[366] Child

Guest poem submitted by Dan Percival <dan_percival@>:

Your clear eye is the one absolutely beautiful thing.
I want to fill it with color and ducks,
The zoo of the new
Whose name you meditate--
April snowdrop, Indian pipe,
Little

Stalk without wrinkle,
Pool in which images
Should be grand and classical

Not this troublous
Wringing of hands, this dark
Ceiling without a star.

	-- Sylvia Plath

This is one of those poems I am often tempted to call the best in the
English language.  Though "free verse," the meter and sound are
carefully structured to support the poem's literal and emotional
content.  I haven't seen any piece of writing that more poignantly and
subtly expresses both the hope for a new beginning that a child inspires
and the foreboding that the hurtful constructions of the adult world
will shape each new life and re-enact themselves.  I wish I had the
leisure to describe this in more detail...

I found a bio of Plath at
http://metalab.unc.edu/cheryb/women/Sylvia-Plath--bio and a shorter but
better-formatted one at http://www.poets.org/LIT/poet/splath.htm

Dan Percival.

From: Kelli Rush <kelli.rush@>

little stalk,
the zoo of the new
colors and ducks...

plath's claim to greatness is in this kind of straightforward writing.




Kelli Rush