Welcome to Strip Coverlet, where we squeeze the bigger picture of literature. I'm Adrian Fort, and we're here for another poetry discussion, as this is National Poetry Month. We are having 30 poetry discussions in 30 days on this channel. Do with that what you will. Sundays with Sylvia Plath, Mondays with William Blake, Tuesdays with Edgar Allan Poe, Willie Wednesday, William Shakespeare on Wednesday, Thursdays with Emily Dickinson, Fridays with Robert Frost, and Saturdays with...
Charles Bukowski. Being as it is Sunday, we have a Sylvia Plath poem here. It is The Moon and the Yew Tree.
Before we get into that, guys, literature is all I talk about on this channel. Poetry, short stories, novel read-alongs, things like that, literary ideas. So if you like that sort of thing, if you find yourself here by chance but not designed, consider hitting that subscribe button. And if you want to help me out with what I'm doing here, if you hit the like button, it's It tells YouTube to share this video with other poetry lovers.
Now, The Moon and the Yew Tree. It reads as such. This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary.
The trees of the mind are black. The light is blue. The grasses unload their griefs at my feet as if I were God. Prickling my ankles and murmuring of their humility, Fumy, spiritus, mists inhabit this place, Separated from my house by a row of headstones. I simply cannot see where there is to get to.
The moon is no door. It is a face in its own right, White as a knuckle and terribly upset. It drags the sea after it like a dark crime. It is quiet, with the oh gape of complete despair. I live here.
Twice on Sunday, the bells startle the sky, eight great tongues affirming the resurrection. At the end, they soberly bong out their names. The yew tree points up. It has a gothic shape.
The eyes lift after it and find the moon. The moon? is my mother she is not sweet like mary her blue garments unloose small bats and owls how i would like to believe in tenderness the face of the effigy gentled by candles bending on me in particular its mild eyes i have fallen a long way clouds are flowering blue and mystical over the face of the stars Inside the church the saints will all, will be all blue, floating on their delicate feet over cold pews, their hands and faces stiff with holiness. The moon sees nothing of this.
She is bald and wild, and the message of the yew tree is blackness, blackness and silence. So, the main thing I want to talk about with this comes down to the first line and the last line here. Many of the interpretations that you see involving this poem, or that I've seen involving this poem, point to darkness as lifelessness. Lifelessness.
I don't think that's the case. So these first two lines here, the tree is the light of the mind, cold and planetary. Or this is the light of the mind, cold and planetary.
The trees of the mind are black. The light is blue. Then we get down here, and the message of the yew tree is blackness, blackness and silence.
I think, contrary to the sort of theory that the blackness is lifelessness, I think that it is pointing to something that is full of life, we just don't know where. Does that make sense? If you go into the woods at night, we are not very well adapted.
to see in the dark, most of nature is. Birds and cats, all sorts of animals can see pretty well in the dark. We cannot.
Those trees, though they are dark, they are full of life. We just don't know where. So I go on a lot of morning walks, walks at four or five in the morning. You can hear stuff rattling around, shaking around, buzzing around.
You can hear stuff moving. And it sees you, but you don't see it. And that is where I think this blackness is. The trees of the mind are black. If the trees of the mind are black, there's stuff moving in there.
And it sees you, but you don't see it. And when we sort of look through the rest of this poem, the moon is no door, separated from my house by a row of headstones. Nonetheless, unload their griefs at my feet as if I were God. All of these things...
point to an alienation. And we get this a lot in Sylvia Plath. So Sylvia Plath is a poet with whom I struggle greatly. A lot of Sylvia Plath's poetry, the first read or two to me, is just words on a page. Like, not even interesting.
It's like a brick of words. and none of them follow the other. So for me, Sylvia Plath is very difficult.
Plath's writing is nearly impenetrable for me. I have to really work at it to get any type of progress, to feel any type of progress on it. And hey, tell me I'm wrong. Tell me I haven't made progress on this, by all means. But...
I think that when we are looking at this alienation in the poem, from everywhere, cold and planetary, do either of those things seem warm and fuzzy? Obviously, cold does not. Uh-oh, did I mess something up? Anyway, it doesn't matter.
So, all of this alienation through this poem... leads to the message of the uterus blackness, blackness and silence. So when we talk about walking through the woods in the dark, and all that stuff sees you, but you don't see it, if you know it's there, and it knows you're there, Silence from the other side means that it is scared of you.
So if the message of the U-tree, the trees of the mind are black, the message of the U-tree, the U-tree of the mind is blackness and silence. Not only is there life in those dark trees. Not only is there life there that you don't see and that it sees you, but it has its feelings about you too, doesn't it? So I think what is being, I think at least one way to read this poem here is to say that the darkness, the blackness and silence from the trees of the mind. are all the inhabitants of the mind staring at the individual kind of being scared right so if that you make a bunch of noise around birds start clapping your hand they're either going to fly away or they're going to bunker down they're not going to not going to chirp at you they're not going to chirp at you unless they know right now it's time to go because the way of nature is that it would rather just be passed over.
It would rather not have to fight. So if the blackness and darkness of the mind are so intimidated by the individual that they inhabit, that they are silent in their darkness, What does that say about the individual who's carrying these things? And indeed, with Sylvia Plath, as with many artists, we saw that type of ending.
That is what I have for the moon and the yew tree. If you like this sort of thing, it really does do me a whole lot of good on this channel if you decide to hit that like button. If you find yourself here by chance but not designed, consider hitting the subscribe button to stick around for more.
literature is all I talk about, and we will be back tomorrow with more poetry. I hope to have you back then.