Jon, I think Plath's crime was that she appropriated public imagery in a
poetry she was permitted to write provided it remained within bounds,
e.g., the natural world, domestic life. A residue of the same prejudice
still clings to Adrienne Rich who, in a much more sustained body of work,
breaks the same rules. Plath, as you point out regarding the recording,
reads hard: the hard or loud female voice is generally not appreciated.
Again, I'd cite Anne Carson's great essay on "The Gender of Sound" in
Glass, irony, and God."
All the best,
Mairead
On Wed, 5 Jul 2000, Jon Corelis wrote:
> Hearing a recording of Plath reading Daddy is an uncomfortable
> experience. This is nothing distanced about it. It sounds like a
> crisis therapy session. Can that poem have any meaning without Freud?
>
> I've heard some people criticize that poem on the grounds that it's
> morally contemptible to compare one's personal neurotic suffering to
> Nazi genocide. I've heard others defend it on the grounds that the only
> effective metaphor for Hell that we have left is the camps. Anyone
> here foolish enough to take sides in this?
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