{"id":4103,"date":"2023-09-11T00:29:26","date_gmt":"2023-09-11T04:29:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/patti-smith-reads-sylvia-plaths-haunting-portrait-of-depression-the-marginalian\/"},"modified":"2023-09-11T00:29:26","modified_gmt":"2023-09-11T04:29:26","slug":"patti-smith-reads-sylvia-plaths-haunting-portrait-of-depression-the-marginalian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/patti-smith-reads-sylvia-plaths-haunting-portrait-of-depression-the-marginalian\/","title":{"rendered":"Patti Smith Reads Sylvia Plath\u2019s Haunting Portrait of Depression \u2013 The Marginalian"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Profit<\/a>
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\"The<\/a><\/p>\n

One of the most menacing things about depression is its elasticity \u2014 its way of suddenly receding, swinging open a window of light, only to return just as suddenly with redoubled darkness, just when life has begun to feel livable again, even beautiful. <\/p>\n

On September 16, 1962, a voice unspooled from the BBC airwaves carrying an emblem of that cruel elasticity. <\/p>\n

Sylvia Plath<\/a> (October 27, 1932\u2013February 11, 1963) \u2014 who spent her life living with the darkness and making light of the barely bearable lightness of being<\/a>, until she could no more \u2014 had composed the poem a year earlier, shortly after moving to a quiet market village in Devon. For the first time, she had a room of her own to write in. \u201cMy whole spirit has expanded immensely,\u201d she wrote to her mother<\/a> as she filled the house with \u201cgreat peachy-colored gladiolas, hot red & orange & yellow zinnias\u201d from the garden, that great living poem<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Within a month, in the fading autumn light, her spirit had begun contracting again in the grip of the familiar darkness. One night, unable to sleep, she tried a meditative writing exercise: to simply describe what she saw in the Gothic churchyard outside her window. That exercise became one of her finest poems and one of the most poignant portraits of depression in the history of literature.<\/p>\n

Found in Plath\u2019s indispensable Collected Poems<\/em><\/strong><\/a> (public library<\/em><\/a>), it comes alive with uncommon poignancy in Patti Smith\u2019s planetary voice \u2014 one of her regular poetry readings from her online journal<\/a>.<\/p>\n