Sylvia Plath's "Wintering"

All of these "bee poems" gave me quite a headache upon first reading. And not just for the in-depth interpretation; the simple surface reading caused confusion, and I found myself re-reading passages again and again to try to understand where Plath's mind was at, or rather where she wanted mine to be at when I read these works.

The second and third readings of the poems made life a little easier. I began to look past the superficial interpretation and metaphors and try to understand more deeply what Plath was actually writing about. In her poem "Wintering", which is about the process of wintering a hive (i.e. making it ready for winter) started to unfold before me as an analogy for her dying marriage and family.

The poem begins with, "This is the easy time, there is nothing doing." This starts off the poem (and from now on, I will be using the metaphor of wintering a hive to actually refer to Plath's marriage/family) with the idea that she has excepted that her marriage is dying, that he has cheated on her, that this is something she needs to put away and forget for a while. It's the "easy time", the time of acceptance. She has gotten what she can out of the marriage and accepts that it will be no more. "The midwife's extractor" to extract "my honey." Those are the good time of her marriage with Hughes, and no she must assign them to the basement, the back of her mind.

"Wintering in a dark without window/At the heart of the house" literally refers to the cellar, but in this interpretation are the dark depths of her memories, her mind. "The last tenant's rancid jam/And the bottles of empty glitters--" could refer to other lost loves, or hopes, or dreams that have wasted away. Although I said this was a poem of acceptance, it is not without her usual currents of depression. Think of acceptance as another way of saying "giving up."

The room she has "never been in", the room she "could never breathe in" indicates her suspicions of her mind. She knows that she has problems, and every once in a while the light from a faint torch may illuminate things, but she would rather put it "out of sight and out of mind." The only time she acknowledges the dark corners of her psyche is through her poetry, which is often difficult to navigate through, and would need much more than a torch to light the way.

The "black asininity" is probably a direct reference to Hughes, and his "asinine" affair which brought her world down around her. "Decay" of the marriage, but "possession" of responsibilities. She knows that even though she wants to just give up and die, "It is they who own me" refers to her children, and she knows that she owes them something. That her husband failed and she must try, even though they are the last thing that she wants to confront.

They are "ignorant" of what is going on around her, to her. The "bees", as in all the bee poems, refer to her children. "This is the time of hanging on for the bees..." At the time this poem was written, shortly after the affair was found out, the children were very young. She likens them to bees, that don't necessarily know their owner or who fees them (and she they- "So slow I hardly know them"), they just "File like soldiers/To the syrup tin." She knows that she is depriving them of motherly affection ("the honey I've taken"), and instead whittles down her responsibilities to her children in this wintering of her life by simply making sure they are fed. "Tate and Lyle keeps them going," which refers to a generic food brand popular at this time. They live on this, instead of their mother's "flowers."

The next stanza was a bit harder to interpret. This could be referring to the idea of "angry bees buzzing in your head" and not allowing you to think. "Mind against all that white." It's as if she's confused, and can't think straight about her future, and instead would like to "blank out" her mind and almost ignore it. (Meissen apparently refers to porcelain, which just emphasizes the purity of the white snow, the appeal of it.)

"On warm days/They can only carry their dead." The dead ideals? When you finally clear out your mind and get rid of the unnecessary? "The bees are all women... They have got rid of the men." She is now essentially swearing off men because of Hughes, which she refers to them all as "blunt, clumsy stumblers, the boors." The women are the intelligent, the strong, the ones who suffer through the wintering and survive. But is it survival? Or is it giving up? Is it the numbness of the hurt which caused you to be "too dumb to think."?

The hive is now the mind, body, and soul... the family. Will it survive? Will she survive this wintering in order to "enter another year?" She's not sure... but "the bees are flying./They taste the spring." In this sense these bees could either be her children, too young to know the ordeals of the past, and able to and willing to face the future, or her thoughts... her thoughts could finally be resurfacing from the cold dark depths and looking towards a new beginning.

Howl

I'm going against the grain and try to decipher what Allen Ginsberg meant by "comic realism" in regards to his piece, "Howl." Nothing about the majority of the poem strikes me as necessarily funny, at least not "ha-ha funny" (there are a few lines).  However, after finding an excerpt online from the 50th anniversary edition of  "Howl" (excerpt here) I had more of an idea of what he was after. Ginsberg states that he changed the first line to read "hysterical" instead of the original "mystical" in order to set the tone of the piece from the beginning. The word hysterical to me conjures up an image of not funny, although it is a relative synonym, but rather, a crazed, f-it, let's enjoy the ride, actual hysteria that these "angel-headed hipsters" were experiencing. By introducing this word in the first line, Ginsberg invites the reader (or listener) to open his or her mind and accept the nonsensical, strangely but brilliantly worded, hyperbolic, oximoronic lines to follow. 

There is a dark humor present in "Howl." These are the "best minds" of Ginsberg's generation, yet they are drug addicted, homosexual (invited or not), hallucinating, starved, and not at all recognized or appreciated by the majority. Every one of them is in an often futile attempt to seek enlightenment, acceptance, love, yet constantly find themselves doing things that are contradictory to that effort. It's a sad "funny" little thing, that these people try so hard to be accepted by the ones they hate (universities, government, etc.), and their gifted minds are wasting away due to drugs, poverty, and starvation. The gritty realism presented in "Howl" emphasizes just how far out of reach these minds really are, yet how in touch Ginsberg, through "Howl", allows us to be with them. I love the quote in the provided excerpt by Gregory Corso that states, "If you have a choice of two things and can't decide, take both." "Howl" is an all-encompassing metaphor for how wonderful and terrible the life of these poets, artists, and the entire beat-generation actually was. They had it all, yet had nothing. They lived life to the fullest, yet lacked. They were a united force, yet suffered from loneliness and exile. They were brilliant, yet mad.


The ironic, and probably the funniest part of "Howl" to me, is that we, along with countless others, are studying and reading and dissecting this poem in an academic setting. The comic realism of the piece transcends the actual text through the obscenity trial that occurred and actually catapulted the popularity of such an under-appreciated section of the population at that time. Even though the stark realistic language of "Howl" represents actual events and persons, it is sometimes difficult to look at it in that light- as an account of true events that led to the creation of an iconic poem, which succeeds in being beautiful through the use of ugly and disturbing language.


To answer the question of how this so-called "humor" adds or detracts to the piece, I have to say it adds to it. Ginsberg is accepting that his generation is messed up, but even being as far in the gutter as they are, they still have something to give, something to add to society. There's an acceptance in the humor, that without it, it would read more as a plea for forgiveness or even a confession; but Ginsberg isn't sorry for his generation or for his involvement in it. This is his way of saying, "Yeah, we f-ed it up, but we learned along the way. And we are all in this together, no matter how alone we feel. We can learn something from this, or we don't. Either way, we can laugh about it later, because that's life."