Johnson,+Casi

=**Sylvia Plath**= Entry One!
 * The Colossus and other poems**

The book I chose for our first reading project is "The Colossus and other poems" written by Sylvia Plath. It is a book filled with 40 complex poems that was first published in 1960. I am very excited to read each poem! I'm not really sure how differentiated each poem is, but just from skimming through the book I have realized that they aren't bubbly and whimsical poems like I am used to, They are very focused, sharp, and a bit demented. My prediction is that the writings will stay consistently nightmare-ish.

Entry Two! This entry would generally be about a specific character, but considering my book doesn't have an established character, I will instead do my best to explain a poem from my book! I am currently on page 22! I am trying to take this poetry novel slowly because I want to fully take in each poem. My favorite piece so far is Two Views of a Cadaver Room, it reads; (1) The day she visited the dissecting room They had four men laid out, black as burnt turkey, Already half unstrung. A vinegary fume Of the death vats clung to them; The white-smocked boys started working. The head of his cadaver had caved in, And she could scarcely make out anything In that rubble of skull plates and old leather. A sallow piece of string held it together. In their jars the snail-nosed babies moon and glow. He hands her the cut-out heart like a cracked heirloom. (2) In Brueghel’s panorama of smoke and slaughter Two people only are blind to the carrion army: He, afloat in the sea of her blue satin Skirts, sings in the direction Of her bare shoulder, while she bends, Finger a leaflet of music, over him, Both of them deaf to the fiddle in the hands Of the death’s-head shadowing their song. These Flemish lovers flourish; not for long.

Yet desolation, stalled in paint, spares the little country Foolish, delicate, in the lower right hand corner. Analysis; Most would find this poem very disturbing! The first view seems to me like she is saddened, and maybe a little shook up! A few things really stand out in this portion of the poem, "In that rubble of skull plates and old leather." which could be showing a bit of disgust, and "He hands her the cut-out heart like a cracked heirloom." could be showing that there is a great loss that came with the death.In the second part it has a more, accepting tune to the cadaver room. No longer saddened, or shaken. I personally don't really understand what her train of thought was in the second half of the poem. Her writings can be SO complex, and very erratic at times.

Entry Three! (9/11/11) I am now on page 44! My quote is; "This is the kingdom of the fading apparition" and it is from the poem The Ghost's Leavetaking! I find this quote meaningful because often times during life, I feel like what we are living is only a dream. Once the dream fades, you are back into reality. You can read the poem for yourself, and then let me know what you think about it!

The Ghost's Leavetaking;
Enter the chilly no-man's land of about Five o'clock in the morning, the no-color void Where the waking head rubbishes out the draggled lot Of sulfurous dreamscapes and obscure lunar conundrums Which seemed, when dreamed, to mean so profoundly much,

Gets ready to face the ready-made creation Of chairs and bureaus and sleep-twisted sheets. The oracular ghost who dwindles on pin-legs To a knot of laundry, with a classic bunch of sheets
 * This is the kingdom of the fading apparition,**

Upraised, as a hand, emblematic of farewell. At this joint between two worlds and two entirely Incompatible modes of time, the raw material Of our meat-and-potato thoughts assumes the nimbus Of ambrosial revelation. And so departs.

Chair and bureau are the hieroglyphs Of some godly utterance wakened heads ignore: So these posed sheets, before they thin to nothing, Speak in sign language of a lost otherworld, A world we lose by merely waking up.

Trailing its telltale tatters only at the outermost Fringe of mundane vision, this ghost goes Hand aloft, goodbye, goodbye, not down Into the rocky gizzard of the earth, But toward a region where our thick atmosphere

Diminishes, and God knows what is there. A point of exclamation marks that sky In ringing orange like a stellar carrot. Its round period, displaced and green, Suspends beside it the first point, the starting

Point of Eden, next the new moon's curve. Go, ghost of our mother and father, ghost of us, And ghost of our dreams' children, in those sheets Which signify our origin and end, To the cloud-cuckoo land of color wheels

And pristine alphabets and cows that moo And moo as they jump over moons as new As that crisp cusp towards which you voyage now. Hail and farewell. Hello, goodbye. O keeper Of the profane grail, the dreaming skull.

Entry Four; (9/17/11) I'm on page 68 I think my prediction was correct, the poems are still very bleak and dark. One of the poems that really made an impression on me within the last week is "The Disquieting Muses", Which is also one of the longest in the book. It shows a few different emotions, which is unusual for Plath

Mother, mother, what illbred aunt Or what disfigured and unsightly Cousin did you so unwisely keep Unasked to my christening, that she Sent these ladies in her stead With heads like darning-eggs to nod And nod and nod at foot and head And at the left side of my crib?
 * The Disquieting Muses;**

Mother, who made to order stories Of Mixie Blackshort the heroic bear, Mother, whose witches always, always, Got baked into gingerbread, I wonder Whether you saw them, whether you said Words to rid me of those three ladies Nodding by night around my bed, Mouthless, eyeless, with stitched bald head.

In the hurricane, when father's twelve Study windows bellied in Like bubbles about to break, you fed My brother and me cookies and Ovaltine And helped the two of us to choir: "Thor is angry: boom boom boom! Thor is angry: we don't care!" But those ladies broke the panes.

When on tiptoe the schoolgirls danced, Blinking flashlights like fireflies And singing the glowworm song, I could Not lift a foot in the twinkle-dress But, heavy-footed, stood aside In the shadow cast by my dismal-headed Godmothers, and you cried and cried: And the shadow stretched, the lights went out.

Mother, you sent me to piano lessons And praised my arabesques and trills Although each teacher found my touch Oddly wooden in spite of scales And the hours of practicing, my ear Tone-deaf and yes, unteachable. I learned, I learned, I learned elsewhere, From muses unhired by you, dear mother,

I woke one day to see you, mother, Floating above me in bluest air On a green balloon bright with a million Flowers and bluebirds that never were Never, never, found anywhere. But the little planet bobbed away Like a soap-bubble as you called: Come here! And I faced my traveling companions.

Day now, night now, at head, side, feet, They stand their vigil in gowns of stone, Faces blank as the day I was born, Their shadows long in the setting sun That never brightens or goes down. And this is the kingdom you bore me to, Mother, mother. But no frown of mine Will betray the company I keep.

=Entry 5; Final Blog!= 9/29/11

Major Poems;
(My opinion!) •The Manor Garden •The Colossus •The Beekeepers Daughter

Favorite Poems;
•Two Views of a Cadaver Room •The Manor Garden •The Eye-Mote •The Ghost's Leavetaking •The Disquieting Muses •The Beekeeper's Daughter

Summary;
This is very complex poetry, showing the darkness of Plath's life. I feel as if many of the poems have a simmilar theme. If you appriciate a challange and Halloween style poetry, this is definantly your author.

Rating;
I rate this book as probably a 4, If you cant break down Plath's complexity, you probably wont enjoy it nearly as much.

Wiki Reflections;
Using Wikispaces was a fun and new way to do "book logs", SO much better than the traditional log sheet. I really enjoyed using Wiki! The only downfall is that having computer problems, or not having Internet at home makes it a little hard to meet the deadlines.