That's not to say that Plath's poetry (early poetry, mind you- I haven't looked on to anything of hers past Juvenalia, as I have read nothing of Hughes' past his 1957 Hawk in the Rain) isn't personal and confessional at times- Family Reunion springs to mind, where names of what can be assumed are actual relatives appear- just that, more than Hughes, Plath makes a solid and probably intentional attempt at including the reader in her work.
Well, wasn't that sentence opaque. What I mean to say is that she tries to let the reader in, and has a few tricks that she uses to get her readers to see where she's coming from. One that she uses quite often is allusion to older, more prevalent texts- folk and fairy tales are favourites of hers, as is musical terminology. Cinderella and Bluebeard are names that catch the attention of anyone who knows the importance of a glass slipper or a locked drawing room. What she says in these poems can be highly personal, or have very little to do with the plot of the tales themselves- sending back the key to Bluebeard's study was hardly an option, I think, for the poor woman in the original story once she knew what she was in for- but with this simple incitation of the known she invites readers to fill in the gaps of the poem where it would be cumbersome to spell out exactly what she was meaning to say.
Cinderella, for example, is a poem that without context would mean almost nothing: a strange woman dances with a prince at a lavish ball, and is alone in feeling the chill of a clock striking midnight.
Cinderella
The prince leans to the girl in scarlet heels,
Her green eyes slant, hair flaring in a fan
Of silver as the rondo slows; now reels
Begin on tilted violins to span
The whole revolving tall glass palace hall
Where guests slide gliding into light like wine
Rose candles flicker on the lilac wall
Reflecting in a million flagons' shine,
And glided couples all in whirling trance
Follow holiday revel begun long since,
Until near twelve the strange girl all at once
Guilt-stricken halts, pales, clings to the prince
As amid the hectic music and cocktail talk
She hears the caustic ticking of the clock.
Tying this sonnet into the story of Cinderella fills in the rest of the plot: the 'strange girl' is in a place that would not welcome her were it not for her intricate mask, and because of this she alone is aware of any event that may ruin break the spell she has cast to allow herself entry into the society. This otherness is something that Plath very well could have connected to a personal moment, turning this into a poem much more like Family Reunion. Instead, she connected it to a community moment, a story that many would be able to channel into and ultimately feel more welcomed to relate to.
The poetry I've read so far of Hughes tackles this a little differently. Poems like The Jaguar, The Horses, and The Thought Fox have a very autobiographical feel to them, rather than a distanced look at what could be a personal thought, like what Plath does with her allusions.
The Jaguar
The apes yawn and adore their fleas in the sun.
The parrots shriek as if they were on fire, or strut
Like cheap tarts to attract the stroller with the nut.
Fatigued with indolence, tiger and lion
Lie still as the sun. The boa-constrictor’s coil
Is a fossil. Cage after cage seems empty, or
Stinks of sleepers from the breathing straw.
It might be painted on a nursery wall.
But who runs like the rest past these arrives
At a cage where the crowd stands, stares, mesmerized,
As a child at a dream, at a jaguar hurrying enraged
Through prison darkness after the drills of his eyes
On a short fierce fuse. Not in boredom—
The eye satisfied to be blind in fire,
By the bang of blood in the brain deaf the ear—
He spins from the bars, but there’s no cage to him
More than to the visionary his cell:The scene portrayed in The Jaguar is so specific, so clear, that it is difficult to imagine the poem's conception without putting Hughes right in the scene- maybe off to the side near the boa constrictor's cage when the jaguar meets him in the eye. The poem doesn't even have to have any deeper meaning- the retelling of an event amazing enough to be put into poetry is motive enough. It is easy to enjoy this poem, to feel the rhythm and alliteration, but not quite as easy to attribute this to one's life without really going vague- a connection with nature? Connection with nature in a man-made place. Is it anti-zoo? Maybe it's a comment on the wilderness inherent in all that comes from the wild. Who knows.
His stride is wildernesses of freedom:
The world rolls under the long thrust of his heel.
Over the cage floor the horizons come.
Hughes doesn't seem to be all that interested in making sure we know, though. In these earlier poems he turns to nature for inspiration and as such many times the result is a nature-like poem: it is there, and it is to be enjoyed, but maybe not analysed. The Horses can very easily just be a straightforward account if that one time that Hughes watched the sunrise one fiery, ephemeral morning with a pack of horses.
I completely agree with your view that Hughes tries to relay his perspective tot he reader, rather than trying to involve the reader in the thoughts he is having. Though, Plath's work as it has relatable qualities I have trouble bonding to; unlike the way I, personally, find Hughes much easy to grasp and his ideas easily relatable. This may be due to Hughes more trying to invoke thought rather and tell a story, in my mind.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you on Plaths tries to include the reader in her work where Hughes is writing poems to represent his self and his feeling. I like that Plath tells stories rather than invoke a thought. Who doesn't love a good story you can relate to.
ReplyDeleteYou make an interesting distinction between the ways both poets try to communicate with the reader:
ReplyDeleteone by appealing to personal experience refracted through the lens of well-known tales (Plath); the other, I would say, by giving us a snapshot, an image, which the reader is invited to respond to and interpret.
In that sense, Hughes may be considered closer to imagist techniques which seek to evoke emotions and thoughts in the reader without ever telling us what these emotions or thoughts are.