My Paper, My Words is a collection of essays, stories, and poems that reflect the challenges of a middle-class husband and father trying to navigate a rapidly changing political, religious, and technological landscape of post-911 America.
For me, the biggest perk of retirement by far is time. Time to spend as you see fit, doling it out for reading, learning, creating, or just being available to my kids.
Lately, I’ve been reading essays and biographical pieces about Sylvia Plath, the brilliant and emotionally troubled American poet and author who took her own life in February of 1963.
Plath’s confessional poetry and prose unpacked gender constraints, patriarchy, and mental health with a raw and emotional acuity that made her a feminist icon. Her passionate and tumultuous marriage and very public divorce from poet Ted Hughes was emotionally distressful and humiliating, but also a catalyst for the most creative period of Plath’s career as a writer.
I haven’t read Plath’s most seminal works, “The Bell Jar” and “Ariel”, but with retirement, I have the opportunity to do so.
I wrote the following poem about Sylvia Plath and used the AI music engine Suno to put my words to song. Here is the link to the song, Trapped Inside the Bell Jar.
Trapped Inside the Bell Jar
Sylvie and Ted lie in a bed of false hope and betrayal in poems and prose where no one knows veracity from portrayal
A suffocating madness let’s the dullness settle in a manic wit, the perfect fit of grit inside her grin
Trapped inside the Bell Jar skinned knees pulled to her chest Cracked, she cried and fell far too far to be addressed
Her pain becomes obsession A catalyst of sorts Words explode in expressions of poisonous retorts
She digs her knife into the headboard etching hearts into the wood shavings fall like paper dolls of misspent womanhood
Trapped inside the Bell Jar skinned knees pulled to her chest Cracked, she cried and fell far Too far to be addressed
With tape and wet tea towels sealing windows and locked doors the sad girl that things happen to dies on the kitchen floor
“Please call Doctor Horder “ Her note said nothing more Nick and Frieda safe and sound Behind their bedroom door
Trapped inside the Bell Jar skinned knees pulled to her chest Cracked, she cried and fell far Too far to be addressed
My Paper, My Words is a collection of essays, stories, and poems that reflect the challenges of a middle-class husband and father trying to navigate a rapidly changing political, religious, and technological landscape of post-911 America.
bendingtheneedle 