Sylvia Plath is my favorite poet. She was not only a descendant of Modernism and the Romantics, she was a poet that cared about her own feelings so much that she cared about yours. She had some fucked-up shit happen in her life, but who cares about that? We all suffer and that has everything to do with poetics. Have you ever heard of Modernism? The Nazis called Modernism primitive and the work of the brutes. The only brutes on this earth are the dogs and those are the things that I love. Do you wonder what I am? You are reading the work of a great poet, possibly one of the greatest ones of your time. If I am standing in front of you right now, you are listening to the voice of one of the greatest poets of your time. Do you take time to analyze greatness? I don’t think you should bother—you will never get it right. I am both a Modernist and a Romantic. All poetry that is good today is some combination of modernism, ethics, and faith. Take note. All poetry that matters today has feelings in it. You can refute or deny this with your lack of them. You can wrestle against feelings and make funny words for it. Take a look in the mirror. You were born a child and you will die one, too. When you are in your grave all that you will be able to say is mommy. You are going to die you know and so am I. That’s it. You were born to die. Take the things you say because you can’t write poems and figure out how to write some. Go to the grocery store and buy some food. Sit alone by yourself and think of how it is, the way it really is. There are a million cells of fluid rushing in your veins. On earth a thousand rivers rush through. The only thing that keeps you contained is the faith God has in your every breath. When you are mean, you let him down, so don’t be. Read Plath. Hell, Read Stein. She was a woman and would have approved of you—you man, you woman, you dog. Bark your last breath while we all swim along a river. There are children playing around you. They know more than you will ever know.
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Dorothea Lasky, ‘The Poetry That is Going to Matter After You Are Dead’, uit Black Life.
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