i am the arrow.

While John has been watching Godzilla 2000, I've been reading the new edition of Ariel by Sylvia Plath. Here are some wonderful lines from the foreward, which was written by Frieda Hughes (daughter of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes).

"I think my mother was extraordinary in her work, and valiant in her efforts to fight the depression that dogged her throughout her life. She used every emotional experience as if it were a scrap of material that could be pieced together to make a wonderful dress; she wasted nothing of what she felt, and when in control of those tumultuous feelings she was able to focus and direct her incredible poetic energy to great effect. And here was Ariel, her extraordinary achievement, poised as she was between her volatile emotional state and the edge of the precipice. The art was not to fall."

Regardless of whether or not her defense of Ted Hughes is deserved (a subject I will not even pretend to be smart or educated enough to comment on), the whole foreward seems to come from this strange place--in between art and reality, legend and consequences, molded by images pasted together from half-memories and childhood stories and an inevitable (perhaps even inborn) yet obviously well-studied appreciation of the art--that fascinates me.

I'm soon to be on the hunt for an essay I wrote the semester I studied Plath... I feel the need to be reminded.