Explicit I - Lovesong
Emmm, I've been planning a series of posts on erotic poetry. The last post on the series is the one that gave me the idea... You'll see why. I've been thinking about it for months and I had postponed it because, to be honest, it's not my favourite kind of poetry. However, I didn't want to post that last poem in an isolated way. I mean, it's a shocking poem and I'd like to present some other perspectives before.
So, I start today because this poem by Ted Hughes was the first one on my list, and, as I'm reading Sylvia Plath (Collected Poems), I don't want anybody to misread my opinion as an absurd comparison between poetical language and private life. I hate that. It seems most of the people who make comments on the poem can only relate it to what they know about the relationship between Hughes and Plath. Of course, last night I said that I might have hateful feelings towards Ted Hughes, but it was because I'm trying to see the book as a whole, and the arrangement of the poems in this case is important. I read somewhere (it's been a long time so I can't remember where) that this particular arrangement made by Hughes shows Sylvia Plath, the woman and poet, in a deceiving light, and that this was not the real order of her poems. I'll look for more information about it, and once I've finished reading the book I'll tell you. Thus I'd better post this before someone claims that I'm an all subjective reader.
Well, coming back to the core issue of the post, this poem goes from the perspective of a man poet.
So, I start today because this poem by Ted Hughes was the first one on my list, and, as I'm reading Sylvia Plath (Collected Poems), I don't want anybody to misread my opinion as an absurd comparison between poetical language and private life. I hate that. It seems most of the people who make comments on the poem can only relate it to what they know about the relationship between Hughes and Plath. Of course, last night I said that I might have hateful feelings towards Ted Hughes, but it was because I'm trying to see the book as a whole, and the arrangement of the poems in this case is important. I read somewhere (it's been a long time so I can't remember where) that this particular arrangement made by Hughes shows Sylvia Plath, the woman and poet, in a deceiving light, and that this was not the real order of her poems. I'll look for more information about it, and once I've finished reading the book I'll tell you. Thus I'd better post this before someone claims that I'm an all subjective reader.
Well, coming back to the core issue of the post, this poem goes from the perspective of a man poet.
Lovesong
He loved her and she loved him
His kisses sucked out her whole past and future or tried to
He had no other appetite
She bit him she gnawed him she sucked
She wanted him complete inside her
Safe and sure forever and ever
Their little cries fluttered into the curtains
Her eyes wanted nothing to get away
Her looks nailed down his hands his wrists his elbows
He gripped her hard so that life
Should not drag her from that moment
He wanted all future to cease
He wanted to topple with his arms round her
Off that moment's brink and into nothing
Or everlasting or whatever there was
Her embrace was an immense press
To print him into her bones
His smiles were the garrets of a fairy palace
Where the real world would never come
Her smiles were spider bites
So he would lie still till she felt hungry
His words were occupying armies
Her laughs were an assassin's attempts
His looks were bullets daggers of revenge
His glances were ghosts in the corner with horrible secrets
His whispers were whips and jackboots
Her kisses were lawyers steadily writing
His caresses were the last hooks of a castaway
Her love-tricks were the grinding of locks
And their deep cries crawled over the floors
Like an animal dragging a great trap
His promises were the surgeon's gag
Her promises took the top off his skull
She would get a brooch made of it
His vows pulled out all her sinews
He showed her how to make a love-knot
Her vows put his eyes in formalin
At the back of her secret drawer
Their screams stuck in the wall
Their heads fell apart into sleep like the two halves
Of a lopped melon, but love is hard to stop
In their entwined sleep they exchanged arms and legs
In their dreams their brains took each other hostage
In the morning they wore each other's face
He loved her and she loved him
His kisses sucked out her whole past and future or tried to
He had no other appetite
She bit him she gnawed him she sucked
She wanted him complete inside her
Safe and sure forever and ever
Their little cries fluttered into the curtains
Her eyes wanted nothing to get away
Her looks nailed down his hands his wrists his elbows
He gripped her hard so that life
Should not drag her from that moment
He wanted all future to cease
He wanted to topple with his arms round her
Off that moment's brink and into nothing
Or everlasting or whatever there was
Her embrace was an immense press
To print him into her bones
His smiles were the garrets of a fairy palace
Where the real world would never come
Her smiles were spider bites
So he would lie still till she felt hungry
His words were occupying armies
Her laughs were an assassin's attempts
His looks were bullets daggers of revenge
His glances were ghosts in the corner with horrible secrets
His whispers were whips and jackboots
Her kisses were lawyers steadily writing
His caresses were the last hooks of a castaway
Her love-tricks were the grinding of locks
And their deep cries crawled over the floors
Like an animal dragging a great trap
His promises were the surgeon's gag
Her promises took the top off his skull
She would get a brooch made of it
His vows pulled out all her sinews
He showed her how to make a love-knot
Her vows put his eyes in formalin
At the back of her secret drawer
Their screams stuck in the wall
Their heads fell apart into sleep like the two halves
Of a lopped melon, but love is hard to stop
In their entwined sleep they exchanged arms and legs
In their dreams their brains took each other hostage
In the morning they wore each other's face
Ted Hughes
Can you see it, the intensity? Even more, can you feel it? You can't deny this is an amazing poem. I don't remember having read any other poem which depicts love and passion in such a way. "He loved her and she loved him". The significance of this lies in that it becomes a sharp opening statement that gives way to the rest of the poem, a love-making scene. From here until the end of the first stanza we see physical urgency, strong images of desire, two people trying to possess each other. But, don't you think there's much more behind those words? Of course, there's the despair of love. And this becomes more evident in the following stanzas, where the poet conjugates the physical with the feelings and thoughts of the lovers. Why is it despairing? Well, because love is sweetly violent, because it involves two who may aim to become one, but still are two individuals struggling with their emotions, with their insecurities, with their intentions.
See, in the fourth stanza it's done. The lovers are again two separate parts of the same thing... "but "love is hard to stop". And that's because though "he may not have sucked her hole past and future in a kiss" or she may not feel him "safe and sure forever and ever", they can't avoid the sensation of fullness implied in their embrace. Then again, you see, the physical joins the emotional. The closeness of their sleep stands for the need of the other not in the sexual sense but in the sense that the mere touch is what fuses their bodies together. And what about their brains? Beyond the conscious mental struggle there's the realm of dreams. There could be no other word to describe what happens there, "hostage". Yes, once again, the violent diction, but it's true, isn't it? And there's no escape because in spite of all they are reflections of each other.
Notes:
*Well, this is the first out of (I guess) 5 posts on the same issue. I don't think I'm going to write them in consecutive order, but I'll try to be regular so people who read this blog don't lose the thread. Remember these are not random posts, I want to reach a point.
*Selfishenough is a personal blog, so it is not a bad and failed attempt of academic writing; I keep that for other times and places. I think this is what professor Gerling describes as expressive writing. I'm just trying to keep tied to the tone of the blog.
*I wonder if someone was able to keep on reading up to this note hahaha. Yeah, I'm boring :P
*I found the poem read by Ted Hughes himself... Just try not to look at the pictures. We would be coming back to the Plath-Hughes commonplace.
See, in the fourth stanza it's done. The lovers are again two separate parts of the same thing... "but "love is hard to stop". And that's because though "he may not have sucked her hole past and future in a kiss" or she may not feel him "safe and sure forever and ever", they can't avoid the sensation of fullness implied in their embrace. Then again, you see, the physical joins the emotional. The closeness of their sleep stands for the need of the other not in the sexual sense but in the sense that the mere touch is what fuses their bodies together. And what about their brains? Beyond the conscious mental struggle there's the realm of dreams. There could be no other word to describe what happens there, "hostage". Yes, once again, the violent diction, but it's true, isn't it? And there's no escape because in spite of all they are reflections of each other.
Notes:
*Well, this is the first out of (I guess) 5 posts on the same issue. I don't think I'm going to write them in consecutive order, but I'll try to be regular so people who read this blog don't lose the thread. Remember these are not random posts, I want to reach a point.
*Selfishenough is a personal blog, so it is not a bad and failed attempt of academic writing; I keep that for other times and places. I think this is what professor Gerling describes as expressive writing. I'm just trying to keep tied to the tone of the blog.
*I wonder if someone was able to keep on reading up to this note hahaha. Yeah, I'm boring :P
*I found the poem read by Ted Hughes himself... Just try not to look at the pictures. We would be coming back to the Plath-Hughes commonplace.
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