Reading and studying Silvia Plath this week has been interesting. I read Ariel a few years ago, but it didn't make a very strong impression on me--I've always enjoyed her poetry, though it's never been a favorite. An interesting contrast in her writing is the dynamic between free verse and the last few remnants of meter; it shows up especially in poems like "Daddy", but avoids any of the rigorous stiffness so prominent in classical poetry.
This week I'm reading a short story collection by Rhys Hughes called "Link Arms with Toads", which, to be honest, has almost nothing to do with poetry, with the exception that it occasionally uses poetic techniques within prose. The collection is made up primarily of very surreal, sometimes difficult stories and the use of poetic techniques (juxtapositions of descriptions, heavier use of abstract/metaphorical language, etc) really adds to their aesthetic edge.
An interesting thing about this class is that it's the first time I've written poetry in quite a few years--normally I'm limited exclusively to fiction, and while (similar to book I was writing about) I like to use a few of the techniques of poetry in prose, I've noticed the matrix of words in a poem (not so much the language itself, but what the language is attempting to "do") is difficult for me. The way a poem is put together and the things it signifies are very different from a story; there's a certain approach to fragmentation and the implementation of images, similar to the way something of recreated in memory than to the way it's actually experienced. I'm not sure quite what this is right now but I think I'm going to continue on my post next week.
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