Sylvia Plath's "Mirror," Conrad Hilberry's "Tongue," Six-Shooters, Walking Naked

Mirror?

'Mirror' by Sylvia Plath

I'm offering Sylvia Plath's "Mirror" again because of a recent visitor comment about the poem at my June 4 post. Mr. Somewords says: "'I have looked at it so long / I think it is a part of my heart.'  This line, coming from the mirror itself, is one of my favorite lines of Plath, ever. The mirror confuses a wall with its heart. I love the idea of a mirror worrying about losing its own essence because of what it has reflected for so long.”

No argument here, Mr. Somewords. To offer one’s Self as a confusion (conflation?) of mirror, heart and wall—that takes guts, and it would probably be a worthy insight coming from any of us. 

I wonder if William Logan and Sharon Olds have found any walls within their hearts.

Wall.  Mirror?

Stones in water = wall or mirror?

Adolescent narcissism and self-pity are probably two of the risks Sylvia Plath takes repeatedly, and she’s been heartily criticized for it  (or was all of that criticism after death?).  But I challenge those who smugly condescend toward Plath from their imagined heights as scholars or reviewers.  How about we all reveal what we see in ourselves in our most honest, most naked moments.  Reveal it, force-feed it to ourselves—then share it with a reading public.

Climbing up a wall

Might that lead to world peace?   Some say toting six-guns is a way to keep the peace; some Texan even proclaimed, “An armed society is a polite society.”  Well, I 'spect. Maybe.

Or could it be that all we have to do is walk naked, in every sense of the word, everywhere we go?  Instead of muttering or chirping some meaningless “hey” to everyone, like Yeats’ “polite, meaningless nods” . . . we confess our most recent taboo thought or obsession. 

Would that lead to less violence? Or more? Might it lead to a mass scramble for cover, both literally and figuratively?

There may be a more polite, though brutal version of all that in Conrad Hilberry’s poem, “Tongue”:

   Conrad Hilberry - Tongue       

(my apologies for white on black—it’s the only version I could find—why do it that way?)

And here is Conrad Hilberry reading the poem:   Dr. Hilberry Reads Poem

 The poem involves behavior rather than thought, but I see it as the boy’s being caught unaware, fully exposed, as if he'd confessed to three counties all his puerile dumbness—which looks remarkably similar to adult dumbness. Hilberry’s youngster is King Lear’s “man more sinned against than sinning."

Embarrassment often overrides pain when we’re caught in our most moronic, vulnerable moments, as we all are from time to time. Don’t you think?  I’d love to invite examples, but for now I’m not offering any of my own.

Organic twisting

Organic

Thanks, Mr. “Somewords,” for starting this train of thought, which I think has some value. Although I too partake aplenty, I’m sick and damned tired of all our asinine pride and posturing, much of which has a frantic quality, because we’re trying to sprint away from self-awareness instead of swallowing whole the blood of our dumbness, like Hilberry’s kid, who has no choice.

Organic Thrust

Sylvia Plath's "Mirror." William Logan and Sharon Olds, continued

I'm not ready to leave the issues and questions I've tried to stimulate in the previous two posts about William Logan, Frieda Hughes and Sharon Olds.  However, my mysterious attraction to my own photo of a fish, along with the humorous comment about it from Pasadena Adjacent at my last post,  have recalled for me a poem by Sylvia Plath.

Since Sharon Olds is sometimes discussed as Plath's psychic daughter, and Frieda Hughes is Plath's actual daughter, and William Logan writes about them all, and I write about William Logan writing about them all, a practice that William Logan has mockingly called Theory . . . well, all the stars seem in alignment for us to consider the three luminaries: William Logan, Sharon Olds, and now Sylvia Plath.

Here is "Mirror" by Sylvia Plath:  'Mirror' by Sylvia Plath

First, I'm interested in my own acceptance of Plath's bold, explicit, perhaps self-indulgent switch in speakers to open the second stanza (or verse paragraph): "Now I am a lake." Part of me wants to reply, "Really. You get to be what you want, when you want. Well, I'm an avalanche, baby, and I just crashed some boulders into your lake, just cluttered you up, just obliterated your arrogant damned lake."


Does she get to do that, simply change horses in midstream because she feels like it and then she can shout it from the rooftops? Doesn't that break some important rule? Is she thumbing her nose at old stuffed shirts, telling them (us? me?) to stuff it if we can't loosen up, can't take a joke? But this is no joke, is it? This is aging, this is shriveling, flesh-gone-to-scales mortality, isn't it?

I feel as if Plath has seized something of mine, and I've said that's okay, boss, go ahead, you can have it. Maybe I didn't want it anyway, though I wasn't sure yet. But go ahead, take it. It was only my cornucopia, my horn of plenty of male logic. It wasn't doing me much good, and your mood, or your mysterious . . . strategy . . .  is surely more important.


Secondly, I'm intrigued by the power of the poem's closing: "rises toward her . . .  like a terrible fish." Sometimes I have images, or personifying glimpses, of old age that are not unlike terrible fish. Yet I'd never have pinned them down and thought, "Oh, yeah, terrible fish, that's exactly what I saw-felt-imagined."  My images had nothing to do with fish, yet I'm perfectly satisfied with Plath's decision that a fish is what she and I both saw in the mirror.

Finally, I am thoroughly satisfied with her vague adjective, "terrible." Why?  Usually I'd ask for something more precise to describe the poem's most dominant image, the fish; but "terrible" seems not just acceptable, but perfect. Maybe it's because I don't usually think of fish as terrible; or maybe something more individualizing about this fish would distract and separate me from the real issue and its creator, while a "terrible" fish, rising at me, feels like just the right transmogrification to capture the universal insult of aging. From flesh to scales in the stroke of a pen. Or tick of a clock.


I wonder if William Logan would say that Plath has managed to capture an unflattering portrait of the human body without resorting to the peep show tactics he attributes to Sharon Olds.  I sure think such wondering is important fun, like a seventh grade dance, where we're all fools, and, whether we dance or stand against the wall with our hands folded, we're glad to be there. But don't tell a soul.

'Mirror' by Sylvia Plath

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