#lady lazarus
“Remember, remember, this is now, and now, and now. Live it, feel it, cling to it. I want to become acutely aware of all I’ve taken for granted.” - Sylvia Plath
Women in the Literary Scene.
50 years ago in the month of October, 1962, Sylvia Plath had an incredible burst of creative energy when she wrote some of her most brilliant and inspiring poems, including my favorites, “Daddy,” “Lady Lazarus,” and “Ariel.” In a letter to her mother on October 16, 1962, she wrote, “I am a genius of a writer; I have it in me. I am writing the best poems of my life; they will make my name… I have a gift of an inspiration for another…”
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“I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)”–from “Mad Girl’s Love Song - A Villanelle”, 1954
“I made a model of you”
–from “Daddy”, 12 October 1962
“How we need another soul to cling to, another body to keep us warm. To rest and trust; to give your soul in confidence: I need this, I need someone to pour myself into.”
–The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath, entry no. 25, 1950
“I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.”–from “Lady Lazarus”, 23-29 October 1962
“I thought, ‘This is what it is to be happy.’”
–The Bell Jar, Chapter Eight, 1963
“It was my first big chance, but here I was, sitting back and letting it run through my fingers like so much water.”
–The Bell Jar, Chapter One, 1963
“Perfection is terrible, it cannot have children.”
–from “The Munich Mannequins”, 28 January 1963
“For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge
For the hearing of my heart–”–from “Lady Lazarus”, 23-29 October 1962
“Everything is the same but different.”
–The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath, entry no. 132, 1952
“I am myself. That is not enough.”
–from “The Jailer”, 17 October 1962
“If you expect nothing from somebody you are never disappointed.”
–The Bell Jar, Chapter Five, 1963
“I desire the things which will destroy me in the end…“
–The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath, entry no. 63, 1951
“I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)”–from “Mad Girl’s Love Song - A Villanelle”, 1954
“I felt very empty, the way the eye of a tornado must feel, moving dully along in the middle of the surrounding hullabaloo.”
–The Bell Jar, Chapter One, 1963
“It is so much safer not to feel”
–The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath, entry no. 155, 1952
“I am calm. I am calm. It is the calm before something awful“
–“Three Women: A Poem for Three Voices“, March 1962
“We should meet in another life, we should meet in air,
Me and you.”–from “Lesbos”, 18 October 1962
“Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.”–from “Lady Lazarus”, 23-29 October 1962
Done by Dylan Kuiper at the Grand Illusion Tattoo in Melbourne, Australia.
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“Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.”
–from “Lady Lazarus”, 23-29 October 1962
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Tattoo done by Armando at Atomic Tattoos in Milwaukee, WI
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Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.
–From “Lady Lazarus”, written 23-29 October 1962
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“Meadow-Flowers” by Sylvia Plath. Pen and ink on paper.
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Submitted by Sarah Kim. Thank you! ♥ I love it!
“Hi! I love your blog so much and thought I would share my tattoo submission, it is the first line of Lady Lazarus in Plath’s handwriting from a draft that’s currently on display at Smith College! It’s my first tattoo and so special to me. <3″
“I have done it again.
One year in every ten
I manage it—— “
–from “Lady Lazarus”, 23-29 October 1962
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I have done it again.
One year in every ten
I manage it——
A sort of walking miracle, my skin
Bright as a Nazi lampshade,
My right foot
A paperweight,
My face a featureless, fine
Jew linen.
Peel off the napkin
O my enemy.
Do I terrify?——
The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?
The sour breath
Will vanish in a day.
Soon, soon the flesh
The grave cave ate will be
At home on me
And I a smiling woman.
I am only thirty.
And like the cat I have nine times to die.
This is Number Three.
What a trash
To annihilate each decade.
What a million filaments.
The peanut-crunching crowd
Shoves in to see
Them unwrap me hand and foot——
The big strip tease.
Gentlemen, ladies
These are my hands
My knees.
I may be skin and bone,
Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.
The first time it happened I was ten.
It was an accident.
The second time I meant
To last it out and not come back at all.
I rocked shut
As a seashell.
They had to call and call
And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.
Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.
I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I’ve a call.
It’s easy enough to do it in a cell.
It’s easy enough to do it and stay put.
It’s the theatrical
Comeback in broad day
To the same place, the same face, the same brute
Amused shout:
‘A miracle!’
That knocks me out.
There is a charge
For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge
For the hearing of my heart——
It really goes.
And there is a charge, a very large charge
For a word or a touch
Or a bit of blood
Or a piece of my hair or my clothes.
So, so, Herr Doktor.
So, Herr Enemy.
I am your opus,
I am your valuable,
The pure gold baby
That melts to a shriek.
I turn and burn.
Do not think I underestimate your great concern.
Ash, ash—
You poke and stir.
Flesh, bone, there is nothing there——
A cake of soap,
A wedding ring,
A gold filling.
Herr God, Herr Lucifer
Beware
Beware.
Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.
- Sylvia Plath
