The Best Music to Write By, Part II: Your Favorites Brought Together in a Special Playlist

in Literature, Music | November 19th, 2012

Last Fri­day, we raised the top­ic of writ­ing to music, and we asked all of you out there what music you write to, if you write to music at all. The num­ber and vari­ety of your sug­ges­tions was a lit­tle over­whelm­ing, and very wel­come, and pro­vid­ed a wealth of rec­om­men­da­tions to put togeth­er into a playlist. There was quite a lot of agree­ment among you and a near-con­sen­sus on instru­men­tal music over vocal. But it also came as no sur­prise that Open Cul­ture read­ers’ tastes span a range of gen­res, cul­tures, and peri­ods and that every­one who wrote in seemed to raise the bar a lit­tle high­er for drop-dead gor­geous, med­i­ta­tive com­po­si­tions.

Out of all of your rec­om­men­da­tions, I have made a selec­tion of six­teen artists that I believe is rep­re­sen­ta­tive. (Apolo­gies if your sug­ges­tions didn’t make the cut—there’s bound to be some bias here). What­ev­er your pos­ture and pref­er­ence for vol­ume lev­els, light­ing arrange­ments, or time of day or night, you might try on each of these while you tap away at your lat­est piece of work. Who knows? You could strike a new rhythm, hit an unfa­mil­iar groove and shake out of a too-famil­iar rut, or shift the tem­po just so, change per­spec­tive, tem­per an unruly mood….

Or maybe just find some cool new music to dig while you cook din­ner.

Last week’s post began with Miles Davis’s In a Silent Way, which I believe inspired some jazz lovers to com­ment. Komiska sug­gest­ed the top-notch Mod­ern Jazz Quartet’s ren­di­tion of “Lone­ly Woman” (above).

Bill Evans’ name also came up quite a bit in your sug­ges­tions. Below is his “You Must Believe in Spring.”

Min­i­mal­ist com­pos­er Steve Reich, and oth­er con­tem­po­raries of his like Philip Glass, got many a men­tion. Below is a live per­for­mance of the first two sec­tions of Reich’s Music for 18 Musi­cians.

Ambi­ent syn­the­siz­er music by the likes of the Scot­tish duo Boards of Cana­da, Tan­ger­ine Dream, for­mer Cocteau Twin Robin Guthrie, and Bri­an Eno came up quite a bit as well. Com­menter Emma Gray Munthe men­tioned the work of less famous but very influ­en­tial elec­tron­ic com­pos­er Jean Michel Jarre. Lis­ten to his ground­break­ing album Equinoxe below:

A few of you point­ed out that any kind of music serves to dis­tract from your process. Cheeky Michael West said as much and more how­ev­er with his lacon­ic ref­er­ence to John Cage’s 4’33″, the ulti­mate min­i­mal­ist com­po­si­tion. Below, lis­ten to (or observe, rather) an orches­tral inter­pre­ta­tion of Cage’s con­cept:

(more…)

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The Best Music to Write By: Give Us Your Recommendations

in Books, Literature, Music, Writing | November 16th, 2012

Writ­ing is hard. It’s hard to begin, hard to con­tin­ue, hard to fin­ish. To write suc­cess­ful­ly and con­sis­tent­ly requires an alchem­i­cal com­bi­na­tion of dis­ci­pline and inspi­ra­tion so per­son­al that read­ing advice on the sub­ject amounts to watch­ing some­one else die to learn how it’s done. And while it often feels enlight­en­ing to read about the habits of, say, Stein­beck or Austen, their meth­ods are non-trans­fer­able. You’ve got to find your own way. So it is with writ­ing to music. It’s always there in the back­ground, goad­ing you on qui­et­ly. Not every­one writes to music; not every­one can. But a good many do, includ­ing Wired con­trib­u­tor Steve Sil­ber­man who calls the prac­tice one of many rit­u­als writ­ers use “to evoke that elu­sive flow of inspi­ra­tion.”

Sil­ber­man just wrote a piece for Neu­roTribes in which he sur­veyed ten authors on their favorite music to write by. One of Silberman’s own choic­es, Miles Davis’s In a Silent Way (above), is one I’m steal­ing. With its bril­liant assem­blage of musi­cians and haunt­ing mood­i­ness it sets the per­fect tone for my process. Also, there’s no singing. Like Sil­ber­man, I can’t com­pete with a wise, wit­ty lyri­cist (he men­tions Elvis Costel­lo, I pre­fer Mor­ris­sey). In Sil­ber­man’s piece, John Schwartz, a New York Times reporter, lis­tens to noth­ing. Jane Hirschfield, a chan­cel­lor of the Acad­e­my of Amer­i­can Poets, likes David Byrne, Dylan’s Mod­ern Times, and Gillians Welch’s The Har­row and the Har­vest. Wired con­tribut­ing edi­tor David Wol­man makes a playlist of most­ly indie-pop songs enti­tled “Write the Book!” His main cri­te­ri­on for the songs he choos­es: DO NOT BE BORING! My default writ­ing music is exem­pli­fied by Aus­tralian three-piece instru­men­tal rock band Dirty Three (below).

So now it’s your turn, read­ers. Do you write to music? If so, what is it? What artists/composers/albums help you find your rhythm and why? Can you stand lyrics in the music you write by or no? Leave your selec­tions in the com­ments. On Mon­day, we’ll com­pile them in an arti­cle and leave you with a great Open Cul­ture playlist. Whether you find some­thing you can steal or not, it should be a fun exer­cise.

*See our fol­low-up post with a list of your favorites here

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

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The Ten Best American Essays Since 1950, According to Robert Atwan

in Books, Literature | November 15th, 2012

Robert Atwan’s favorite lit­er­ary genre is the essay. As edi­tor and founder of The Best Amer­i­can Essays series, Atwan has read thou­sands of exam­ples of the remark­ably flex­i­ble form.

“Essays can be lots of things, maybe too many things,” writes Atwan in his fore­ward to the 2012 install­ment in the Best Amer­i­can series, “but at the core of the genre is an unmis­tak­able recep­tiv­i­ty to the ever-shift­ing process­es of our minds and moods. If there is any essen­tial char­ac­ter­is­tic we can attribute to the essay, it may be this: that the truest exam­ples of the form enact that ever-shift­ing process, and in that enact­ment we can find the basis for the essay’s qual­i­fi­ca­tion to be regard­ed seri­ous­ly as imag­i­na­tive lit­er­a­ture and the essay­ist’s claim to be tak­en seri­ous­ly as a cre­ative writer.”

In 2001 Atwan and Joyce Car­ol Oates took on the daunt­ing task of trac­ing that ever-shift­ing process through the pre­vi­ous 100 years for The Best Amer­i­can Essays of the Cen­tu­ry. Recent­ly Atwan returned with a more focused selec­tion for Pub­lish­ers Week­ly: “The Top 10 Essays Since 1950.” To pare it all down to such a small num­ber, Atwan decid­ed to reserve the “New Jour­nal­ism” cat­e­go­ry, with its many mem­o­rable works by Tom Wolfe, Gay Talese, Michael Herr and oth­ers, for some future list. He also made a point of select­ing the best essays, as opposed to exam­ples from the best essay­ists. “A list of the top ten essay­ists since 1950 would fea­ture some dif­fer­ent writ­ers.”

We were inter­est­ed to see that six of the ten best essays are avail­able for free read­ing online. Here is Atwan’s list, along with links to those essays that are on the Web:

  • James Bald­win, “Notes of a Native Son,” 1955 (Read it here.)
  • Nor­man Mail­er, “The White Negro,” 1957 (Read it here.)
  • Susan Son­tag, “Notes on ‘Camp,’ ” 1964 (Read it here.)
  • John McPhee, “The Search for Mar­vin Gar­dens,” 1972 (Read it here with a sub­scrip­tion.)
  • Joan Did­ion, “The White Album,” 1979
  • Annie Dil­lard, “Total Eclipse,” 1982
  • Phillip Lopate, “Against Joie de Vivre,” 1986 (Read it here.)
  • Edward Hoagland, “Heav­en and Nature,” 1988
  • Jo Ann Beard, “The Fourth State of Mat­ter,” 1996 (Read it here.)
  • David Fos­ter Wal­lace, “Con­sid­er the Lob­ster,” 2004 (Read it here in a ver­sion dif­fer­ent from the one pub­lished in his 2005 book of the same name.)

“To my mind,” writes Atwan in his arti­cle, “the best essays are deeply per­son­al (that does­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly mean auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal) and deeply engaged with issues and ideas. And the best essays show that the name of the genre is also a verb, so they demon­strate a mind in process–reflecting, try­ing-out, essay­ing.”

To read more of Atwan’s com­men­tary, see his arti­cle in Pub­lish­ers Week­ly.

The pho­to above of Susan Son­tag was tak­en by Peter Hujar in 1966.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

30 Free Essays & Sto­ries by David Fos­ter Wal­lace on the Web

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Meryl Streep Shrooms Her Way Through Modern Alice in Wonderland

in Literature, Poetry, Television, Theatre, Video - Arts & Culture | November 12th, 2012

Beware the Jub­jub bird…

Beware post-70s the­atri­cal exper­i­men­ta­tion…

Beware a chil­dren’s clas­sic — Alice in Won­der­land, in a mod­ern musi­cal update …

Beware a grown woman cast as a lit­tle girl…

On the oth­er hand, what if we’re talk­ing about Meryl Streep? Specif­i­cal­ly the Deer Hunter / Kramer vs. Kramer-era Streep, star­ring in Alice in Con­cert, play­wright Eliz­a­beth Swa­dos and direc­tor Joe Pap­p’s 1981 adap­ta­tion of Lewis Car­rol­l’s orig­i­nal trip­py tale. If Alice at the Palace, a slight­ly restaged for tele­vi­sion ver­sion, is any evi­dence, Amer­i­ca’s Most Seri­ous Actress had a blast, bound­ing around in bag­gy over­alls, doing every­thing in her con­sid­er­able pow­er to upend the pris­sy pinafore-sport­ing Dis­ney stan­dard. She jigged. She pout­ed. She slew the Jab­ber­wock and almost imme­di­ate­ly regret­ted it.

Not sur­pris­ing­ly, giv­en the con­text, she also got to play stoned. Her spacey mean­der­ings ush­ered in the most fan­tas­ti­cal­ly para­noid inter­pre­ta­tion of the Jab­ber­wocky you’re ever like­ly to hear, cour­tesy of a sup­port­ing ensem­ble that includ­ed Mark Linn-Bak­er and the late Michael Jeter. Sud­den­ly, that which has long proved mad­den­ing starts to make sense.

It’s  a feat all around.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pho­to: The Real Alice in Won­der­land Cir­ca 1862

Alice in Won­der­land: The 1903 Orig­i­nal Film

Lewis Car­rol­l’s Alice in Won­der­land avail­able in our Free Audio Books and Free eBooks col­lec­tions.

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Rare Footage of Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald From the 1920s

in Books, Literature | November 7th, 2012

The writer F. Scott Fitzger­ald and his flam­boy­ant wife Zel­da are often remem­bered as the embod­i­ment of the boom and bust that con­vulsed Amer­i­ca in the peri­od between the two world wars.

Like char­ac­ters in The Great Gats­by, Scott and Zel­da lived lives of wild aban­don in the Roar­ing Twen­ties, rid­ing on top of taxi cabs and splash­ing in the Plaza Hotel foun­tain. Scott was inspired and prod­ded along in his dis­si­pa­tion by the noto­ri­ous­ly eccen­tric Zel­da. As Ring Lard­ner once put it, “Mr. Fitzger­ald is a nov­el­ist and Mrs. Fitzger­ald is a nov­el­ty.”

But by the time the stock mar­ket crashed in 1929, so too had the Fitzger­alds. Scot­t’s drink­ing caught up with him, and Zel­da’s eccen­tric­i­ty evolved into schiz­o­phre­nia. Their sad down­fall is cap­tured in Fitzger­ald’s 1930 sto­ry, “Baby­lon Revis­it­ed.” Zel­da would live the rest of her life in men­tal insti­tu­tions while Scott spent his final years in Hol­ly­wood, strug­gling to pay for her treat­ment and try­ing to recap­ture his lost glo­ry. Their daugh­ter, Scot­tie, was raised by oth­er peo­ple.

In this video we catch a few glimpses of the Fitzger­alds in their hey­day, before the par­ty came to an end. The film clips are fun to watch but the YouTube video on which they are col­lect­ed should per­haps be tak­en with a grain of salt. We’re not sure, for exam­ple, that the clip pur­port­ing to show Zel­da being “very live­ly in a street” is actu­al­ly of her. It appears to show some­one else. And one of the cap­tions claims that Fitzger­ald is pic­tured writ­ing The Great Gats­by, but accord­ing to the Uni­ver­si­ty of South Car­oli­na’s Fitzger­ald Web site, the sen­tence he is writ­ing on paper is: “Every­body has been pre­dict­ing a bad end for the flap­per, but I don’t think there is any­thing to wor­ry about.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

Win­ter Dreams: F. Scott Fitzger­ald’s Life Remem­bered in a Fine Film

F. Scott Fitzger­ald Recites From Shake­speare’s Oth­el­lo and John Mase­field­’s ‘On Grow­ing Old’

Find F. Scott Fitzger­ald’s works in our col­lec­tions of Free eBooks and Free Audio Books

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Download a Free, New Halloween Story by Neil Gaiman (and Help Charities Along the Way)

in Audio Books, Literature | October 29th, 2012

We’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured the free, down­load­able sto­ries and nov­els by author Neil Gaiman avail­able online in video, audio, and text for­mat. This is a won­der­ful thing, to be sure; Gaiman’s a fan­tas­tic writer of dark fan­ta­sy for chil­dren and adults alike, so who bet­ter to inau­gu­rate this year’s Hal­loween cel­e­bra­tions with a new free sto­ry, avail­able for down­load through Audible.com and read by Neil him­self?

Gaiman’s new sto­ry, enti­tled “Click-Clack the Rat­tle­bag,” is creepy, for sure, but that’s all I’m going say about it. You’ll need to down­load it your­self to find out more, and you real­ly should because for every down­load of the sto­ry, Audi­ble has agreed to donate a dol­lar to one of two char­i­ties that Neil has chosen—one for the U.S. and one for the U.K.. Gaiman has more infor­ma­tion on his per­son­al web­site, where he describes his nego­ti­a­tions with Audi­ble in set­ting up the dona­tions and the process of record­ing the sto­ry. He writes:

The sto­ry is unpub­lished (it will be pub­lished in a forth­com­ing anthol­o­gy called Impos­si­ble Mon­sters, edit­ed by Kasey Lans­dale and com­ing out from Sub­ter­ranean Press). It’s fun­ny, a lit­tle bit, and it’s scary, just enough for Hal­lowe’en, I hope.

Gaiman also has a few requests: first, you need to down­load the sto­ry by Hal­loween in order to make the dona­tion; sec­ond, please don’t give the sto­ry away—encourage peo­ple to go down­load it for them­selves; and last­ly, “wait to lis­ten to it until after dark.” Atmos­phere mat­ters.

You do not need an Audi­ble account to down­load the sto­ry, but you do need to give them your email address to prove you’re a human. U.S. read­ers should go to www.audible.com/ScareUs and U.K. read­ers to www.audible.co.uk/ScareUs. (Gaiman pro­vides no instruc­tions for read­ers in oth­er coun­tries; I sup­pose they could go to either site). So don’t wait—help Audi­ble raise mon­ey for some wor­thy edu­ca­tion­al char­i­ties and get in the spir­it with some great new fic­tion from one of the most imag­i­na­tive writ­ers work­ing today. Final­ly, if you’re look­ing for more scary reads this Hal­loween, down­load Gaiman’s “All Hal­low’s Read” book rec­om­men­da­tions in a .pdf.

Note: Do you want to lis­ten to oth­er free audio books by Neil Gaiman? Just head over to Audible.com and reg­is­ter for a 30-day free tri­al. You can down­load any audio­book for free. Then, when the tri­al is over, you can con­tin­ue your Audi­ble sub­scrip­tion, or can­cel it, and still keep the audio book. The choice is entire­ly yours. And, in full dis­clo­sure, let me tell you that we have a nice arrange­ment with Audi­ble. When­ev­er some­one signs up for a free tri­al, it helps sup­port Open Cul­ture.

Final­ly, we also sug­gest that you explore our col­lec­tion of 450 Free Audio Books. It’s loaded with great clas­sics.

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

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The Moth Now Streams its Brilliant & Quietly Addictive Stories on the Web

in Life, Literature, Podcasts | October 27th, 2012

The Moth, a New York City-based sto­ry­telling orga­ni­za­tion, is a rare crea­ture indeed. Found­ed in 1997 by poet and nov­el­ist George Dawes Green, The Moth was orig­i­nal­ly Green’s attempt to re-cre­ate sum­mer nights in his native Geor­gia, when friends would gath­er on the porch and tell each oth­er stories—a south­ern tra­di­tion Green missed in the north, sym­bol­ized by the moths he remem­bered as part of the scene. From its begin­nings in Green’s New York liv­ing room, the orga­ni­za­tion has grown into a mul­ti-media phe­nom­e­non, with live sto­ry­tellers on stage in New York and Los Ange­les, and on tour around the world, a pod­cast, and The Moth Radio Hour, air­ing on over 200 sta­tions nation­wide.

So who tells sto­ries at The Moth? An amaz­ing range of peo­ple, from actors, authors, and musi­cians, to every­day peo­ple with some­thing to say and the courage to say it in front of a crowd. In fact, if you feel like you belong in that last cat­e­go­ry, The Moth invites you to pitch them two min­utes of your sto­ry and sub­mit it for a chance to tell it live. Oh, one oth­er thing: The Moth stip­u­lates that all sto­ries must be true sto­ries and must be your sto­ries, not some­one else’s. How do they know? I sup­pose they’ve just got fine­ly-tuned BS detec­tors after 15 years in the sto­ry­telling busi­ness.

To give you an idea of what a Moth sto­ry is like (I almost wrote “a typ­i­cal Moth sto­ry,” but there is no such thing) have a look at the video above, with Neil Gaiman telling a dri­ly humor­ous sto­ry from his teenage years. Gaiman’s pre­sen­ta­tion is sub­dued, in his under­stat­ed Eng­lish way, and replete with delight­ful digres­sions and asides. An exam­ple of a more impas­sioned, urgent Moth tale comes from come­di­an Antho­ny Grif­fith, who tells the sto­ry of his rise to com­ic fame with his Tonight Show appear­ances while he was also nurs­ing his young daugh­ter who had can­cer.

As I said, there is no “typ­i­cal Moth sto­ry,” and that’s the appeal. Every­one who takes the stage has some­thing to say that no one else could, because it’s theirs alone. Both of the videos above are avail­able on The Moth’s Youtube chan­nel, which fea­tures dozens more live sto­ry­tellers (I’d rec­om­mend Dan Savage’s sto­ry among so many oth­ers).

Oh, but wait, there’s more! (Can you tell I’m excit­ed about this?). The Moth is now stream­ing audio of recent sto­ry­telling events on its web­site, with some avail­able for free down­load. Some here are not-to-be-missed. For instance, you should drop what­ev­er you’re doing (read­ing this sen­tence, I assume) and lis­ten to Damien Echols’ har­row­ing sto­ry of his 18 years on death row as one of the wrong­ly-con­vict­ed, and recent­ly freed, “West Mem­phis Three.” Still here? Fine. Then you must imme­di­ate­ly go away and lis­ten to play­wright A.E. Hotch­n­er tell his sto­ry about watch­ing a bull­fight with his friend Ernest Hem­ing­way. If nei­ther of these appeals, you’re prob­a­bly hope­less, but hey, what can it hurt to scroll through the exten­sive list of sto­ries stream­ing on The Moth web­site and find a few that speak to you? Invari­ably, this will hap­pen: when you start lis­ten­ing to Moth sto­ry­tellers, you’ll find it very hard to stop. It’s a pret­ty great non-prof­it rack­et they’ve got going: bank­ing on the old­est and most durable form of enter­tain­ment and human con­nec­tion.

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

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Hear Sylvia Plath Read Her Poem ‘A Birthday Present’

in Literature, Poetry | October 27th, 2012

Sylvia Plath would have turned 81 years old today. It’s a strange thing to imag­ine. Plath’s rep­u­ta­tion as a poet is so sad­ly bound up with her death by sui­cide at the age of 30, and so many of the lines in her lat­er poet­ry sound like sui­cide notes, that it seems impos­si­ble to pic­ture her mak­ing it to old age. In “Lady Lazarus,” Plath writes: “Dying/Is an art, like every­thing else./I do it excep­tion­al­ly well.”

Plath is remem­bered main­ly for the poems she wrote in the last half year of her life, when she had sep­a­rat­ed from her hus­band, the poet Ted Hugh­es. It was then that Plath found her “real voice,” as Hugh­es put it, in a marathon burst of cre­ativ­i­ty that result­ed in the com­po­si­tion of some 70 poems, over half of which were col­lect­ed in her posthu­mous book, Ariel.

But the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing Plath’s final days–her anger and sense of betray­al over her hus­band’s infi­deli­ty, her deci­sion to kill her­self by turn­ing on the gas and plac­ing her head in an unlight­ed oven while her two young chil­dren slept in anoth­er room–have com­pli­cat­ed her lit­er­ary lega­cy. A mor­bid cult has sur­round­ed Plath, with many of her most fer­vent admir­ers gloss­ing over the poet­’s long strug­gle with men­tal ill­ness to find in her a mar­tyred fem­i­nist saint, a mod­ern Ophe­lia.

“It has fre­quent­ly been asked whether the poet­ry of Plath would have so aroused the atten­tion of the world if Plath had not killed her­self,” writes Janet Mal­colm in The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hugh­es. “I would agree with those who say no. The death-rid­den poems move us and elec­tri­fy us because of our knowl­edge of what hap­pened.” It’s a shame, because Plath’s achieve­ment should be judged on its own mer­its. In 2000, Joyce Car­ol Oates described some of the qual­i­ties she admired in Plath’s writ­ing:

The most mem­o­rable of Sylvia Plath’s incan­ta­to­ry poems, many of them writ­ten dur­ing the final, tur­bu­lent weeks of her life, read as if they’ve been chis­eled, with a fine sur­gi­cal instru­ment, out of Arc­tic ice. Her lan­guage is taught and orig­i­nal; her strat­e­gy elip­ti­cal; such poems as “Les­bos,” “The Munich Man­nequins,” “Par­a­lyt­ic,” “Dad­dy” (Plath’s most noto­ri­ous poem), and “Edge” (Plath’s last poem, writ­ten in Feb­ru­ary, 1963), and the pre­scient “Death & Co.” linger long in the mem­o­ry, with the pow­er of malev­o­lent nurs­ery rhymes. For Plath, “The blood jet is poet­ry,” and read­ers who might know lit­tle of the poet­’s pri­vate life can nonethe­less feel the authen­tic­i­ty of Plath’s recur­ring emo­tions: hurt, bewil­der­ment, rage, sto­ic calm, bit­ter res­ig­na­tion. Like the great­est of her pre­de­ces­sors, Emi­ly Dick­in­son, Plath under­stood that poet­ic truth is best told slant­wise, in as few words as pos­si­ble.

Oates called Plath “our acknowl­edged Queen of Sor­rows, the spokes­woman for our most pri­vate, most help­less night­mares.” The poem above, “A Birth­day Present,” is one of the pri­vate and night­mar­ish poems col­lect­ed in Ariel. Plath wrote it just over half a cen­tu­ry ago as she was con­tem­plat­ing the approach of her 30th birth­day, and some­thing dark­er. The record­ing is from a BBC broad­cast in Decem­ber of 1962, only two months before Plath’s death. (You can read the text as you lis­ten.) In his 1966 fore­ward to the first U.S. edi­tion of Ariel, the poet Robert Low­ell made the fol­low­ing assess­ment of Plath:

Sui­cide, father-hatred, self-loathing–nothing is too much for the macabre gai­ety of her con­trol. Yet it is too much; her art’s immor­tal­i­ty is life’s dis­in­te­gra­tion. The sur­prise, the shim­mer­ing, unwrapped birth­day present, the tran­scen­dence “into the red eye, the caul­dron of morn­ing,” and the lover, who are always wait­ing for her, are Death, her own abrupt and defi­ant death.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dylan Thomas Recites ‘Do Not Go Gen­tle into That Good Night’ and Oth­er Poems

Charles Bukows­ki Reads His Poem “The Secret of My Endurance”

Allen Gins­berg Reads His Famous­ly Cen­sored Beat Poem, Howl

Hear Sylvia Plath Read Fif­teen Poems From Her Final Col­lec­tion, Ariel, in 1962 Record­ing

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