Some sad things.

I was thinking about sad things today on my walk to Tennessee Beach, and at a certain point I started to think about the epically sad poet Sylvia Plath, who wrote some of the saddest things ever, back in her day. Sylvia had mental problems. She was also incredibly brilliant—one of the most legendary female poets ever to live. And, as far as I am concerned, one of the only readable poets, period.

I’m not usually a poetry girl. But some of my favorite lines come from her book Ariel, published in the early 60s after a severely dramatic and terrible period in her tempestuous marriage to fellow poet Ted Hughes. Soon after Ariel was published, Sylvia gassed herself to death. Ted went on to marry his mistress Assia Wevill, who had once escaped Nazi Germany, but eventually also killed herself over a man. Way to go, Ted.

This is an excerpt from a Sylvia Plath poem called The Tub. I took the liberty of truncating it and left out a line. If you want to read the whole thing it’s here.

each day demands we create our whole world over,
disguising the constant horror in a coat
of many-colored fictions; we mask our past
in the green of eden, pretend future’s shining fruit
can sprout from the navel of this present waste.

in faith we shall board our imagined ship and wildly sail
among sacred islands of the mad till death
shatters the fabulous stars and makes us real.