No Need to Get Sentimental

The poets this week all show mastery of restraint. For such personal pieces, there is no overemotional blathering, whining, crying, or otherwise boring the reader with their weeping. There is emotion, to be sure, but overall I don’t get the sense that the poets feel sorry for themselves, or expect you to feel sorry for them either.

I will make one exception for the poem that does tip the “emotional scale” this week, and that, of course, is “Daddy.” This is certainly on the list of favorites for any Plath reader (like me), and I don’t think it’s exaggerating to say that it has what could be considered a “hysterical bent.” In many ways it is a rant, but it is filled with emotional anger, not self-pity. Out of all of the poems this week, I think this is the one that wears the most emotion on its sleeve. But it’s an emotion that is built upon intelligent metaphor, so we completely excuse Plath for raging against her dead father, who died and left her when she was so young. We breathe a sigh of relief along with her when the “vampire-father” is finally dead. It is ultimately a catharsis for her, filled with such irony and cryptic references that we can’t help but read along, hanging on to every word as she makes sure the stake has truly gone thru his heart, and she can safely, finally, say she is “done.” It’s emotional, yes, but I think it builds to a sense of mastery over one’s emotion, and shows the poet’s strength, not weakness. She ends up the heroine, no longer the helpless victim, crying for someone to save her.

I seem to have a new “favorite poet” each week, or at least one that I’m happy to have read and plan to continue reading. This week it is Galway Kinnell. I’d never heard of him before, and I certainly enjoyed his frankness and subtle humor. His “After Making Love We Hear Footsteps” is one that any parent can appreciate. I think my favorite one, though, is one that wasn’t on our reading list. That is the aptly titled, “The Correspondence School Instructor Says Goodbye to His Poetry Students.” Here, there is an emotional tone to saying goodbyes, but, as Richard Hugo says, it “approaches the edge of sentimentality.” He comes right out and says, in so many words, “I did care / I did read each poem entire.” There is a feeling of connection from the instructor to his students: he can feel their loneliness by the postmarks of their hometowns. That is a perfect example of expressing emotion without going over the edge.