It had been awhile since I’ve read any poetry, and I’ve had this book sitting on my bookshelf for years, looking very forlorn and neglected, so I decided to give The Colossus a try. And I’m glad I did. While you shouldn’t count on Sylvia Plath to raise your spirits when you’re feeling down (one of her poems is about a body that was buried with a live rat in the coffin and the damage that ensued…), at least she is fully able to transport you to a different time and place (usually a place where white-capped waves crash under gray skies and withered leaves slowly drop from trees). Dark and brooding, but beautiful.
I love these lines from “The Ghost’s Leavetaking”, speaking of that nebulous time when night turns to dawn:
“So these posed sheets, before they thin to nothing,
Speak in a sign language of a lost otherworld,
A world we lose merely by waking up.”