There’s a certain slant of light,
On winter afternoons,
That oppresses, like the weight
Of cathedral tunes.

Heavenly hurt it gives us;
We can find no scar,
But internal difference
Where the meanings are.

None may teach it anything,
‘T is the seal, despair,—
An imperial affliction
Sent us of the air.

When it comes, the landscape listens,
Shadows hold their breath;
When it goes, ‘t is like the distance
On the look of death.

words: chrysoprase, sophistries, diadem

while reading Wintering, i tried to read along with this at the same time, as the chapter titles in Wintering are the titles of these poems, but in the sequence that Sylvia Plath had decided upon. she killed herself before the book was published and Ted Hughes reordered the poems into chronological order, removed some that he felt were “personally aggressive,” and added several poems written in the very last months’ before Plath’s death, which are “colored by her suicidal depression.” (*)

i’ve owned Plath’s collected poems since high school and have only read a few here and there, so it was good to have a starting point and find that i really appreciate her voice in many ways. something i felt when reading Sun Under Wood, which i also felt reading these poems, is that i’ve been enjoying reading poetry lately because sometimes it’s very personal in an oblique way but with sudden and startling insights clear through to the writer. especially reading these poems with a concept of what was going on around the same time, these insights are especially stirring.

i wonder if some day there will be a published edition of ariel as it was intended. it was definitely awkward trying to recreate it, flipping back to the index constantly!

i’ve never been a huge Sylvia Plath fan, but i heard a few things about this novel and the inspiration behind it sounded interesting. Kate Moses takes the original order of the Ariel poems as her foundation to tell this fictionized tale of Plath’s move back to London after her marriage with Ted Hughes fell apart.

the description and insight is really impressive, though i felt by the end of the book that i was dragging as i read and a chapter or two got more of a skim-through—but that might have been because i got worried that everything was going to be really depressing by the end that i skipped ahead and read the afterword before i was done. the book ends almost two months before Sylvia Plath’s death, and there are only vague foreshadowings to the change in her mental outlook before the postscript neatly ties up what happened afterwards.

now i am curious about Her Husband by Diane Middlebrook, as this book barely takes on Hughes’ perspective.

it’s been two years since the last Optic Nerve; it’s crazy to have just breezed through a new issue. there are some notable shifts with this one, most immediately gratifying is the promise of more new material much sooner than last time. this story is the first of three parts, and Tomine will also be publishing a collection of “odds and ends” called Scrapbook (may 2004 release). he is definitely one of my favorite comic book artists and the recent lack of publishing has been sorely disappointing.

this story focuses on a core group of pointedly asian american characters—the first time Tomine has really delved into race within his work. this and perhaps the longer narrative show that he is seeking to develop his work more. it’s hard to comment on a story that isn’t yet finished, but i am looking forward to the next part.