{"id":20,"date":"2008-10-27T16:51:46","date_gmt":"2008-10-27T23:51:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vivtown.com\/?p=20"},"modified":"2008-11-09T07:15:11","modified_gmt":"2008-11-09T14:15:11","slug":"happy-birthday-sylvia-plath","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/vivtown.com\/?p=20","title":{"rendered":"Happy Birthday, Sylvia Plath"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s Sylvia Plath’s<\/a> birthday. Had she not taken her own life on a cold february morning in 1963, Plath would’ve been 78 today. Here’s one of my favorite Plath poems:<\/p>\n

\u00c2\u00a0The Moon and the Yew Tree<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary
\nThe trees of the mind are black. The light is blue.
\nThe grasses unload their griefs on my feet as if I were God
\nPrickling my ankles and murmuring of their humility
\nFumy, spiritous mists inhabit this place.
\nSeparated from my house by a row of headstones.
\nI simply cannot see where there is to get to.<\/p>\n

The moon is no door. It is a face in its own right,
\nWhite as a knuckle and terribly upset.
\nIt drags the sea after it like a dark crime; it is quiet
\nWith the O-gape of complete despair. I live here.
\nTwice on Sunday, the bells startle the sky —
\nEight great tongues affirming the Resurrection
\nAt the end, they soberly bong out their names.<\/p>\n

The yew tree points up, it has a Gothic shape.
\nThe eyes lift after it and find the moon.
\nThe moon is my mother. She is not sweet like Mary.
\nHer blue garments unloose small bats and owls.
\nHow I would like to believe in tenderness –
\nThe face of the effigy, gentled by candles,
\nBending, on me in particular, its mild eyes.<\/p>\n

I have fallen a long way. Clouds are flowering
\nBlue and mystical over the face of the stars
\nInside the church, the saints will all be blue,
\nFloating on their delicate feet over the cold pews,
\nTheir hands and faces stiff with holiness.
\nThe moon sees nothing of this. She is bald and wild.
\nAnd the message of the yew tree is blackness – blackness and silence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s Sylvia Plath’s birthday. Had she not taken her own life on a cold february morning in 1963, Plath would’ve been 78 today. Here’s one of my favorite Plath poems: \u00c2\u00a0The Moon and the Yew Tree This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary The trees of the mind are black. The light […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/vivtown.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/vivtown.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/vivtown.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/vivtown.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/vivtown.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/vivtown.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/vivtown.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/vivtown.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/vivtown.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}