Sylvia Plath: The little known works.

[tyggerjai]

For weasels_of_fire


I am a little.
Teapot.
Short, and stout.

Here is, my handle.
Here is, my spout.

When I get all steamed up,
Then.
I shout.

Tip me over.

Pour me out.


Discuss, with particular attention to the suicidal and sexual subtext of the final two lines.

sol.
.

Comments

Ach du, teapot, ach du (or: Teapot, teapot, you bastard, I'm through).

[weasels-of-fire.livejournal.com]

If I satisfy your perverse Plathian paroxysms now, I demand pork crackling.

*clears throat in pseudo-erudite manner and perches spectacles pensively on bridge of nose*

Ahem. Plath's allusion to the 'steaming up' of the metaphorical, anthropomorphic kettle clearly alludes to -
a) The future oven in which she will place her pseudo-literary head, which indeed 'steams up' a great deal.
b) Her previous allusions to the crematoria of Nazi death camps, which is somewhat of a recurring theme in previous poems such as "Daddy" and "Lazy Lazzarus", which also obviously sinisterly implicates her eventual oven-bound demise.
c) Her sordid passive-aggressive sexual relationship with Ted bloody Hughes, who apparently had a penchant for the time-honoured art of sodomy, which also connotates 'steaming up' imagery of a slightly less highbrow nature.

I will completely deliberately ignore the overtly psychosexual motifs in Plath's 'handle' and 'spout', as I am not inclined to sounding like a Melbourne Uni fembo lesbo who waxes lyrical over Freud's coke habit. I will, however, suggest that perhaps Plath's 'handle' is a metaphor for the perpetually unstable, frequently suicidal state of her unconscious.

The climax, if you will, of Plath's poem, resplendent with the maudlin, morbid overtones of suicidal cock-hungry repression, ultimately epitomizes the abject symbolism of her oven-popping Deutschy demise. 'Tip me over' is an excruciatingly obvious reference to Plath's enduring life-long desire to be forcefully bent over by the rapacious guttural kraut which pervades most of her SS-fetishized poetry. It is juxtaposed eerily, however, with the forlorn suicidal grappling of 'pour me out', which could also be a sly, filthy and something Henry Miller-esque allusion to female ejaculation. It is clear, then, pathologically bored reader, that Plath cunningly and rather irritatingly associates her dark 'teapot' of death with the thrusting joy of being bent over like the Fatherland-loving ho that she was.

Christ, Jai, kill me.

Re: Ach du, teapot, ach du (or: Teapot, teapot, you bastard, I'm through).

[tyggerjai.livejournal.com]

Christ, Jai, kill me.
Death is too
Good for You,
Old scrubber.

So, pork next sunday, then?

sol.
.

Re: Ach du, teapot, ach du (or: Teapot, teapot, you bastard, I'm through).

[weasels-of-fire.livejournal.com]

Excellent. Though I want the crackling to be arranged in the letters S-C-R-U-B-B-E-R, like the frosting on a birthday cake.

Re: Ach du, teapot, ach du (or: Teapot, teapot, you bastard, I'm through).

[tyggerjai.livejournal.com]

Couldn't manage scrubber crackling. 7:15 for 7:30 ok?

sol.
.

Re: Ach du, teapot, ach du (or: Teapot, teapot, you bastard, I'm through).

[weasels-of-fire.livejournal.com]

Oh shit shit shit. My brain's been like absolute jelly all week, and I've completely forgotten about pork, and now I'm on my way to a Eurovision gathering. If I had remembered earlier, I would have emailed you for a raincheck. Shit. I've very sorry. I'm an absolute scrubber.

Re: Ach du, teapot, ach du (or: Teapot, teapot, you bastard, I'm through).

[tyggerjai.livejournal.com]

Scrubber :)
We'll cope. More pork for the rest of us!

sol.
.

Re: Ach du, teapot, ach du (or: Teapot, teapot, you bastard, I'm through).

[weasels-of-fire.livejournal.com]

Allow me to apologize more profusely (without the pork in my belly to make it super-profuse) by sharing this pain with you...

And as an aside, I advise you slap spark_au's arse with a wet towel after he eats your pork as a territorial hierarchical "Just so you know who cooks the pork in this house, bitch!" gesture.