...we shall board our imagined ship and wildly sail among sacred islands of the mad till death shatters the fabulous stars and makes us real.
Sylvia PlathRead
I saw the gooseflesh on my skin. I did not know what made it. I was not cold. Had a ghost passed over? No, it was the poetry.
Interpretation
The quote expresses an intense emotional reaction to poetry, likening it to a supernatural experience.
Sylvia Plath uses vivid imagery to describe the powerful effect poetry has on her, conveying the idea that it can elicit deep, almost ghostly sensations. The gooseflesh, typically associated with coldness or fear, here arises from the beauty and impact of the poetic experience, illustrating that poetry stirs profound emotions within us.
In practice
This quote can be used in a poetry reading to express the deep feelings poetry can evoke.
...we shall board our imagined ship and wildly sail among sacred islands of the mad till death shatters the fabulous stars and makes us real.
The hardest thing, I think, is to live richly in the present, without letting it be tainted & spoiled out of fear for the future or regret for a badly-managed past.
It is as if my life were magically run by two electric currents: joyous positive and despairing negative--which ever is running at the moment dominates my life, floods it.
You walked in, laughing, tears welling confused, mingling in your throat. How can you be so many women to so many people, oh you strange girl?
I keep wanting to crawl back into the womb.
It's the living, the eating, the sleeping that everyone needs. Ideas don't matter so much after all. My three best friends are Catholic. I can't see their beliefs, but I can see the things they love to do on earth. When you come right down to it, I do believe in the freedom of the individual.
I hear it in the deep heart's core.
Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky
Sitting over words _x000D_ Very late I have heard a kind of whispered sighing _x000D_ Not far _x000D_ Like a night wind in pines or like the sea in the dark _x000D_ The echo of everything that has ever _x000D_ Been spoken _x000D_ Still spinning its one syllable _x000D_ Between the earth and silence.
Or from Browning some "Pomegranate," which if cut deep down the middle Shows a heart within blood-tinctured, of a veined humanity.
n OthI n g can s urPas s the m y SteR y of s tilLnes s
And I will find some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,/ Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings.
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