biennial poems

When I was reading Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar for the first time around June 2021, her poem Mad Girl's Love Song was included in the foreword (or maybe afterword?). Her verses stood out so much to me at the time, that I immediately sent a photo of the poem's text to my friends. Plath's villanelle is as follows:

Mad Girl's Love Song

By Sylvia Plath

"I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;

I lift my lids and all is born again.

(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,

And arbitrary blackness gallops in:

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed

And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.

(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:

Exit seraphim and Satan's men:

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you'd return the way you said,

But I grow old and I forget your name.

(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;

At least when spring comes they roar back again.

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

(I think I made you up inside my head.)"

Now, around two and a half years later, Mad Girl's Love Song has risen from the disk drive to the L1 cache of my brain. It is intriguing to recognize these cyclical patterns of emotion as I get older.

Aside from the catchy repetition of the parenthetical "I think I made you up inside my head", and prose reminiscent of 20th century Olivia Rodrigo, one of my favorite lines is "The stars go waltzing out in blue and red", as it reminds me of the blue and red shift phenomenon of stars, where their perceived color changes depending on whether they are traveling towards or away from us, similar to the Doppler effect for sound. To again state the obvious, such a shift in perspective applies to people as well.

The overall celestial imagery (stars, moons, heaven and hell, thunderbirds) is very dramatic and grand, and it delights me to see that Plath wrote the poem around the age of 21, the very age I first encountered her words. Though Plath was subject to mental illness and a tragic ending, at a surface level, her words can echo an embrace of angst that cycles through various mediums in popular culture. In other words, we can all individually wallow as a collective!

For the overthinkers, those experiencing paralysis by analysis, or those second guessing gut-based decisions, cheers to 2024!

Milo was annoyed at the sound of my typing interrupting his sleep, so now I will sleep.