quartz contentment
I’d forgotten about the AP Lit assignment over Thanksgiving break when I picked up The Bell Jar from the stack of books I’ve neglected this semester. The chance to lie in bed until noon reading a book I’d chosen for myself seemed so enticing that I didn’t realize until I was about three-quarters of the way through that I really wasn’t a fan of the book. When I returned to school and picked my way through the packet of Plath poems, it was almost a physically uncomfortable experience — a Plath overload. The writing is genius, of course (“I’m a riddle in nine syllables”? So perfect), but it’s a dark and sticky thing to read. Perhaps that’s her point: Sylvia Plath doesn’t seem the type to coddle anyone, including (especially?) her readers. But her treatment of death and its surrounding events is such a twisted one that I find it hard to relate.
Emily Dickinson’s poems, however, strike me harder because they’re easier to digest initially. Veiled in smooth rhythm and apparent simplicity, each piece contains small statements bursting with a very real sense of grief and humanity. Despite the quirky personality my limited knowledge of her life tells me she was known for, Dickinson treats death in a very realistic manner. It’s quiet. I like it.
