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A review by ella_holden_
The Colossus by Sylvia Plath
- p. 20 The Colossus: ‘I shall never get you put together entirely, pieced, glued, and properly jointed’. ‘Thirty years now I have laboured to dredge the silt from your throat, I am none the wiser.’
- p. 21 The Colossus: ‘the sun rises under the pillar of your tongue. My hours are married to shadow.’
- p. 22 Lorelei: ‘it is no night to drown in’
- p. 27 All The Dead Dears: ‘with a granite grin’
- p. 30 The Thin People: ‘they are always with us, the thin people’
- p. 33 Suicide Off Egg Rock: ‘His blood beating the old tattoo I am, I am, I am’
- p. 35 Mushrooms: ‘We shall by morning inherit the earth. Our foot’s in the door’
- p. 38 Watercolour of Grantchester Meadows: ‘hands laced, in a moody indolence of love’
- p. 39 The Ghost’s Leavetaking: ‘the no-colour void where the waking head rubbishes our the draggled lot of sulphurous dreamscapes and obscure lunar conundrums…sleep-twisted sheets’
- p. 40 The Ghost’s Leavetaking: ‘O keeper of the profane grail, the dreaming skull’
- p. 43 Black Rook In Rainy Weather: ‘I only know that a rook ordering its black feathers can so shine as to seize my senses, haul my eyelids up, and grant a brief respite from fear of total neutrality. With luck, trekking stubborn through this season of fatigue, I shall patch together a content of sorts. Miracles occur, if you care to call these spasmodic tricks of radiance miracles. The wait’s begun again, the long wait for the angel, for that rare, random descent.’
- p. 44 A Winter Ship: ‘a poor month for park-sleepers and lovers’
- p. 46 Full Fathom Five: ‘Your dangers are many. I cannot look much but your form suffers some strange injury and seems to die’
- p. 47 Full Fathom Five: ‘You defy other godhood, I walk dry on your kingdom’s border…Father, this thick air is murderous, I would breathe water’
- p. 50 Blue Moles: ‘What happens between us happens in darkness, vanishes easy and often as each breath’
- p. 54 Man In Black: ‘And you, across those white stones, strode out in your dead black coat, black shoes, and your black hair till there you stood, fixed vortex on the far tip, riveting stones, air, all of it, together’
- p. 60 Snakecharmer: ‘lids his moony eye’
- p. 80-88 Poems For A Birthday: ‘I am all mouth… Let me sit in a flowerpot, the spiders won’t notice… These halls are full of women who think they are birds… you are the one mouth I would be a tongue to… This is a dark house, very big, I made it myself, cell by cell from a quiet corner… He lives in an old well, a stony hole. He’s to blame… Eating the fingers of wisdom… The mother of mouths didn’t love me… O I am too big to go backward… Time unwinds from the great umbilicus of the sun its endless glitter. I must swallow it all… In the light the blood is black. Tell me my name… The sun sat in his armpit… Monkey lived under the dunce cap. He kept blowing me kisses. I hardly knew him… Call him any name, he’ll come to it… I’ve married a cupboard of rubbish. I bed in a fish puddle. Down here the sky is always falling… I am lost, I am lost, in the robes of all this light… When I fell out of the light. I entered the stomach of indifference, the wordless cupboard… This is the after-hell: I see the light… Love is the bone and sinew of my curse.’
- p. 21 The Colossus: ‘the sun rises under the pillar of your tongue. My hours are married to shadow.’
- p. 22 Lorelei: ‘it is no night to drown in’
- p. 27 All The Dead Dears: ‘with a granite grin’
- p. 30 The Thin People: ‘they are always with us, the thin people’
- p. 33 Suicide Off Egg Rock: ‘His blood beating the old tattoo I am, I am, I am’
- p. 35 Mushrooms: ‘We shall by morning inherit the earth. Our foot’s in the door’
- p. 38 Watercolour of Grantchester Meadows: ‘hands laced, in a moody indolence of love’
- p. 39 The Ghost’s Leavetaking: ‘the no-colour void where the waking head rubbishes our the draggled lot of sulphurous dreamscapes and obscure lunar conundrums…sleep-twisted sheets’
- p. 40 The Ghost’s Leavetaking: ‘O keeper of the profane grail, the dreaming skull’
- p. 43 Black Rook In Rainy Weather: ‘I only know that a rook ordering its black feathers can so shine as to seize my senses, haul my eyelids up, and grant a brief respite from fear of total neutrality. With luck, trekking stubborn through this season of fatigue, I shall patch together a content of sorts. Miracles occur, if you care to call these spasmodic tricks of radiance miracles. The wait’s begun again, the long wait for the angel, for that rare, random descent.’
- p. 44 A Winter Ship: ‘a poor month for park-sleepers and lovers’
- p. 46 Full Fathom Five: ‘Your dangers are many. I cannot look much but your form suffers some strange injury and seems to die’
- p. 47 Full Fathom Five: ‘You defy other godhood, I walk dry on your kingdom’s border…Father, this thick air is murderous, I would breathe water’
- p. 50 Blue Moles: ‘What happens between us happens in darkness, vanishes easy and often as each breath’
- p. 54 Man In Black: ‘And you, across those white stones, strode out in your dead black coat, black shoes, and your black hair till there you stood, fixed vortex on the far tip, riveting stones, air, all of it, together’
- p. 60 Snakecharmer: ‘lids his moony eye’
- p. 80-88 Poems For A Birthday: ‘I am all mouth… Let me sit in a flowerpot, the spiders won’t notice… These halls are full of women who think they are birds… you are the one mouth I would be a tongue to… This is a dark house, very big, I made it myself, cell by cell from a quiet corner… He lives in an old well, a stony hole. He’s to blame… Eating the fingers of wisdom… The mother of mouths didn’t love me… O I am too big to go backward… Time unwinds from the great umbilicus of the sun its endless glitter. I must swallow it all… In the light the blood is black. Tell me my name… The sun sat in his armpit… Monkey lived under the dunce cap. He kept blowing me kisses. I hardly knew him… Call him any name, he’ll come to it… I’ve married a cupboard of rubbish. I bed in a fish puddle. Down here the sky is always falling… I am lost, I am lost, in the robes of all this light… When I fell out of the light. I entered the stomach of indifference, the wordless cupboard… This is the after-hell: I see the light… Love is the bone and sinew of my curse.’