HILARY CLINTON READS SYLVIA PLATH’S COLLECTED POEMS BEFORE HER LATEST CONGRESSIONAL TESTIMONY

by Mary Ellen Talley

AI-generated graphic by NightCafé for The New Verse News.

I would no more pick up a book

of confessional poetry than 

read cautionary tales and Greek myths 

while picketing the White House in my youth.  

Vietnam was such a waste.

Why in the world am I reading Plath

when I should be boning up for Epstein testimony?

Some say my schedule was suicidal

when I was Secretary of State. I came of age early

but took Bill’s name as my own

in spite of Gloria Steinem’s dominion.

There is little value in confession; 

Whitewater just about did us in,

but see how even my daughter 

embraces our legacy. She learned the lesson 

of the ratings game and will thrive

even if her hubby’s hedge fund 

ever skims the truth. At least I’m free

to be honest. Epstein was Bill’s gig,

not mine, although I’m savvy enough to know

the more opulent connections the better, 

especially while the world goes bonkers.

Plath wrote,  It might be heaven,

This state plentitude: still in one

Gigantic tapestry…. That’s my life.

Plath’s young mental illness captures me, 

Twice that lamp of the possible.  

I believe in that.  We studied the Greeks

at Wellesley. First reading, I disliked Perseus, 

but here I am in Plath’s title,

The Triumph of Wit Over Suffering.

I refuse catastrophe. I still maintain 

more rigor than any elected sycophants.

No rigor mortis come to stiffen all creation.

If I could only sway Senators with such strong words!

But why am I reading from a woman 

who let adultery cave her in? Not me!

I’m blond. Plath brunette. Neither of us stupid.  

But she stuck her head in the oven to escape.  

How could she dare to evade

this imperfect future, this amazing challenge?    

   

Mary Ellen Talley’s poems have appeared in many journals including Louisville Review, Deep Wild, and Trampoline as well as in multiple anthologies, and three chapbooks. She resides in Seattle, WA and worked for many years as a school-based speech/language pathologist (SLP.) 

THE EXPERT MANICURE

given by Marilyn Monroe to Sylvia Plath in a dream

by Kate Bernadette Benedict

[In his new biography of Sylvia Plath, American Isis, Carl] Rollyson points to an often ignored journal entry from October 1959 in which Plath recounts being visited by Marilyn Monroe in a dream. Monroe, Plath writes, was dressed like a "fairy godmother" and appeared in a setting that she imagined to be similar to an upcoming dinner party with T.S. Eliot to which she and Hughes had been invited. Plath writes: "I spoke, almost in tears, of how much she and Arthur Miller meant to us, although they could, of course, not know us at all. She gave me an expert manicure. . . . She invited me to visit during the Christmas holidays, promising a new, flowering life." --Micah Mattix, The Wall Street Journal 
Image source: The Cheryl Flavour

Who is this, under stage light, bowing over my gnawed and ink-dark nails?
It is the White Goddess, with the platinum air.

It is the moon woman, in full, in full illumination.
She is in my thrall, it is a wonderment. She is at my beck and call.

See how she eradicates the blue discolorations!
She achieves an alchemy; the cuticles dissolve.

The bright chromium of her tools, the shimmering lotions!
How is it such holiness misspends itself on me¾

Me with my Maenad’s fury and my matronly hair?
It is like being stung by a seraph or poured into the cup of a tulip.

The jars are arrayed before us, the glamorous polishes.
Tangerines, mauves, and those appalling plasma reds.

These lights are the lights of Migraine, I cannot choose now.
But the hour is late, and the audience is waiting.

See them staring at us, in the Stygian shadows?
A vast arrangement of bald heads, utterly still.

What do they want from us, blonde godmother?
What must we do, do, do to make them satisfied?

I do not think they require a death.
That is another matter entirely.

What is the name of that pale lacquer with the mirrory sheen?
I would name it Isis, I would name it Icicle.

How you perfect me now, with your finishing touches!
White nails, the immaculate hands of a virgin, my hands.

They will dance poems onto pages, danses macabres, arabesques.
I will join you one day in the Pantheon, I am statuesque.


Kate Bernadette Benedict is a poet living in Riverdale, NY. She was the editor/publisher of the online poetry journals Umbrella and Tilt-a-Whirl.