(I always get creeped out by old head shots of people. The way the people in those photo seemed really give me chills. This is already a less creepy one I found of Sylvia Plath. I apologize in advance if you have the same problem with old head shots.)
I came across Sylvia Plath's Mad Girl's Love Song recently, and I really like it. Here it goes.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan's men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
I fancied you'd return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan's men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
I fancied you'd return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
Reading this poem was as if an insight into how the actual 'I'm madly in love with (insert a guy here)' feels like. Reading the poem, I felt sucked in into the speaker's snippets of dreams. I was brought into her imaginations of being madly in love with her man under the night sky, kissing madly, and feeling as if the world is theirs and that they are invincible and infinite. Indeed, this is a love song, and even so, a mad girl's love song by a girl fallen madly in a love that isn't mutual. Perhaps it really is so magical when one finds THE person. Perhaps it really feels so extraordinary when one is in love. I don't know yet how love feels, and I cannot judge.
The line "(I think I made you up inside my head.)" also made me think. I remember watching an interview with Edward Norton for "The Painted Veil", and he said that when people fall in love with people, they fall in love with what they want them to be, or what they thought they are. This is really true, and I think this idea is kind of expressed in the line. Another thought about this line is, I was thinking, perhaps when one first falls in love with a person, one would see all the beauty and perfections of that person, and would start to wonder if such perfection can really exist in a person, or doubt if one had made it all up in one's head. Am I right?
I've studied Sylvia Plath's poems at school, and I didn't really like them. I thought they were all so depressing and dark (I was half weirded out and half confused when I read Poppies in July), and I didn't get them or know what to do about them. I am lucky enough to not have felt such tragic feelings to be able to relate to Plath's troubles. But this poem is different. Sylvia Plath wrote this poem when she was twenty one and I guess that is the reason why I relate to it more: because, perhaps I am still just a teenager, and I get this, or I am still waiting on the day when I will get this poem. I think many girls will connect with this poem, because feelings like this can really hit us, right?
Disclaimer: Hope you guys liked my sort-of-romantic side and my crappy thoughts on the poem. I am still trying this analyzing-poems-alone-and-in-structured-thoughts-and-sentences-thingy out. Please let me know if I did really bad, I'll stop. Promise.
