Crossing the Water

This volume was put together by Ted Hughes after the death of Sylvia Plath. It contains poems written in the period between the publication of 'Colossus' and her later most famous collection'Ariel.' I know Plath's writing in a quite superficial way and would in any sense have difficulty affirming or disaffirming the iconic status she has attained in the world of poetry. I in truth did not find the poems on the whole on what I would call the 'legendary level' that of Dickinson, Hopkins, Wallace Stevens, Yeats, those whose music make their lines incredibly memorable. But I did find in these poems many startling and surprising lines, a world of metaphor extremely rich and often disconcerting. These are the poems, of a true original whose voice is pitched extremely high. They are poems in which the language too seems searching to reach an extreme level of feeling. Perhaps the most well- known poem of the collection is the award winning 'Insomniac' which closes with a stanza typical of Plath. "Nightlong , in the granite yard ,invisible cats Have been howling like women, or damaged instruments. Already he can feel daylight, his white disease, Creeping up with her hatful of trivial repetitions. The city is a map of cheerful twitters now, And everywhere people, eyes mica- silver and blank, Are riding to work in rows, as if recently brainwashed." A happier and somewhat milder mood is expressed in the poem 'Love Letter' which I take to be about her relationship with Ted Hughes. It opens with the following stanza. "Not easy to state the change you made. If I'm alive now, then I was dead, Though , like a stone , unbothered by it, Staying put according to habit. You didn't just toeme an inch,no- Nor leave me to set my small bald eye Skyward again, without hope, of course, Of apprehending blueness, or stars. The poetry has a clear and coherent , readily readable structure of simple sentences. But those sentences are so complicated and charged with metaphor and feeling that they are difficult to decipher and comprehend. Their music is however far from being simply lyrical, but rather is harsh, discordant wild and searching. A true poet yes, but not one to give us calm or peace, or certitude or help from pain.

This is probably my favorite collection of Plath poetry, although some of my favorite poems aren't in here (Morning Song is my very favorite). From the time I looked at the cover (dark waves at night, what could be better for the writer who crossed the Atlantic to die by her own hand?) to the last poem in the book, I felt that I was seeing Plath's vision at its most clearly expressed. You can feel the dark weight of her impending collapse, but her head is still above water, so to speak. I also think that it's the book with the least amount of self-pity; she's strongest as a poet and as a person in this collection. This is not to discount Ariel, which contain some of her best poems, but they're like flashes of lightning in a grey sky of self-pity. In Crossing the Water, on the other hand, we get to see the loneliness of the long distance swimmer, sure and strong, who knows she's heading into danger.