FOR APRIL 2022 POETRY MONTH: Anna Świrszczyńska, the Polish Sylvia Plath--and Plath

 

 

Anna Świrszczyńska (aka Anna Swir) (1909–1984) was a Polish poet whose poems are about her experiences during World War II, motherhood, the female body, and sensuality. (Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II)  I read about her way back in the 80s when I was researching Polish poets and also found that sometimes she was referred to as the Polish Sylvia Plath, or Polish Plath. I did then read Anna's poetry in the years that Sylvia's poetry was still fresh in my mind, and I did see the resemblance. 

Both had the WWII experience,  both had the horrors and bleakness of the war, both wrote of women's concerns and women's liberation in a time when people sought liberation from the war and Nazi Germany. Finding another Plath, I was absolutely fascinated.

In the meantime, before I had encountered Świrszczyńska, I did try to sound like Plath as so many young female poets tried. Many young female poets want to emulate Plath or at least try thrir hand at her type of poetry, and I wanted not to emulate Plath per say but to emulate her poetry. I must be clear and emphasize that I meant to master her poetic style, not to emulate her mental illness. Plath was known for her immaculate slant rhyme and line breaks, together producing a sort of sea-wave-crashing-upon-rock rocking rhythm, repetitively unsettling to the point of then eventually unnerving; and, all the while, her words yet flowed strongly and unceasingly as naturally as the waters of the sea-storm, unabashed by any feelings of discomfiting the audience. The impact struck me as brilliant insofar as craft. I felt persuaded or compelled to try the same. I too sought that discomfiture--not always, but often, to various degrees in various poems and short stories. Such was as follows: 

     bleakness:

1. the quality or state of being bare and inhospitable.

   "the bleakness of that destroyed landscape"

   • the quality or state of cold and miserable weather.

     "the bleakness of winter"
   • the quality or state of being hopeless, discouraging, or unlikely to have a favorable outcome.

     "this story is marked by unrelenting bleakness"

 (Retrieved from https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=bleakness)

A professor one day spoke of poems being of warm fire and/or cold fire. It was in that moment that I suddenly realized what I had been doing and rather liked the idea of being near warm fire much more than cold fire. I decided to pitch (get rid of) my Plath-like sales pitch (and wrote a poem about that later) and seek the warmth I once knew and generated in many of the poems of my high school and earlier college days like in my first couple workshops before encountering Plath. However, we do all ger sarcastic or bleak or moody or or or whatever sometimes. But I don't want to live there. 

Plath and Anne Seton and Adrienne Rich were friends. The three would meet for lunch or coffee and discuss suicide notes. Two out of three ended up following through and committing suicide--how bleak is that?!?! Pulitzer prize-winning Anne Sexton committed suicide at age 45. She was a confessional poet and one of the best-known writers in America in her time. From what I heard of Plath in my youth, she killed herself by sticking her head in an oven when she found out that her husband Ted Hughes had had an affair. And oh the poems of Ted Hughes, how I loved them, so I was so disappointed upon hearing this. No one is ever worth killing yourself over. Not in my (poetry) book! All three of these poets were feminists and felt oppressed.I think of how J.K. Rowling, the author of Harry Potter wrote while on welfare in a laundry closet with kids at home. I wish I could beat those odds, but even if I can't, I cannot see killing myself, especially over another person. So in these three female poets, as in many poets, there is a strong lesson for today's girls and teenagers who feel bullied or stuck in a relationship that feels unfair to them. I just hope that teen girls and young adult women and poets do not want to identify with this.

Regarding that period of my life, many people would ask me if the things I wrote of in poems and in short stories actually ever happened. They happened, but not completely, and not always to me. Sometimes I would take a word of a phrase I heard and run with it into a poem, such as from a conversation I overheard at a bar or an image I saw while walking down the street and imagining the image. Sometimes one moment of a story would happen and then I would run with that into a short story and embellish it until the cows came home.

In defiant spirit of life's struggles, and yes, sounding a lot like cold-fire Plath, Anna Świrszczyńska wrote,

You will not tame this sea
either by humility or rapture.
But you can laugh
in its face.

From, The Sea and the Man, Translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Leonard Nathan

I hope to do another write-up on Plath, but the days and time for National Poetry Month blogs are running out fast with there being other work I have to do.  

I write this blog mostly for my granddaughter to read some day.

I am keeping a sort of journal online. 

If anyone else happens to read it, great. If not, so be it.

I need to blog less to get some other writing projects done. I always think that blogging will just be a quick warm-up before I go type my other articles, but it does not always work out that way. I think I will definitely stop posting this blog on my FB page so much.