Fwd: Ms. Stephens Project
Jhakierre Thompson
Date: Wed, 18 May 2011 22:52:17 -0400
Subject: Ms. Stephens Project
To: tjhak...@gmail.com
Activity One
1. Dark House
2. Something evil dealing with family
3. Very descriptive, sounds lonely, and very eerie, a mother about to give
birth, a little crazy, and depressing feel.
4. eelish:
turnipy:
maps: discover and show something: to discover something; key part of
something and create a visual representation
marrowy: the essence, core, or key part of something
moley-handed:
footlings: unimportant; having no important or serious usefulness;
lacking representation of
bowel: part of the intestine: a section or pat of the intenstine
especially the part of the intestine that connects to the anus; depths of
something; the deepest or innermost thoughts
devlings: to search deep and laboriously, to dig the ground up with a
spade
grey paper: a term used by the intellectual community, librarians,
medicial and research professionals to refer to a body of materials that
cannot be found easily through conventional channels such as publishers
5.This poem talks about a woman who has lost her senses and
is pregnant before giving birth to a child or possibly children and then
finding value in birth.
6. The scariness and how unpredictable motherhood is.
Sylvia Palth:
- born on October 27, 1932 during the Great Depression
- American poet, novelist, and short story writer
- raised as a Unitarian Christian and experience a loss of faith when her
father died
- studied at Smith College and Newham College, Cambridge
- 1953, after undergoing electroconvulsive therapy for depression, her
first medical documented sucide was in late August 1953 by crawling
underneath her house and overdose on sleeping pills
- married fellow poet Ted Hughes in 1956
- after their marriage they were heavily involved in astrology,
supernatural, and using the Oujia boards
- lived in United States before moving to England
- showed promise as an artisian at a young age
- suffered a long struggle with depression and
martial separation before attempting sucide at the age of 21
- working as a receptionist at the Massachussetts General Hospital
psychiatric unit and took creative control and took writing seminars given
by poet Robert Lowell and attended by Anne Sexton, who led her to write from
a feminine view.
- *Feb. 1961, Plath's second pregnancy ended in a miscarriage and would
later appear in her poems*
- Summer of 1962, Hughes began to keep bees, which would later appear in
her poems.
- *Poems exhibit typical imagery, using personal and nature-based
depictions i.e. moon, blood, hospitals, foetuses and skulls*
- *In 1952, while in Yaddo, artist coloney in New York State in Autumn
learned "to be true to my own weirdness" and wrote "Poem for a Birthday"
echoing Theodore Roethke's Last Son sequence, though it theme is her own
traumatic breakdown and suicide attempt at 21.*
- Plath died of carbon monoxide poisoning with her head in the oven,
sealed the rooms between her and her sleeping children with wet towels.
Approximately died at 4:30 am; she placed her head in the oven and killed
herself.
Activity 2
Dark House
*This is a dark house, very big.
I made it myself,
Cell by cell from a quiet corner, - 7
*Chewing at the grey paper,
Oozing the glue drops,
Whistling, wiggling my ears,
Thinking of something else.
It has so many cellars,
Such eelish delvings!
U an round as an owl,
I see by my own light.
Any day I may litter puppies
Or mother a horse. My belly moves.
I must make more maps.
These marrowy tunnels!
Moley-handed, I eat my way.
All-mouth licks up the bushes
And the pots of meat.
He lives in an old well,
A stoney hole. He's to blame.
He's a fat sort.
Pebble smells, turnipy chambers.
Small nostrils are breathing.
*Little humble loves! - 6*
Footlings, boneless as noses,
It is warm and tolerable
In the bowel of the root.
Here's a cuddly mother.
1. www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoetId=7083
2. www.biography.com/articles/Sylvia-Plath-9442550
3. www.standford.edu/class/engl187/docs/plathpoem.html
4. www.bbc.co.uk/poetryseason/poets/sylvia_plath.shtml
5. www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,942057-1,00.html
6. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcf2rfL_6Sw
7. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZI8AC4AR5A