Plath Review

I read a Sylvia Plath review. She said she was "fearless" and tore away "contradictions" of "politeness." The outer romance of anothers isn't the poetry Plath had written. Ariel began with love and ended in Spring. A secret of what's good for me is good for everyone. If I love someone and that someone's best for me, then it's best for everyone that I love who's best for me. The thesis seems to me to glide across and through the muck and mud of poetic subjects. Her will that had led to her tragic circumstances of her death then challenge that thesis. People assume because she died her art must have been a celebration of futility. But it wasn't. Her life continued in other ways and only by knowing the hope of eternal life can someone understand her work. Her work does represent a choice for the reader and how one chooses to view her work as limited and hopeless like Robert Lowell suggested or not. It's almost the real secret is if you believe the critics then you're fucked. Critics were trying to shape the romance to fit the type of narratives that were convenient. One could read him more generously and presume that the hypothesis that "life even when disciplined just isn't worth it" is just a statement on how being too academic can tyrannize one's life, and that is her tragedy, being too academic. But that's not typically the confirmation bias of one who trusts critics. People have tended to look to critics to decide for them what to enjoy and what not too. And that's foolish. A true poet can see life and choose life. For me, even as a critic, I see Plath's work as a will to survive and to love on her own terms in spite of what destiny had imposed on her. THe complacency of fate and the cynisism of those in her day might have been incapable of knowing. It seems to me most people have a tendency to think the world doesn't exist outside of their self esteem, like children who think that a parent out of site ceased to exist. Like art, Sylvia exists outside of what critics thought of themselves and what the reader would like, but an artist tends to turn invisible outside of what others like or don't like. Salvation I suspect is the same way. People tend to not like salvation because they're often just not already saved. It's outside their self esteem and so tend to never reach for it. Integrity is the way and I asked God for integrity so that I wouldn't just be a reflection of sickness. Studying one artist well and living live as an artist put me beyond self esteem and into the ability to relate to reality. I would suggest knowing one or two particular artists to this degree of intimacy. It's the way of life.