Fever 103 - by Sylvia Plath

Fever 103

by Sylvia Plath

Pure? What does it mean?
The tongues of hell
Are dull, dull as the triple

Tongues of dull, fat Cerberus
Who wheezes at the gate. Incapable
Of licking clean

The aguey tendon, the sin, the sin.
The tinder cries.
The indelible smell

Of a snuffed candle!
Love, love, the low smokes roll
From me like Isadora's scarves, I'm in a fright

One scarf will catch and anchor in the wheel.
Such yellow sullen smokes
Make their own element. They will not rise,

But trundle round the globe
Choking the aged and the meek,
The weak

Hothouse baby in its crib,
The ghastly orchid
Hanging its hanging garden in the air,

Devilish leopard!
Radiation turned it white
And killed it in an hour.

Greasing the bodies of adulterers
Like Hiroshima ash and eating in.
The sin. The sin.

Darling, all night
I have been flickering, off, on, off, on.
The sheets grow heavy as a lecher's kiss.

Three days. Three nights.
Lemon water, chicken
Water, water, make me retch.

I am too pure for you or anyone.
Your body
Hurts me as the world hurts God. I am a lantern --

My head a moon
Of Japanese paper, my gold beaten skin
Infinitely delicate and infinitely expensive.

Does not my heat astound you. And my light.
All by myself I am a huge camellia
Glowing and coming and going, flush on flush.

I think I am going up,
I think I may rise --
The beads of hot metal fly, and I, love, I

Am a pure acetylene
Virgin
Attended by roses,

By kisses, by cherubim,
By whatever these pink things mean.
Not you, nor him

Not him, no

Please note that artistic interpretation can and will vary significantly, according to the choices made by the person reading the poem. To demonstrate this, feel free to listen to Ms. Lizotte's reading of the same poem in the attached podcast, and see if you get a different feeling as you listen to the work

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Billy Collins

I love this poem. What do you think?

Some Days
Some days I put the people in their places at the table,bend their legs at the knees,if they come with that feature,and fix them into the tiny wooden chairs.All afternoon they face one another,the man in the brown suit,the woman in the blue dress,perfectly motionless, perfectly behaved.But other days, I am the onewho is lifted up by the ribs,then lowered into the dining room of a dollhouseto sit with the others at the long table.Very funny,but how would you like itif you never knew from one day to the nextif you were going to spend itstriding around like a vivid god,your shoulders in the clouds,or sitting down there amidst the wallpaper,staring straight ahead with your little plastic face?





which one to use?

This blog is as plain as white bread

It needs major work, and I don't know what direction to take with it. I'd like to publish interesting English teacher blog links, and put a sample lesson or two in here, but am still working on familiarizing myself with the technology.

Jump in!

It's something that comes naturally. We all read, write, and think, or at least think we do. So let's jump in, and ask questions later. This is a test. This is only a test.