Maternity in Plath's "The Arrival of the Bee Box"

I've always been incredibly fascinated with Plath's bee poems, and “The Arrival of the Bee Box” is one of my favorites. Plath's ability to instill these small insects with so much richness and complexity beyond the surface narrative tells us much about her vast poetic talent. There’s a lot going on here to work with. There’s certainly some racial tension at work in this poem with the repetition of “black” and the juxtaposition of “Caesar” and “African hands” (ll. 15, 22, 13). On another level, the poem also seems to operate as an extended metaphor for the speaker’s conflicted sense of maternity. The personification of the bees, coupled with the speaker’s anxieties regarding their dependence and independence (from her) produces a specific relationship in the poem which resembles (an admittedly dysfunctional) relationship between a mother and her children.

The bees are not only personified in this poem, they are personified as children. In the first stanza, the speaker compares the box to the “coffin of a midget / or a square baby,” (ll. 3-4) but quickly refutes the notion that the inhabitants are dead with the realization of the noise they create. Their noise is further examined and personified in the following stanzas. In stanza four, “the unintelligible syllables” are closer to an infant’s babbling than the buzzing of bees one would expect. “Syllables” especially, evokes the sense of a human noise.

Such personification is further informed by the speaker’s strange desire to both care for these insects and be free of such a responsibility. The white space between stanzas five and six becomes an intense place of meditation between these two extremes. In the final line of stanza five, the speaker realizes her authority over the creatures as she declares that “They can die, I need feed them nothing, I am the owner” (l. 25). In the first line of stanza six, however, she questions the basic needs of the bees, and in doing so, asserts her own responsibility as nurturer: “I wonder how hungry they are” (l. 26).

The ultimate product of such tension is the speaker’s decision to “set them free” as she acknowledges her inability to provide for them: “I am no source of honey” (ll. 35, 33). The final foreboding line, “The box is only temporary,” distills the speaker’s dark realization into an equally dark and vaguely suicidal resolution (l. 36).


Thanks for reading,
-Matthew




The Arrival of the Bee Box

I ordered this, clean wood box
Square as a chair and almost too heavy to lift.
I would say it was the coffin of a midget
Or a square baby
Were there not such a din in it.

The box is locked, it is dangerous.
I have to live with it overnight
And I can't keep away from it.
There are no windows, so I can't see what is in there.
There is only a little grid, no exit.

I put my eye to the grid.
It is dark, dark,
With the swarmy feeling of African hands
Minute and shrunk for export,
Black on black, angrily clambering.

How can I let them out?
It is the noise that appalls me most of all,
The unintelligible syllables.
It is like a Roman mob,
Small, taken one by one, but my god, together!

I lay my ear to furious Latin.
I am not a Caesar.
I have simply ordered a box of maniacs.
They can be sent back.
They can die, I need feed them nothing, I am the owner.

I wonder how hungry they are.
I wonder if they would forget me
If I just undid the locks and stood back and turned into a tree.
There is the laburnum, its blond colonnades,
And the petticoats of the cherry.

They might ignore me immediately
In my moon suit and funeral veil.
I am no source of honey
So why should they turn on me?
Tomorrow I will be sweet God, I will set them free.

The box is only temporary.





Plath, Sylvia. “The Arrival of the Bee Box.” Anthology of Modern American Poetry. Ed. Cary Nelson. New York: Oxford UP, 2000. 531. Print

Goodbye, Hello

On the last day of 2009, John Keats comes to mind. Yesterday morning, my grandfather passed away after a long struggle with Alzheimer's. One of his favorite things to tell me, when he was still able, was, "Life is a search for truth and beauty." This advice struck me as inspiring or infuriating, depending on the stage of life I was in at the time it was given. I wonder whether my grandfather would say he had found the objects of his quest. I never asked while he could answer.

While searching for John Keats' answer, I found Albert Einstein's: “The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.”

And now Keats:

Ode on a Grecian Urn

Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness,
Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape
Of deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal—yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unwearièd,
For ever piping songs for ever new;
More happy love! more happy, happy love!
For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd,
For ever panting, and for ever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd,
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.

Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
What little town by river or sea-shore,
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
Is emptied of its folk, this pious morn?
And, little town, thy streets for evermore
Will silent be; and not a soul, to tell
Why thou art desolate, can e'er return.

O Attic shape! fair attitude! with brede
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Thou, silent form! dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty," —that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

In Memoriam: Thomas Matthew Kelly, 4/17/20- 12/30/09

Useful Ambivalence

Good news! The Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture since 1900 has chosen my extended critical essay, "Useful Ambivalence: Adventures in Lyric Essay Land," to be part of their 2010 conference. I will present the paper at the University of Louisville in February of 2010.

Here is the abstract for the paper (see below). I'd love to hear from anyone who has been working in the form. Why do you choose to make use of the dual possibilities of the lyric essay? What challenges does it present?

Abstract

This essay, “Useful Ambivalence: Adventures in Lyric Essay Land,” explores the blurring of boundaries between poetry and essay, as well as the interstitial space between them where magic sometimes happens. What is a lyric essay? Why do writers seem to choose hybrid genres more frequently now? Are clear demarcations between genres meaningful? Can a lyric essay exist apart from its words? What is the role of Truth in this genre?

This work will examine the apparent interdependence of form and content in lyric essays. It will also seek to establish a working definition of the term “lyric essay,” look briefly at its origins, and closely examine three examples in the genre: The Body by Jenny Boully, “The Theory and Practice of Postmodernism: A Manifesto” by David Antin, and selections from Joan Didion’s The White Album. In the close readings, I will examine elements common to essays that have been termed “lyric,” either by the authors or by editors who anthologize their work. Excerpts of each of the aforementioned works appear in John D’Agata’s seminal anthology, The Next American Essay; a self-proclaimed lyric essayist, D’Agata will frequently serve as a guide throughout this study. This essay shall also posit explanations for the recent proliferation of works that resist categorization, i.e. what is to be gained from blurring the lines?

“Useful Ambivalence” will also investigate the craft of the lyric essay. How do the aforementioned writers use juxtaposition, negative space, jazz, narrative, and other techniques to render meaning? Finally, the study ends with an envoy addressed to readers and writers who might wish to continue investigating the form of the lyric essay.

Happy Thanking,
jk

Realizing Social (In)Justice in Elizabeth Bishop’s “Pink Dog”

Perhaps because it is one of Bishop’s travel poems, “Pink Dog” immediately caught my attention with its vivid, colorful imagery, playfulness, and conversational tone. I love the speaker’s initial observation of something so mundane as a hairless dog contrasted with the sights and smells of Rio De Janiero. The rhyme scheme, which is constructed with three end-rhymes in each tercet, (aaa bbb ccc…), is at first almost child-like in its simplicity and playfulness. Similarly, the speaker’s surprise at the sight of the dog, in its simplicity and honesty, achieves a conversational tone from the beginning stanza.

All of these initial impressions constitute a kind of lightness which is soon complicated by the speaker’s darker observations of the displaced and poverty-stricken populations of the city: “how they deal with beggars? They take and throw them in the tidal rivers / Yes, idiots, paralytics, parasites / go bobbing in the ebbing sewage, nights / out in the suburbs, where there are no lights” (ll. 14-18). The first effect of such a major shift in tone and subject inherent in the speaker’s juxtaposition of the hairless dog with the city’s poor and displaced is the immediate comparison. While she employs some hyperbole, the speaker recognizes that these people are being treated as if they were unwanted animals.

The poem evolves even further in the final four stanzas when the speaker returns to meditations on the pink dog and proposes that it dress up for the Carnival festival to hide its repellent condition. The speaker concludes by praising the festival which “is always wonderful!” (l. 36), and urging the dog to participate, “Dress up! Dress up and dance at Carnival!” (l. 38). Such praise is tainted, of course, with a cynicism which informs the entire poem. Bishop’s investigation of the city’s treatment of its poor populations is also an investigation of the shallow and meaningless nature of festivals such as Carnival. Just as the pink dog becomes a metaphor for the “idiots, paralytics, [and] parasites” which a city cannot hide, Carnival becomes a metaphor for the ineffectual human endeavor to compensate for such social injustice. Because it is a Christian holiday, Carnival also becomes, in Bishop’s representation, a manifestation of the failure of religion to solve social problems of classism. Just as Bishop’s playful rhyme can only partially hide the dark themes of the poem, Carnival can only superficially obfuscate (and temporarily alleviate) human misery.

--Matthew Vetter



PINK DOG

Rio de Janeiro


The sun is blazing and the sky is blue.
Umbrellas clothe the beach in every hue.
Naked, you trot across the avenue.

Oh, never have I seen a dog so bare!
Naked and pink, without a single hair . . .
Startled, the passersby draw back and stare.

Of course they’re mortally afraid of rabies.
You are not mad; you have a case of scabies
but look intelligent. Where are your babies?

(A nursing mother, by those hanging teats.)
In what slum have you hidden them, poor bitch,
while you go begging, living by your wits?

Didn’t you know? It’s been on all the papers,
to solve the problem, how they deal with beggars?
They take and throw them in the tidal rivers.

Yes, idiots, paralytics, parasites
go bobbing in the ebbing sewage, nights
out in the suburbs, where there are no lights.

If they do this to anyone who begs,
drugged, drunk, or sober, with or without legs,
what would they do to sick, four-leggéd dogs?

In the cafés and on the sidewalk corners
the joke is going round that all the beggars
who can afford them now wear life preservers.

In your condition you would not be able
even to float, much less to dog-paddle.
Now look, the practical, the sensible

solution is to wear a fantasia.
Tonight you simply can’t afford to be a-
n eyesore. But no one will ever see a

dog in mascara this time of year.
Ash Wednesday’ll come but Carnival is here.
What sambas can you dance? What will you wear?

They say that Carnival’s degenerating
—radios, Americans, or something,
have ruined it completely. They’re just talking.

Carnival is always wonderful!
A depilated dog would not look well.
Dress up! Dress up and dance at Carnival!

—Elizabeth Bishop




Works Cited

Bishop, Elizabeth. “Pink Dog.” Anthology of Modern American Poetry. Ed. Cary Nelson. New York: Oxford UP, 2000. 530. Print

Sulphur Hollow

This is a poem of mine that was recently featured in the Sept. 2009 issue of The Journal of Kentucky Studies. Enjoy!

-Matthew Vetter


Poem at Sulphur Hollow

I don’t need to tell you,
I have claimed the biggest,
moss-covered rock, to sit

with my son and watch
the black and yellow bird
who brought me here

dart from tree to tree.
What does she know,
I wonder, of the back half

of the Ford I found buried
in the hillside, the lock
of its trunk still shining

among the rust and decay.
All around us, mast from oaks
and maples waits to be

scavenged, stored, peeled.
The skin of the oak nut is scored,
divided like the fruit of an orange

into so many sections.
My son wants to gather
as many as he can, wants

to throw them into this small valley,
wants to add one small sound
to the winter roar of wind

blowing against a thousand
dead dry leaves all at once.
Now there’s a low wailing

across the fields, beyond
the tree line that borders
the edge of Sulphur Hollow.

I stand and turn my head.
I want to know the animal
that would cry like that.

I'm Your Butcher, Baby

I have been working with my brother to revise a sonnet that he wrote. We worked on it a few times, but he wanted to submit it as part of his college application. The catch was, it could only be eight lines. So I harkened back to Molly Peacock's lecture on the magical proportions of the sonnet and started hacking. In other words, we tried to keep the 8:6 ratio (roughly) while leaving the heart of the poem intact.

Here is the most "finished" version (the lines are really long):

DNA created me. I am one plus one, the reaction of an act not correlated with a thought of me.
What am I if not a continuation of people who lived before my creation? Accident or surprise,
no one hoped or planned for me. If I were a part of God’s plan, then I should have purpose.
But I could find so many purposes, meaning falls away.
I lean toward nothing.
I am not thankful for the happiness belief brings. Absolute Truth breeds division.
What am I but another organism on the chain whose links make up existence?
I am everything and nothing. I refuse treatment for my cancer.

Both of us were pleased and amazed with the results. The original was far more wordy. Almost an essay. Now the lines pop, especially the short one at the turn.

It was a good exercise. If only I could be as ruthless with my own work. I aim to try.

Happy haunting,
jk

Lunar Eclipse

Here's a poem I wrote in February of 2008 which was just recently published in the Autumn 2009 Issue of The Midwest Quarterly. I hope that it will speak to you on your own terms; but, for me, this poem represents an early phase in my discovery and initial investigations of secular humanism. Thanks for reading,

Matt




Lunar Eclipse
February 20, 2008


I like how you throw your cigarette to the grass
and leave me with the wooden rocking chair,

the wetness of you breath lingering
in the frozen air after you have shut the door.

I imagine you, going from room to room,
turning off lights, shutting the cabinets

I have left open. See how stones from the river
enter the eyes of our children? What beautiful

stupor sleep ushers. What will I give them?
The night is theirs, this shadow passing

over the moon makes everything around it
explode. I will not pray tonight. To pray

is to confess solitude. I am not alone.
To pray in gratitude is to confess coincidence,

to admit to luck or chance, but everything
here I have made, or helped in the making.

To pray in exaltation is to celebrate
that which is not your own. To pray in

petition is to beg. I will not pray tonight.
I beg for nothing. I have seen the light

between each star brighten as the red moon
goes dark, then bleeds, then goes dark again.