“Suicide Off Egg Rock” by Sylvia Plath

This site’s primary purpose is to serve as a portfolio. The secondary purpose is to blog; to get myself writing at least a few times a week. Obviously, we’re off to a slow start, so I’m implementing a new weekly category called Tea & Poetry Tuesday. It sounds luxurious to me because I love both of those things. And since Tuesday is just Monday’s duller little brother, why not give it something to do?

In future entries, I’ll explore loose leaf blends and even tea houses and herbalists. It’ll be all quaint ‘n’ shit. Today I’ve been sipping nothing special – just the basic iced Lipton variety.

The poem I’ve selected is far more robust. This entry features one of Plath’s bleakest pieces and references some dark Will Shakespeare, Trent Reznor, and even Everlast. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Below, I provide the text, a personal reading, and an interpretation of the poem that’s less an analysis than it is a fun-house mirror. (Welcome to the carnival of my mind, y’all. There will be refreshments at the end.)

I found “Suicide Off Egg Rock” yesterday evening and I really liked it. I don’t know about you, but sometimes I just want to be someone else for a while. Even if it is a man about to drown himself.

Behind him the hotdogs split and drizzled
On the public grills, and the ochreous salt flats,
Gas tanks, factory stacks – that landscape
Of imperfections his bowels were part of –
Rippled and pulsed in the glassy updraught.  (5)
Sun struck the water like a damnation.
No pit of shadow to crawl into,
And his blood beating the old tattoo
I am, I am, I am. Children
Were squealing where combers broke and the spindrift  (10)
Raveled wind-ripped from the crest of the wave.
A mongrel working his legs to a gallop
Hustled a gull flock to flap off the sandspit.

He smoldered, as if stone-deaf, blindfold,
His body beached with the sea’s garbage,  (15)
A machine to breathe and beat forever.
Flies filing in through a dead skate’s eyehole
Buzzed and assailed the vaulted brainchamber.
The words in his book wormed off the pages.
Everything glittered like blank paper.  (20)

Everything shrank in the sun’s corrosive
Ray but Egg Rock on the blue wastage
.
He heard when he walked into the water

The forgetful surf creaming on those ledges.

Here’s my reading. (It opens in a separate tab.)

I like the rhythm of this piece. Alliteration, imperfect and asymmetrical rhymes hustle the reader right through. Like a rush of wind on the roof of a tall building, life flashing before you.

(lines 1-5)
It starts in medias res, like a FADE IN: on a daredevil speeding towards his biggest jump, the world an oblivious blur becoming less and less a part of him and not knowing that it’s about to lose a part of itself.

(lines 6-9)
Sun struck the water like a damnation.

Hits hard like a pot-hole. Refocus. Notice there’s No pit of shadow to crawl into, but scorching light only propels us. Blood keeps pumping its declaration as through a chorus, thumping that wretched, relentless onomatopoeia, I am, I am, I am.

A threat? No, a challenge. Defiance.

(lines 9-13)
Playing in the background like dusty, forgotten old family footage, children take joy in a new world full of fun surprises. Even a dog orchestrates the actions of air-farers.

(lines 14-16)
Hit the brakes. Roll to a stop. Stand on the edge and feel it. Heavy. Heady. Pull camera back and calculate the weight, the sheer size and deep time of that ancient heart; A machine to breathe and beat forever. And upon its beaches we are merely… What we are.

(lines 17-19)
Look at that dead ray. That’s how it always turns out, isn’t it? “–And we fat ourselves for maggots.” My story ends at supper, too. Worms, the honored guests. They who feed kings to beggars take my words and pass them along. My historians. My librarians.

My clean-up crew.

(line 20)
And all becomes clear. “Problems do have solutions, you know.” Like a clean slate. Like it never happened.

“A lifetime of fucking things up fixed in one determined flash.” Watching the choppy water froth white and cap.

(lines 21-24)
Pull camera in. Hold. The world: small, dead, empty, still.

All that vast perspective shriveled up, crumpled, thrown away, supposedly too insignificant to be remembered.

So with tears in his eyes, the catcher in the rye told his old man he went huntin’.
And he felt so free, like his destiny lay somewhere out on the horizon.
His heart went cold, he felt a hundred years old. Started pullin’ back on the trigger…

I think I’m gonna die today. Everyone that hurt me’s gonna pay.
How could such a short time feel so long? How could such a young life go so wrong?

– “So Long” by Everlast

And that’s just one glance in a single mirror. One of the things I love most about poetry is that it can be different each time you look at it. A new day gives a fresh angle; you notice something you missed last time or now you see it very differently, and then the whole poem transforms. What do you see in your mirror today?

By the way, how are you feeling? Here’s that refreshment I promised – a tasty, magicalicious antidote that has nothing to do with anything – thanks to this awesome article from Cracked.com. Takes about 14 seconds to kick in, but it’s worth it.