ENGL 6480/7480, Studies in
Contemporary Literature: Mad Men
and the Sixties
Dr. David Lavery
Summer 2015
Meeting 10
7/28/15 | Meeting 10
PSR Chronology: 1969
Reading: Portable Sixties Reader—Part Seven: Out of the Fire: The Black
Arts and the Reshaping of Black Consciousness (443-87) | Sylvia Plath: all |
MMDCTTV: Marc (226)
Screening: Voices and Visions: Sylvia Plath
Case Study: Poetry in the Sixties
Mad Men Season 5: "Far Away Places" or "Signal 30"
ENGL 6480/7480, Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
Meeting 10
Portable Sixties Reader—The Sixties: A Chronology (xvii-xli)
1969
ENGL 6480/7480, Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
Meeting 10
David Lavery’s birthday (8/27) comes up as the 362 BD pulled in the
lottery. His alternative plans to (1) sniff moth balls for a month (thus
reducing himself to a puddle of snot) prior to his draft physical or (2)
run away to Canada (as a college junior he had copyedited a book on the
subject written by a pacifist Clarion State College librarian) become
unnecessary.
1969
ENGL 6480/7480, Studies in Contemporary
Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
Meeting 10
Portable Sixties Reader—Part Seven: Out of the Fire: The Black Arts and
the Reshaping of Black Consciousness (443-87)
ENGL 6480/7480, Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
Meeting 10
MMDCTTV: Marc (226)
ENGL 6480/7480, Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
Meeting 10
Sylvia Plath: all
Screening: Voices and Visions: Sylvia Plath
ENGL 6480/7480, Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
Meeting 10
Case Study: Poetry in the Sixties
ENGL 6480/7480, Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
Meeting 10
Mad Men Season 5: "Far Away Places" or "Signal 30"
ENGL 6480/7480, Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
Meeting 10
ENGL 6480/7480 | Studies in
Contemporary Literature: Mad Men
and the Sixties
Dr. David Lavery
Summer 2015
Season 5
Don Draper has married his secretary Megan Calvet, who throws a surprise birthday party for Don and
their co-workers. Don is embarrassed by the party and Megan serenading him in front of his coworkers. Megan (who has been promoted to copywriter) meanwhile struggles with Don's growing
detachment with work, as he is constantly having Megan come in late and leave early to the agency,
and her own unfulfilled dream of being an actress. Don's detachment alienates Peggy, who is being
made to train Megan, and Bert, who feels that Don has gone "on love leave", not caring about his job
or turning in quality work.
Feeling her chances at work have been undercut by Don's detachment, the couple have a fight while
touring a Howard Johnson's hotel. Don leaves Megan behind in a huff when she tells him that she's
come to find the advertising industry hollow and superficial. Megan manages to hitch a ride back to
their new apartment, where they fight and ultimately reconcile.
Don's slacking at work coincides with the arrival of a new hire, in the form of young advertising
phenom Michael Ginsberg. Young, aggressive, and anti-social, Ginsberg proves to be a rival for Don
and Peggy. When the two are made to pitch advertisements for a snow cone company, Don purposely
leaves behind Ginsberg's child-friendly campaign material in order to pitch his own darker, devilthemed campaign instead, which is ultimately chosen. Meanwhile, Peggy finds herself reaching a glass
ceiling with regards to Ginsberg being able to rise faster within the company. However, one evening
Ginsberg confides his dark secret to Peggy: that he was born in a Nazi concentration camp for Jews,
ENGL 6480/7480 | Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
5
where his mother died and that he spent his first five years in an orphanage before his father found
him and took him to America to live. By the end, Peggy decides to leave the agency for another firm in
order to fulfill her full potential. Don attempts to keep her by offering her a raise but ultimately
concedes that Peggy has to leave him to continue out of his shadow. Before she leaves the office
forever, Don kisses her hand, finally realizing how important she was to him. Peggy also makes a new
change at home: she accepts her boyfriend's proposal to live together, to her mother's disapproval.
Elsewhere, Roger struggles to remain relevant in the company as Pete Campbell schemes to steal his
plush office for himself. Roger begins to secretly pay Peggy and Ginsberg to produce material for him
to pitch to clients. He also experiments with LSD, which has a profound impact on him and his own
marriage to Jane; under the influence of the drug the two confess that their marriage has failed and
they divorce. Roger meanwhile begins pursuing an affair with Megan's mother, culminating in Don's
daughter Sally catching her step-grandmother performing oral sex on Roger.
Pete Campbell, having moved to the suburbs, begins to become more and more detached from his life
and starts missing the big city. His relationship with Lane Pryce collapses and the two fight, with Lane
beating Pete up in front of the other partners. He also begins a relationship with Beth Dawes, the wife
of a fellow train commuter, who later breaks off the affair out of guilt even though she and Pete know
that her husband is unrepentant in his own adultery. She later tells Pete that her husband is forcing her
to undergo electroshock therapy because of her manic depression. Pete visits his mistress one last
time in the hospital, whose memories of the affair have been destroyed. He confronts Beth's husband
ENGL 6480/7480 | Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
5
later on the train, revealing the affair and culminating in a fist fight. Returning home defeated and
alone, his wife Trudy agrees to allow Pete to rent an apartment in the city for overnight stays.
Joan struggles with single motherhood while her husband is overseas, with help from her mother.
However, when she discovers that Greg has signed up for another tour of duty in the Army Medical
Corps without consulting her, Joan confronts Greg and in the process denounces him for his earlier
rape of her and orders him out of her and their son's life. Greg reluctantly agrees but then files for
divorce, which upsets Joan as she fears that Greg will paint her as the villain in their divorce case.
Further complicating things is the firm's pursuit of Jaguar as a client, as Pete is able to get a promise
that the agency will get the account if Joan sleeps with the head of the Jaguar dealers' association.
Pete arranges a vote behind Don's back, and the other partners reluctantly agree to pay Joan to have
sex with the executive to secure the account for them. However, Lane convinces Joan to take an
ownership percentage of the company instead as Don tries (and fails) to stop Joan from doing the
deed. The firm wins the account, but alienates Joan and Don from the rest of the partners and from
each other.
ENGL 6480/7480 | Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
5
Lane Pryce struggles with his own demons as he is revealed to be greatly in debt and owing a good
amount of taxes from when he moved his money to the US last season to help keep the firm afloat.
When his scheme to use his Christmas bonus to pay off his tax debt fails, Lane is forced to steal from
the company to pay his debt. Bert and Don discover this and Don fires Lane, who then kills himself
rather than face the disgrace of resigning and returning to England. He hangs himself in his office,
leaving Roger, Pete, and Don to cut him down. Nobody but Don knows the reason behind his suicide.
Megan (who has returned to acting) seeks Don's help to secure a commercial role for her. Megan's
visiting mother cruelly denounces Megan's ambitions and tells Don that he should not help Megan, as
she believes that Megan's dream of acting must be crushed and that she should behave like the proper
wife of a wealthy man. While Don is at the dentist, Megan's mother reduces her daughter to a
quivering wreck, resulting in Don agreeing to help Megan get the role in order to secure her the
happiness she needs to function. Eventually, she gets the role, and after dropping her off at the studio,
Don leaves to a bar where he sits by himself and orders a drink.
The season ends with a montage of all the main characters having realizations about themselves. Pete,
in the aftermath of his affair with Beth, is seen sitting alone on his couch with his headphones on and
eyes closed. Peggy, having quickly risen through the ranks in her new career, is shown toasting a single
glass of champagne to herself with a smile on her face. A naked Roger looks out the window of his
hotel room at the city, in the throes of an LSD trip, and raises both of his arms into the air. And lastly,
Don is seen at the bar, where a woman begins to flirt with him and asks if he is alone. He turns and
looks at her ambiguously.
ENGL 6480/7480 | Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
5
ENGL 6480/7480 | Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
5.5
ENGL 6480/7480 | Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
5.6
ENGL 6480/7480 | Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
5.7
ENGL 6480/7480 | Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
5.8
ENGL 6480/7480 | Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
5.9
ENGL 6480/7480 | Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
5.10
ENGL 6480/7480 | Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
5.11
ENGL 6480/7480 | Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
5.12
ENGL 6480/7480 | Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
5.13
ENGL 6480/7480, Studies in
Contemporary Literature: Mad Men
and the Sixties
Dr. David Lavery
Summer 2015
Poets of
the 1960s
A. R. Ammons (1926-2001)
ENGL 6480/7480, Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
Poets of the 1960s
W. H. Auden (1907-1973)
ENGL 6480/7480, Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
Poets of the 1960s
Maya Angelou (1928-2014)
ENGL 6480/7480, Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
Poets of the 1960s
Amiri Baraka (1934-2014)
ENGL 6480/7480, Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
Poets of the 1960s
John Berryman (1914-1972)
National Book Award Winner:
1969—His Toy, His Dream, His Rest by John
Berryman
Pulitzer Prize Winner: 1965 77
Dream Songs (Farrar)
ENGL 6480/7480, Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
Poets of the 1960s
Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979 )
National Book Award Winner:
1970—The Complete Poems by Elizabeth Bishop
ENGL 6480/7480, Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
Poets of the 1960s
Elizabeth Bishop
Robert Bly (1926- )
National Book Award Winner:
1968—The Light Around the Body by Robert Bly
ENGL 6480/7480, Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
Poets of the 1960s
Charles Bukowski (1920-1994)
ENGL 6480/7480, Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
Poets of the 1960s
James Dickey (1923-1997)
National Book Award Winner:
1966—Buckdancer's Choice: Poems by James
Dickey
ENGL 6480/7480, Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
Poets of the 1960s
Alan Dugan (1923-2003)
National Book Award Winner:
1962—Poems by Alan Dugan
Pulitzer Prize Winner: 1962 Poems (Yale Univ.
Press)
ENGL 6480/7480, Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
Poets of the 1960s
Richard Eberhardt (1904-2005)
Pulitzer Prize Winner: 1966 Selected
Poems (New Directions)
ENGL 6480/7480, Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
Poets of the 1960s
Lawrence Ferlinghetti (1919- )
ENGL 6480/7480, Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
Poets of the 1960s
Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997)
ENGL 6480/7480, Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
Poets of the 1960s
Allen Ginsberg
Michael McClure
Gary Snyder
Jack Kerouac
Allen Ginsberg, Howl (1955)
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by
madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn
looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly
connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat
up smoking in the supernatural darkness of
cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities
contemplating jazz,
who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and
saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs
illuminated,
who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes
hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy
among the scholars of war,
who were expelled from the academies for crazy &
Allen Ginsberg, Howl (1955)
publishing obscene odes on the windows of the skull,
who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear,
burning their money in wastebaskets and listening
to the Terror through the wall,
who got busted in their pubic beards returning through
Laredo with a belt of marijuana for New York,
who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine
in Paradise Alley, death, or purgatoried their
torsos night after night
with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares, . . .
Robert Hayden (1913-1980)
ENGL 6480/7480, Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
Poets of the 1960s
Anthony Hecht (1923-2004)
Pulitzer Prize Winners: 1968 The Hard
Hours (Atheneum)
ENGL 6480/7480, Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
Poets of the 1960s
Richard Hugo (1923-1982)
ENGL 6480/7480, Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
Poets of the 1960s
Richard Howard (1929- )
Pulitzer Prize Winners: 1970 Untitled
Subjects (Atheneum)
ENGL 6480/7480, Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
Poets of the 1960s
Ted Hughes (1930-1998)
ENGL 6480/7480, Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
Poets of the 1960s
Randall Jarrell (1914-1965)
National Book Award Winner:
1961—The Woman at the Washington Zoo by
Randall Jarrell
ENGL 6480/7480, Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
Poets of the 1960s
Donald Justice (1925- )
ENGL 6480/7480, Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
Poets of the 1960s
Jack Kerouac (1922-1969)
ENGL 6480/7480, Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
Poets of the 1960s
Galway Kinnell (1927-2014 )
ENGL 6480/7480, Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
Poets of the 1960s
Kenneth Koch (1925-2002)
ENGL 6480/7480, Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
Poets of the 1960s
Stanley Kunitz (1905-2006)
ENGL 6480/7480, Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
Poets of the 1960s
Denise Levertov (1923-1997)
ENGL 6480/7480, Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
Poets of the 1960s
Philip Levine (1928- 2015)
ENGL 6480/7480, Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
Poets of the 1960s
Robert Lowell (1917-1977)
National Book Award Winner:
1960—Life Studies by Robert Lowell
ENGL 6480/7480, Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
Poets of the 1960s
Phyllis McGinley (1995-1978)
Pulitzer Prize Winner: 1961 Times Three:
Selected Verse From Three Decades (Viking)
ENGL 6480/7480, Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
Poets of the 1960s
James Merrill (1926-1995)
National Book Award Winner:
1967—Nights and Days by James Merrill
ENGL 6480/7480, Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
Poets of the 1960s
Howard Moss (1922-1987)
ENGL 6480/7480, Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
Poets of the 1960s
Howard Nemerov (1920-1991)
ENGL 6480/7480, Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
Poets of the 1960s
Charles Olson (1910-1970)
ENGL 6480/7480, Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
Poets of the 1960s
George Oppen (1908-1984)
Pulitzer Prize Winner: 1969 Of Being
Numerous (New Directions)
ENGL 6480/7480, Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
Poets of the 1960s
Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)
ENGL 6480/7480, Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
Poets of the 1960s
John Crowe Ransom (1888-1974)
National Book Award Winner:
1964—Selected Poems by John Crowe Ransom
ENGL 6480/7480, Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
Poets of the 1960s
Theodore Roethke (1908-1963)
National Book Award Winner:
1965—The Far Field by Theodore Roethke
ENGL 6480/7480, Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
Poets of the 1960s
Anne Sexton (1928-1974)
Pulitzer Prize Winner: 1967 Live or
Die (Houghton)
ENGL 6480/7480, Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
Poets of the 1960s
Karl Shapiro (1913-2000)
ENGL 6480/7480, Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
Poets of the 1960s
Louis Simpson (1923-2012)
Pulitzer Prize Winner: 1964 At The End Of The
Open Road (Wesleyan Univ. Press)
ENGL 6480/7480, Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
Poets of the 1960s
W. D. Snodgrass (1926-2009)
Pulitzer Prize Winner: 1960 Heart's
Needle (Knopf)
ENGL 6480/7480, Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
Poets of the 1960s
Gary Snyder (1930- )
ENGL 6480/7480, Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
Poets of the 1960s
Jack Kerouac’s fictional Gary Snyder:
Japhy Ryder in The Dharma Bums
I am setting the Way Back Machine for 1975. A much publicized event at
the University of Florida would bring some major figures from the Beat
Movement--Gary Snyder, Allen Ginsberg, Michael McClure--to campus to
honor the great ecologist (and U of F faculty member) Howard T. Odum.
It was a fascinating week. I was teaching U of F's first-ever course on
Native American Literature, and Snyder, who had made himself available
for classroom visits, came to talk to my students. It was a wonderful 50
minutes, and Snyder struck me, as he had when I first saw him in Saint
Cloud, Minnesota three years before, as just about the most fullyactualized human being I had ever met. (I should note that this was my
LSD period, and I was attentive to such things.)
20th Century American Literature
Fall 2012 | Dr. Lavery
But the highlight of the week was a poetry
reading to be held in a natural amphitheater
around a small pond in the heart of the
campus. For events such as these, a
platform/stage was laid across the water,
and Snyder, McClure, and Ginsberg would
read from a podium placed upon it to the
assembled multitude. A crowd of several
hundred filled the outdoor theatre-in-theround. (A couple of years later I remember
hearing Norman Mailer and Hunter
Thompson--who pleaded with the crowd to
bring him any good drugs they had--read in
the same location.)
20th Century American Literature
Fall 2012 | Dr. Lavery
The reading would have been memorable in
its own right (Snyder is the greatest reader
of his own poetry I have ever heard in
person)--even without the heckler.
Wandering through the audience a very,
very drunk guy in his twenties continued to
harangue the poets on the pond. It seemed
he wanted to be included on the program-wanted to read his poetry.
Finally, Snyder, who was acting as MC for
the evening, took the mike and, in an effort
to quiet the heckler (where was security?)
offered to let him read one poem if that
would shut him up. He accepted the offer
and made an anything-but-straight-line for
the stage over the pond.
The aspiring poet took the podium and
pulled a large manuscript of his poetry out
of his backpack (the size of the tome
brought a moan from the audience) and
threw it on podium. As he announced to the
hostile crowd "I want to read you my first
poem, "Getting a B*#@ J%*," he leaned
forward, seeking to steady himself, on the
podium, and it tumbled, the manuscript with
it, into the pond.
With barely a moment's hesitation, Gary
Snyder, in what seems now over thirty
years later a surreal moment, leaped down
into the shallow pond and retrieved the
manuscript. Soon after security arrived and
hauled the drunk off, and the reading
commenced without further incident.
William Stafford (1914-1993)
National Book Award Winner:
1963—Traveling Through the Dark by William
Stafford
ENGL 6480/7480, Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
Poets of the 1960s
Mark Strand (1934-2014)
ENGL 6480/7480, Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
Poets of the 1960s
May Swenson (1913-1989)
ENGL 6480/7480, Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
Poets of the 1960s
Diane Wakoski (1937- )
ENGL 6480/7480, Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
Poets of the 1960s
Robert Penn Warren (1905-1989)
ENGL 6480/7480, Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
Poets of the 1960s
Richard Wilbur (1921- )
ENGL 6480/7480, Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
Poets of the 1960s
William Carlos Williams (1883-1963)
Pulitzer Prize Winner: 1963 Pictures from
Brueghel (New Directions)
ENGL 6480/7480, Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
Poets of the 1960s
William Carlos Williams, “This is Just to Say”
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
Saving
for breakfast
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
William Carlos Williams, “The Red Wheelbarrow”
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
Barrow
glazed with rain
Water
beside the white
chickens.
James Wright (1927-1980)
ENGL 6480/7480, Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
Poets of the 1960s
ENGL 6480/7480 | Studies in
Contemporary Literature: Mad Men
and the Sixties
Dr. David Lavery
Summer 2015
Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath
(1932-1963)
ENGL 6480/7480 | Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
Sylvia Plath
ENGL 6480/7480 | Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
Sylvia Plath
ENGL 6480/7480 | Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
David Levine’s Sylvia Plath
ENGL 6480/7480 | Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
ENGL 6480/7480 | Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
Sylvia Plath
Ted Hughes (1930-1998)
ENGL 6480/7480 | Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
Sylvia Plath
At the house where Sylvia Plath committed suicide.
ENGL 6480/7480 | Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
The Bell Jar
(Larry
Peerce, 1979)
(1963)
ENGL 6480/7480 | Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
Sylvia Plath
Sylvia (Christine
Jeffs, 2003)
Sylvia Plath
ENGL 6480/7480 | Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
In the film, Sylvia Plath is, inexplicably,
married to Bond, James Bond.
Ted Hughes
Sylvia Plath
ENGL 6480/7480 | Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
Cut
What a thrill My thumb instead of an onion.
The top quite gone
Except for a sort of hinge
Of skin,
A flap like a hat,
Dead white.
Then that red plush.
Little pilgrim,
The Indian's axed your scalp.
Your turkey wattle
Carpet rolls
ENGL 6480/7480 | Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
Sylvia Plath
Cut
Straight from the heart.
I step on it,
Clutching my bottle
Of pink fizz. A celebration, this is.
Out of a gap
A million soldiers run,
Redcoats, every one.
Whose side are they on?
O my
Homunculus, I am ill.
I have taken a pill to kill
The thin
Papery feeling.
Saboteur,
Kamikaze man -
ENGL 6480/7480 | Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
Sylvia Plath
Cut
The stain on your
Gauze Ku Klux Klan
Babushka
Darkens and tarnishes and when
The balled
Pulp of your heart
Confronts its small
Mill of silence
How you jump Trepanned veteran,
Dirty girl,
Thumb stump.
ENGL 6480/7480 | Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
Sylvia Plath
Daddy
You do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot
For thirty years, poor and white,
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.
Daddy, I have had to kill you.
You died before I had time-Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,
Ghastly statue with one gray toe
Big as a Frisco seal
And a head in the freakish Atlantic
Where it pours bean green over blue
In the waters off beautiful Nauset.
I used to pray to recover you.
Ach, du.
ENGL 6480/7480 | Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
Sylvia Plath
Daddy
You do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot
For thirty years, poor and white,
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.
Daddy, I have had to kill you.
You died before I had time-Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,
Ghastly statue with one gray toe
Big as a Frisco seal
And a head in the freakish Atlantic
Where it pours bean green over blue
In the waters off beautiful Nauset.
I used to pray to recover you.
Ach, du.
ENGL 6480/7480 | Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
Sylvia Plath
Daddy
You do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot
For thirty years, poor and white,
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.
Daddy, I have had to kill you.
You died before I had time-Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,
Ghastly statue with one gray toe
Big as a Frisco seal
And a head in the freakish Atlantic
Where it pours bean green over blue
In the waters off beautiful Nauset.
I used to pray to recover you.
Ach, du.
ENGL 6480/7480 | Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
Sylvia Plath
Daddy
You do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot
For thirty years, poor and white,
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.
Daddy, I have had to kill you.
You died before I had time-Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,
Ghastly statue with one gray toe
Big as a Frisco seal
And a head in the freakish Atlantic
Where it pours bean green over blue
In the waters off beautiful Nauset.
I used to pray to recover you.
Ach, du.
ENGL 6480/7480 | Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
Sylvia Plath
Daddy (continued)
In the German tongue, in the Polish town
Scraped flat by the roller
Of wars, wars, wars.
But the name of the town is common.
My Polack friend
Says there are a dozen or two.
So I never could tell where you
Put your foot, your root,
I never could talk to you.
The tongue stuck in my jaw.
It stuck in a barb wire snare.
Ich, ich, ich, ich,
I could hardly speak.
I thought every German was you.
And the language obscene
ENGL 6480/7480 | Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
Sylvia Plath
Daddy (continued)
An engine, an engine
Chuffing me off like a Jew.
A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.
I began to talk like a Jew.
I think I may well be a Jew.
The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna
Are not very pure or true.
With my gipsy ancestress and my weird luck
And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack
I may be a bit of a Jew.
I have always been scared of you,
With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.
And your neat mustache
And your Aryan eye, bright blue.
Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You--
ENGL 6480/7480 | Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
Sylvia Plath
Daddy (continued)
Not God but a swastika
So black no sky could squeak through.
Every woman adores a Fascist,
The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart of a brute like you.
You stand at the blackboard, daddy,
In the picture I have of you,
A cleft in your chin instead of your foot
But no less a devil for that, no not
Any less the black man who
Bit my pretty red heart in two.
I was ten when they buried you.
At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do.
ENGL 6480/7480 | Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
Sylvia Plath
Daddy (continued)
But they pulled me out of the sack,
And they stuck me together with glue.
And then I knew what to do.
I made a model of you,
A man in black with a Meinkampf look
And a love of the rack and the screw.
And I said I do, I do.
So daddy, I'm finally through.
The black telephone's off at the root,
The voices just can't worm through.
If I've killed one man, I've killed two-The vampire who said he was you
And drank my blood for a year,
Seven years, if you want to know.
Daddy, you can lie back now.
ENGL 6480/7480 | Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
Sylvia Plath
Daddy (continued)
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.
12 October 1962
ENGL 6480/7480 | Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
Sylvia Plath
Lady Lazarus
I have done it again.
One year in every ten
I manage it-A sort of walking miracle, my skin
Bright as a Nazi lampshade,
My right foot
A paperweight,
My face a featureless, fine
Jew linen.
Peel off the napkin
O my enemy.
Do I terrify?--
ENGL 6480/7480 | Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
Sylvia Plath
Lady Lazarus (continued)
The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?
The sour breath
Will vanish in a day.
Soon, soon the flesh
The grave cave ate will be
At home on me
And I a smiling woman.
I am only thirty.
And like the cat I have nine times to die.
This is Number Three.
What a trash
To annihilate each decade.
ENGL 6480/7480 | Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
Sylvia Plath
Lady Lazarus (continued)
What a million filaments.
The peanut-crunching crowd
Shoves in to see
Them unwrap me hand and foot-The big strip tease.
Gentlemen, ladies
These are my hands
My knees.
I may be skin and bone,
Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.
The first time it happened I was ten.
It was an accident.
ENGL 6480/7480 | Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
Sylvia Plath
Lady Lazarus (continued)
The second time I meant
To last it out and not come back at all.
I rocked shut
As a seashell.
They had to call and call
And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.
Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.
I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I've a call.
ENGL 6480/7480 | Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
Sylvia Plath
Lady Lazarus (continued)
It's easy enough to do it in a cell.
It's easy enough to do it and stay put.
It's the theatrical
Comeback in broad day
To the same place, the same face, the same brute
Amused shout:
'A miracle!'
That knocks me out.
There is a charge
For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge
For the hearing of my heart-It really goes.
ENGL 6480/7480 | Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
Sylvia Plath
Lady Lazarus (continued)
And there is a charge, a very large charge
For a word or a touch
Or a bit of blood
Or a piece of my hair or my clothes.
So, so, Herr Doktor.
So, Herr Enemy.
I am your opus,
I am your valuable,
The pure gold baby
That melts to a shriek.
I turn and burn.
Do not think I underestimate your great concern.
ENGL 6480/7480 | Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
Sylvia Plath
Lady Lazarus (continued)
Ash, ash-You poke and stir.
Flesh, bone, there is nothing there-A cake of soap,
A wedding ring,
A gold filling.
Herr God, Herr Lucifer
Beware
Beware.
Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.
23-29 October 1962
ENGL 6480/7480 | Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
Sylvia Plath
Morning Song
Love set you going like a fat gold watch.
The midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bald cry
Took its place among the elements.
Our voices echo, magnifying your arrival. New statue.
In a drafty museum, your nakedness
Shadows our safety. We stand round blankly as walls.
I'm no more your mother
Than the cloud that distills a mirror to reflect its own slow
Effacement at the wind's hand.
All night your moth-breath
Flickers among the flat pink roses. I wake to listen:
A far sea moves in my ear.
ENGL 6480/7480 | Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
Sylvia Plath
Morning Song (continued)
One cry, and I stumble from bed, cow-heavy and floral
In my Victorian nightgown.
Your mouth opens clean as a cat's. The window square
Whitens and swallows its dull stars. And now you try
Your handful of notes;
The clear vowels rise like balloons.
ENGL 6480/7480 | Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
Sylvia Plath
Ariel
Stasis in darkness.
Then the substanceless blue
Pour of tor and distances.
God's lioness,
How one we grow,
Pivot of heels and knees! -- The furrow
Splits and passes, sister to
The brown arc
Of the neck I cannot catch,
Nigger-eye
Berries cast dark
Hooks ----
ENGL 6480/7480 | Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
Sylvia Plath
Ariel (continued)
Black sweet blood mouthfuls,
Shadows.
Something else
Hauls me through air ---Thighs, hair;
Flakes from my heels.
White
Godiva, I unpeel ---Dead hands, dead stringencies.
And now I
Foam to wheat, a glitter of seas.
The child's cry
ENGL 6480/7480 | Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
Sylvia Plath
Ariel (continued)
Melts in the wall.
And I
Am the arrow,
The dew that flies,
Suicidal, at one with the drive
Into the red
Eye, the cauldron of morning.
ENGL 6480/7480 | Studies in Contemporary Literature: Mad Men and the Sixties
Sylvia Plath