Sylvia Plath Is in Paris with a Balloon on a Long String by Amy Newman

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend December 26, 2014   Sylvia Plath Is in Paris with a Balloon on a Long String   Amy Newman

its tricolor streamers floating and trailing. It takes up the air like a determined child. Plath was riding her horses of need, and then breaking them, one by one. The horse of loneliness, the horse of panic. The horse of the Sacre Coeur’s calcite-and-rainwater white piped on Montmartre like a wedding cake. The horse of the wallpaper powdered with rosebuds. The horse of weeping in the charming vestibule. The horse of the park’s green geometry, of the mushroom’s black underpleats. The horse of the lily-of-the-valley’s chaste bell. The horse of the prickly thin storm about to be, of the cool cottons of the hotel bed and his beautiful body, golden, lean, and the horse of having been so close, and then changing his mind. The horse of her will like a planet, irrefutable, distantly tethered to the bestial earth, and Paris splayed and blazing around them, as if illustrated.            Copyright © 2014 by Amy Newman. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   “If we studied the lives of the poets closely, could we begin to see American poetry coming into being? In my book On this Day in Poetry History, forthcoming from Persea Books in 2015, I imagine the history of American poetry as a kind of Google map, or kinetic diorama, the poets moving toward or away from epiphanies, navigating among odd, compelling moments, and unexpected correspondences. In this case, it’s March 29, 1956, and Plath is in Paris with a balloon.” —Amy Newman   Amy Newman is the author of Dear Editor (Persea Books, 2011). She teaches at Northern Illinois University and lives in DeKalb, Illinois. Most Recent Book by Newman   Dear Editor (Persea Books, 2011) "A Natural History of My White Girl" by Ching-In Chen "Morning Song" by Sylvia Plath "On Becoming a Poet in the 1950s" by Stephen Beal Poem-a-Day   Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-a-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends. Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038