There’s
a stake in your fat black heart
And
the villagers never liked you.
They
are dancing and stamping on you.
They
always knew it was you.
Daddy,
daddy, you bastard, I’m through.
 |
| Sylvia Plath |
The poet is looking at a photo of her father (“You stand at
the blackboard, daddy,/in the picture I have of you”), not speaking to him
personally—“I was ten when they buried you”. The “you” addressed in the
imagination is aimed at a specific person, but spoken only in theory to that
individual. In this case, the person addressed is no longer even alive.
Plath’s poem shows the incredible dynamism of the “you” of
imaginative address. The poet speaks her mind about her father, uncensored by the need to show
the poem to the person addressed. She can be as brutally honest as she likes.
Diplomacy be damned, she tells it like it is.
Many political poems are also spoken to a “you” of
imaginative address, such as Anna Akhmatova’s “Imitation from the Armenian.”
which she wrote in a sort of code, but the poem was clearly a challenge to the
Soviet Premier Josef Stalin, who sent her son away to Siberian forced labor
camps for seventeen years:
…was my little son
To your taste, was he fat
enough?
(translated by D.M. Thomas)
(translated by D.M. Thomas)
If you write mostly to a “you” of imaginative address, it
might be a worthwhile exercise to try writing to a “you” of personal address,
where you actually give the writing to the other person. The content might be
more cautious, but it also might be more probing, since you are actually
communicating, not just venting.
Also try the reverse. If you usually write to a “you” of
personal address, change it up. Write a secret poem or prose piece to that “you” that you
would never show that person. It might bring to light emotions or ideas that
you otherwise would never express.
More on writing to a “you” in the next blog.
More on writing to a “you” in the next blog.
Part 1 of Addressing a “You”: Personal Address
_________________________________
Zack’s new book of poetry, The Kama Sutra for Senior Citizens and Other Poems on Aging.
Order in the USA Order in the UK
Zack’s most recent translation:
The Water Drinkers and Other Sketches of Paris in the Romantic Era by Henry Murger
Other posts of interest:
Getting the Most from Your Writing Workshop
How Not to Become a Literary Dropout
Putting Together a Book Manuscript
Does the Muse Have a Cell Phone?
Poetic Forms: Introduction, the Sonnet, the Sestina, the Ghazal, the Tanka, the Villanelle
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