April Is National Poetry Month

So... April is National Poetry Month.

I think it's wonderful that we celebrate poetry, although I will admit that - while I am reasonably proficient at prose - I actually suck at writing poetry. Which is funny because I have a deep and abiding love for the form and frequently read and enjoy it.

That being said, I will be celebrating National Poetry Month here in Doctor Zombie's Midnight Theater of Terror. Whether it's the English major/dork in me, or my unfathomable need to fill my life with pain and embarrassment, I will spend this month sharing some of my favorite poets and poetry -- as well as some of my OWN... as painful as that's going to be.

Call it the attention whore in me.

Look at this way, I will also be commenting and mercilessly ridiculing my own horrible attempts at poetry -- and encourage you to do the same! Nothing like a little blood sport to make one appreciate the masters, huh?

So... to kick off National Poetry Month, I figured I'd go with one of my favorite poets, Sylvia Plath. I'm also doing this because I just read that, a few days ago, her own son killed himself. Is there such a thing as a suicide gene?

This poem, by the way, is the last one she wrote before taking her own life. In essence, she wrote her own eulogy.

Edge


The woman is perfected
Her dead

Body wears the smile of accomplishment,
The illusion of a Greek necessity

Flows in the scrolls of her toga,
Her bare

Feet seem to be saying:
We have come so far, it is over.

Each dead child coiled, a white serpent,
One at each little

Pitcher of milk, now empty
She has folded

Them back into her body as petals
Of a rose close when the garden

Stiffens and odors bleed
From the sweet, deep throats of the night flower.

The moon has nothing to be sad about,
Staring from her hood of bone.

She is used to this sort of thing.
Her blacks crackle and drag.