blog entry

Meet Sylvia Plath

Kim Sisto Robinson

­­I’m attracted to the unusual, the misunderstood, the strange; bad girls like Joplin, Sexton, Winehouse, Madonna; the underdog, the naughty, Nabokov’s Lolita.I’m a contradiction, b­ecause I don’t strive to be like any of them. In fact, I probably wouldn’t even like half of these individuals. But the unusual and the revolutionaries have made me into a better writer.

 

Enter: Sylvia Plath.When I was fourteen years old, a girl with dreams and depression, I stumbled upon Plath, and I thought, ‘finally, somebody like me, layered in weaknessand imperfection.’ The honesty and beauty of her poetry blew my knee high stockings off, helped my homones balance, offered me something more...

 

Let me explain myself—Plath is the reason I began writing, the reason I believe telling the truth is the only way to write.I believe the authenticity and rawness of our words will set us free.Plath did, too.

 

There’s a stake in your fat black heart / And the villagers never liked you / They are dancing and stamping on you / they always knew it was you / Daddy, daddy you bastard, I’m through. ~Ariel, Sylvia Plath

 

One does not need to resemble somebody else to understand them, empathize with them, or relate with them as I do with Plath. It doesn’t matter a damn, becauseI still understand her dark side as if it’s my own; I can see the sanity and insanity, how intergrated they can be;  how they almost touch; the normal and abnormal; the light and dark.Without both, one could not write, or at least, write anything with intensity or value. The words would be like paper doll cut outs. Flat.

 

It’s about the art; the metaphor and symbolism melting inside my ears.It always has been.It’s not about judging or placing morals upon somebody else.It’s about lifting the layers one by one, until you know what’s under the roots.One cannot become a writer without performing this task.

 

Plath’s language is alive and relentless; she writes from a fever inside her mind.I felt that fever. I still feel the heat upon my skin.The words shimmer like sun, but at the same time, darkness falls over the light.

 

Let me start again.I don’t want to write only one layer, one color, one emotion.I want to unwrap everything, get to the wounds and open the scars.This is what I’ve learned from Plath. This is the kind of writer I desire to be.

 

Plath Reads Daddy:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hHjctqSBwM