week #13 criticcal

This weekend I read over our packet for the upcoming group project. The poem form that interested me the most was Confessional Poetry. It was stated that confessional poetry was an expression of feelings and emotions. They consisted of feelings of death, trauma, and relationships. Some of the most known people to use this form, was Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, and W.D. Snodgrass, and Robert Lowell. I choose the poem but Sylvia Plath was Lady Lazarus

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 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.
Gentleman , 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 it 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 shout:

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

For the eyeing 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 on 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.

I loved the vivid images used in this poem. In the bible Lazarus was raised from the dead, her use of language in the poem paints that picture of what it may have been like to view someone that was once dead. My favorite line was " Do I terrify" and "The Sour breath will vanish in a day". The poem had solemn tone to it. She comes out of the grave incomplete, and she is hoping to one day regain those things that makes us alive. While doing research on her poem. A reader wrote that " "Lady Lazarus' is Plath's way expressing in her own words the agony of being born agian." This was a deep dark poem. Plath has been known for writing depressing poems that hint around the act of suicide. We even see in this poem her multiple suicide attempts and how she continuously raise from the dead and come back from them. To me, most confessional poems are like a cry out for help. Its a way for the author to hopefully gain understanding from the reader.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esBLxyTFDxE