it out and not come back at all.
I rocked shut

As a seashell
They had to call and call
And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.

Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.

I do it so i feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I've a call.

It's easy enough to do it in a cell.
It's easy enough to do it and stay put.
It's the theatrical.

Comeback in broad day
To the same place, the same face, the same brute
Amused shot:

'A miracle!'
That knocks me out.
There is a charge

For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge
For the hearing of my heart-
It really goes.

And there is a charge, a very large charge
For a word or a touch
Or a bit of blood

Or a piece of my hair or my clothes.
So, so, Herr Doktor.
So, Herr Enemy.

I am your opus,
I am your valuable,
The pure gold baby

That melts to a shriek.
I turn and burn.
Do not think I underestimate your great concern.

Ash, ash-
You poke and stir.
Flesh, bone, there is nothing there-

A cake of soap,
A wedding ring,
A gold filling.

Herr God, Herr Lucifer
Beware
Beware.

Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.

An interesting poem...

"Cut"

What a thrill -
My thumb instead of an onion.
The top quite gone
Except for a sort of hinge

Of skin,
A flap like a hat,
Dead white.
Then that red plush.

Little pilgrim,
The Indian's axed your scalp.
Your turkey wattle
Carpet rolls

Straight from the heart.
I step on it,
Clutching my bottle
Of pick fizz.

A celebration, this is.
Out of a gap
A million solders run
Redcoats, every one.

Whose side are they on?
O my
Homunculus, I am ill.
I have taken a pill to kill

The thin
Papery feeling.
Saboteur,
Kamikaze man -

The stain on you
Gauze Ku Klux Klan
Babushka
Darkens and tarnishes when

The balled
Pulp of your heart
Confronts its small
Mill of silence

How you jump -
Trepanned veteran,
Dirty girl,
Thumb stump.

- Sylvia Plath

The Night

We grow accustomed to the Dark -
When Light is put away - As when
the neighbor holds the Lamp To
witness her Goodbye

A Moment - We uncertain step For
Newness of the night - Then - fit our
Vision to the Dark - And meet the
Road - erect -

And so of larger - Darknesses -

Those Evenings of the Brain-When
not a Moon disclose a sign - Or Star -
come out - within -

The Bravest - grope a little -
And sometimes hit a Tree
Directly in the Forehead
But as they learn to see -
Either the Darkness alters -
Or something in the sight
Adjusts itself to Midnight -
And Life steps almost straight.

- Emily Dickinson

Acquainted with the Night

I have been one acquainted with the night. I
have walked out in rain - and back in rain. I
have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat. And
dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry Came over
houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-by;
And further still at an unearthly height,
One luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right. I
have been one acquainted with the night.

- Robert Frost

What I love here is the contrasting view points of both poets writing about the same topic: night. In Emily Dickinson's poem you get a sense of sadness and uncertainty at the first two stanzas but later you see that feeling gradually progresses into awareness and realization. Frost however presents this depressing aspect throughout the whole poem. The mood is very gloomy and towards the end of the poem you feel extreme pity for the speaker especially when Frost repeatedly says "I have been one acquainted to the night," is means that the speaker is and has been accustomed to loneliness and misery.

It's amazing how both poets mention night and darkness but have similar yet completely different perspectives of what darkness really represents. Dickinson speaks of darkness in a way that symbolizes hope and optimism, it's like although the speaker fails to find his/her way, in the end the light at the end of the tunnel always prevails: there is always that beckon of hope in every situation life throws at you. Frost however registers this idea that there is just so much sadness and negativity in life that a person eventually has become accustomed and almost accepting towards whatever wretchedness life has to offer.

Just love how the poems are similar when it comes to certain aspects of the night while in the end still being completely different in each poet's true perspective of life. What is interesting is that both poems reveal so much about each poet's attitude and perception of the sorrow and grief that shrouds people's everyday lives.