11 February

Today is the anniversary, if such word can be used, of Sylvia Plath’s suicide. 1963 was the year in which she put her head in her oven over in merry old England. So it goes.

That means that she’s been stone cold dead for 46 years and would have been 76 going on 77 had she not died that day or on some other day between now and then for the same or some other reason. I know those numbers are obvious once I’ve crunched them, but how often do you do math if you don’t have to? Besides which, those numbers help make the point that she has been dead longer than she lived; this has been true since 1993 and won’t ever again be untrue.

Seymour Mayne described her to me once as one of those “vampiric” poets. By this he meant essentially that she was one of those poets whose voice can creep into yours thereby causing the writers’ style to mimic hers. This, in writing, is generally considered ungood. If you’re busy mimicking someone else, you’re busy not finding your own voice. This would mean that you are then on the path to becoming a bad writer. I ignored him, at my peril, because I was in the cult, the Cult of Plath. It’s endemic in university circles, or at least it used to be. At one point, I even had memorized her poem, “Daddy,” just to see if I could. It’s a long poem….words from that poem still echo around in my braincase to this day. I think today some of the folks in this cult would have been endearingly referred to as, “Emos”, but I could be wrong. I’m not going to quote any of her work here because, well, mostly because I’m not wearing any garlic. I also don’t want to appear to be piggybacking on her fame, or misery, or pathos, or her considerable talent in some craven hope that the appearance of her words here will somehow uplift the quality of mine. If you want to read some, then be my guest. I’ve added a blog link on my page for your convenience. I had a quick glance and believe it’s as good a door as any….

It’s an odd thing that the death of someone famous is generally remarked upon. This is not always the case of course, with birthdays being holidays in some countries. That said, for some reason we’re apt to remark upon the passing of someone. We’re more focused on the exit rather than the entrance. Is the party really that bad? Or….thinking more on it, maybe it’s not so odd.

I used to wear this old green t-shirt, one of those No Fear ones that said, if not this very phrase, something very similar, on the back, “It’s not that life is short, it’s just that you’re dead for so long”. I was at breakfast with a friend in Toronto and I had a septuagenarian come up to me, a retired teacher, and he said basically that that was the truest thing he’d read in a long time. I had originally thought I must have offended him for him to approach me and here it is I turned out to have delighted him. So, it is true – he said it was true, and I have to trust him – if anyone would know, wouldn’t it be him? A teacher? An old teacher?

I’m reminded of William Munny, a fictional character in an actual movie titled, Unforgiven. Stay with me, we’re getting there. In this movie, William Munny said of killing a man – and I am quoting him here because he’s merely a blood thirsty killing machine à la Nosferatu (so my “voice” is quite safe, I think), “It's a hell of a thing, killing a man. Take away all he's got and all he's ever gonna have.”

If killing is like that, then dying is the other side of the coin.

So, I’ve marked the final day of a life lived. I don’t do it for everyone of course and, in fact, I think Sylvia’s date of passing is the only one I remark upon. I think it could be said that I am lucky to have such a luxury. Sylvia Plath wrote some excellent poems and an enduring novel and some short stories that may or may not have seen the light of day if she wasn’t who she turned out to be. Maybe that’s why I mark the date that she wasn’t going to go over that poem one more time, wasn’t going to give milk and cookies to her kids once more, wasn’t going to cry or smile or sigh again, wasn’t going to have anything anymore.

Don’t get me wrong. She did have a powerful influence on me when I was younger and that influence still resonates. I love Sylvia Plath’s writing. I love and relate strongly to, Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams, and any number of her poems, with, “Tulips,” perhaps being my favourite. I’ve read a number of her biographies and her letters. I haven’t done this for any other writer.

But I do not read her anymore. I cannot really afford to. I need to continue to search for and hone my own voice however I can.

She’s good with that. I know she is.