Sylvia Plath Found Poem in The Worcester Review

Delighted to share that I have a Sylvia Plath found poem in Volume 45, Numbers 1 & 2 of The Worcester Review, which became available for purchase this past December. "There, There" was written using a paragraph from The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath.

I think this is one of the oddest found poems I've ever written since the poem is essentially a lament about the harsh reality of aging out of being able to have children, which is not at all a usual part of my poetic repertoire. I'm very familiar with writing laments in general—I think a lot of my poems can accurately be labeled laments—but this particular topic isn't something I really write about because being childfree isn't a difficult topic for me in anyway. The existence of this poem lends the topic more gravity than it really deserves honestly.

I think writers surprise themselves all the time through the process of writing; most writers have looked at a completed poem or story or essay and marveled a bit at being responsible for its existence. I think that's a common experience. I've been writing poems for more than half my life and I'm still perpetually surprised by my own work. "There, There" almost shocked me though since it just isn't about a topic I typically explore in my work; the topic isn't something I regularly fixate on unlike bipolar depression or mania. For whatever mysterious reason, "There, There" just happened to be the poem I found in the paragraph I used to write it.

Again, Volume 45, Numbers 1 & 2 of The Worcester Review is now available to purchase!

Here is the paragraph I used from The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath to write the poem with the words I selected in red:

There comes a time when all your outlets are blocked, as with wax. You sit in your room, feeling the prickling ache in your body which constricts your throat, tightens dangerously in little tear pockets behind your eyes. One word, one gesture, and all that is pent up in you - festered resentments, gangrenous jealousies, superfluous desires - unfulfilled - all that will burst out of you in angry impotent tears - in embarrassed sobbing and blubbering to no one in particular. No arms will enfold you, no voice will say, "There, There. Sleep and forget." No, in your new and horrible independence you feel the dangerous premonitory ache, arising from little sleep and taut strung nerves, and a feeling that the cards have been stacked high against you this once, and that they are still being heaped up. An outlet you need, and they are sealed. You live night and day in the dark cramped prison you have made for yourself. And so on this day, you feel you will burst, break, if you cannot let the great reservoir seething in you loose, surging through some leak in the dike. So you go downstairs and sit at the piano. All the children are out; the house is quiet. A sounding of sharp chords on the keyboard, and you begin to feel the relief of loosing some of the great weight on your shoulders.