The Bell Jar and Sylvia Plath Poems

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath is written beautifully, the words not overbearing but just enough to give the reader something to sink their teeth into. Ester Greenwood has been called up from Boston to New York city for a month to just enjoy herself, and she is bored. She could do anything, talk to anyone, but she isn't finding the big city all its been cracked up to be. She is staying a women's hotel with other girls who have won a fashion magazine's contest, most of whom are annoying little self absorbed idiots. But some are interesting, including Ester, who is not complaining exactly about being showed with gifts and dragged around the city to parties, but she's getting kind of tired of it. I would to if I were her to be honest, and I can really with her connect with her. I haven't really read that far, but what I have has been very interesting. I think i am really going to like this book.

"April 18" is one of my favorites of Plath's. This poem is about lost yesterdays and tomorrows, and the future that will never happen. The last stanza of this poem really struck me:

"a future was lost yesterday
as easily and irretrievably
as a tennis ball at twilight"

These lines really struck me because they are so true, and they sum of the way we treat most opportunities, especially the day to day ones.

"I Am Vertical" is more of a poem about nature, and the cycle of life than most of her others. Most of her poems are about death and surrendering to the darkness, and this one is a nice refresher. She uses personification very effectively in this poem, helping the reader really understand what she was trying to say. I have noticed that her writing is often witty and deep at the same time, even in this poem which seems to have a lighter tone to it.

English-Speaking Persons Will Find Translations

"English-Speaking Persons Will Find Translations", a poem by Michael S. Glaser, captures the way Americans treat the Holocaust and how ashamed we should be of out own past of genocide. Glaser describes tourists bringing their children up to the ovens at Dachau and posing them for the camera so they can tell everyone about the "amazing" trip they had in Germany, which is wrong on so many levels, its hard to describe. The author also talks about the movie playing in his hotel, one of the cowboy and Indian kind of things, one that shows Americans in a very bad light, but it still seems acceptable. Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Vietnam are also mentioned, proving the point that we have no reason to judge. What happened in Dachau was awful, almost to terrible for words, but what people where doing and the way we see it as a nice day trip is almost as bad, and Glaser makes this point beautifully in this poem.