Widows’ Work
This sentence–“David was a big sweater, and I just remember the sweat marks on his pillow when I changed the cases”–I just feel it in my gut. And then there was this, also from last week. Can the “artistic value” of the work of the widow, the work that specifically pertains to the widow’s widowhood, ever eclipse the grief itself, the heartbreak-response of the audience? Can such work ever obtain its own terms? No, it seems to me. Which is also sort of heartbreaking, or at least one tentacle of the heartbreak.
Dear HTMLGIANT,
My friend cowfish
I miss you!
There’s an essay about sound and syntax in Plath’s poem “Nick and the Candlestick” in the latest Writer’s Chronicle. I haven’t read it. But I will on my way to Atlanta today. “Nick and the Candlestick” is one of my favorite Plath poems. Her line breaks fuck shit up.
Here’s a taste:
Old cave of calcium
Icicles, old echoer.
Even the newts are white,Those holy Joes.
And the fish, the fish—
Christ! they are panes of ice,A vice of knives,
A piranha
Religion, drinkingIt’s first communion out of my live toes. …