It's the penultimate day. The penultimate poem for 2018's Poetry Month. Glo/NaPoWriMo's pulled out an interesting prompt: "Today, we’d like to challenge you to write a poem based on the Plath Poetry Project’s calendar. Simply pick a poem from the calendar, and then write a poem that responds or engages with your chosen Plath poem in some way."
Don't you just love things that begin with "simply"? I was all over this website last night and deciding which Plath poem to riff on wasn't easy. I first read her when I was in my early twenties and thought I might turn out to be a poet. I was into the confessional poets then—Anne Sexton, Sylvia.
I was born on her sixteenth birthday. My mother wanted to name me Sylvia but somehow I ended up as Linda. Once, I named a kitten after her using her nickname "Sivvy". My Sivvy was a sick little cat who didn't last long. She had constant diarrhea and had to be cleaned up after all the time. She wasn't a friendly cat. After she was gone I said I'd learned never to name a pet after a suicidal poet. Oh, and the name of the love of my life? Ted. Plath's story fascinated me then and continues to. This, this may be the poem for today. Let's have a look.
Never Name Anything After a Suicidal Poet
We share a birthday, Sylvia and I—
Two Scorpios on the lookout for Hallowe'en.
My mother wanted to name me Sylvia
But somehow I ended up as Linda.
Once, I named a kitten after her
Using her nickname, Sivvy.
My Sivvy was a sick little cat—
Couldn't catch a rat. Threw up in a hat.
She had constant diarrhea—
Had to be cleaned up after all the time,
Bum in the sink,
Filthy as ink.
She wasn't a friendly cat.
No lovely pussy oh pussy my love lost there.
After she was gone I swore never to name
Anything else after a suicidal poet.
And the love of my life who I took to my bed?
Ted is his name. Ted. Ted.
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| Sivvy, the no-tail diarrhea cat, Thornhill, Ontario 1979 |
It being National Poetry Month, I picked up four poetry books at Otter Books in Nelson, BC last week. (Yay, independent bookstores!) Coincidentally, one of them is Sina Queyras' My Ariel.
In honour of Plath I've grudgingly capitalized all the lines and thrown in a little bit of her signature repetitiveness at the end. And a couple of rhymes. And a couple of em-dashes, because Plath liked to use them. And she does mention a cat in The Other. I'm just going to leave Never Name Anything After a Suicidal Poet as my Day 29 poem work-in-progress and go read some of Queyras' work.
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2 comments:
Thanks for the link, Linda. I think you enjoyed finding the parallels in Sylvia's life and yours. My wall poem is a much-shortened, much-changed earlier poem I wrote during a La Manz timed reading five or six years ago. After reading her wall poem, It seemed appropriate to resurrect it and then to perform major surgery, including amputations and facelifts. The last three rewrites actually occurred after I published it this morning! I just can't stop rewriting. J.
Ha! I know what you mean re the rewriting. You'll note I ended by referring to my Day 29 poem as a work-in-progress. And yes, I'd forgotten we shared a birthday until I started working on this one. Fun.
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