Hi grasshopper,
Now here's a many layered poem!
Each time I've read it I've come across other ways of highlighting different
things it's getting at -
the bee, with it's honey, it's skills at building, then it's one track mind
(making a bee-line), it's sting... and I feel I can can keep on imagining
other links between how I see bees and how I see poem-making and poetry - so
I hope I do!
Then there's the sense of "the poet's wife" - and just who is that?
I'd been playing with the notion, "so, all poet's have a wife, and her name
is The Muse" - which wis intruiging, and I was enjoying playing that through
my mind... And the thought of Vanilla on the breath - amazing, delightful!
But then Arthur's reminded me of Plath and her poems, and I remember the Bee
Wall outside her and Hughes' house just outside Heptonstall and I'm starting
to interpret some things in other ways as well. How close is this poem to
Huge Ted's wife becomes an intruiging, a rewarding, question. The
possibilities of glimpsing moments in their relationship alongside comments
in the poem is intruiging. The possibilities of glimpsing more about Huge
Ted's perception of what poetry is, where it comes from, and then seeing how
Plath saw poetry makes the poem work like the little hologram on my Bank
Card (first one image, then the other...).
(And now I'm even thinking, which poet has the wife? Hughes or Plath? Or
both? And I start to get giddy, did they do any poet-wife swapping...
throwing stanzas into a bowl like car-keys perhaps???) (But this is being
silly!) (But the poem does make me spin off in all kinds of ways, so I'm
offering a strange kind of compliment!)
And then I start on the third part, and see, somewhere behind the images you
give, their child in bed between them, and I remember the poem "The Moon &
Little Frieda" and recognise how their daughter is now valued as a poet.
There's other resonances in their too, I seem to recall Plath had moon
things as well!).
Of course all these Plath/Hughes things aren't all that the poem's doing! I
sort of find the langauge is somehow seducing me towards seing myself in
another light as well... (But, then, the "wings of blood" makes me pause and
wonder - is it a direct quote of something, a direct allusion, or is it a
grasshopper phrase? I sort of associate wings with feathers - if its birds -
or skin - of it's, say, bees - more than with blood...)
In all of it, therefore, I'm intruiged by how I interpret what's possible.
But I do find, and found when I first started to read it, that there are a
lot of females in this poem. I don't find that too much - but (LOL) I once
found myself wondering "Is the bee at the start of the poem a male or a
female?" (But I don't think that matters! It's just that it appears as the
only ungendered animate in the poem!!)
I'm also still wondering about the phrase: "to unearth sky" - it sounds a
difficult way of saying something that may be said more simpler (because
neither earth nor sky are embedded in all else the poem is getting at - at
least I can't see why these words have been chosen instead of something less
complex, something more simple).
It's given me a fair few hours really good pleasure - I'm grateful.
Bob


>From: grasshopper <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: The Pennine Poetry Works <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: New sub: The Poet's Wife
>Date: Sun, 3 Aug 2003 13:32:46 +0100
>
>
>           The Poet's Wife
>
>
>There's a bee in the bedroom curtains,
>vibrating against the glass. It will escape soon,
>to unearth sky.Yesterday you reminded me
>that all the worker bees are shes.
>Listen to the plump throb of her body.
>They stack the wax hexagons neatly
>through the hive - such strength and economy
>in that sixfold architecture - and pack
>the cells with females - a few drones
>the only males, mere generation-fodder.
>
>I know your Muse is female:
>I have smelt the vanilla of her breath
>as she speaks into your ribs,
>and twists her fingers in your heartbeat.
>I see her hair tangled breaklessly
>in the fabric of your eyes. She teaches you
>the heaviness of teardrops,
>the melt of bowels, the aching pull
>of  womb on vertebrae.
>
>You call her Anima. Her wings of blood
>fade and flux with the tide,
>strong as light, timeless as sorrow.
>Mistress of subtle mysteries,
>she lifts your face to the moon,
>softens your sight, cradles
>the earth in your cranium,
>and she lies between us, humming,
>as you cast your gaze around.
>
>                             grasshopper

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