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                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, February 8, 1993                   TAG: 9302060237
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: NEW YORK                                LENGTH: Medium

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SOME OF THE BEST FROM SYLVIA PLATH

Here are excerpts from the poems of Sylvia Plath, who died at age 30 on Feb. 11, 1963:

"Little or nothing.

So many of us!

So many of us!

We are shelves, we are

Tables, we are meek,

We are edible

Nudgers and shovers

In spite of ourselves.

Our kind multiplies:

We shall by morning

Inherit the earth.

Our foot's in the door."

- from "Mushrooms."

"Herr God, Herr Lucifer

Beware.

Beware.

Out of the ash

I rise with my red hair

And I eat men like air."

- from "Lazarus."

"Its crystals a little poultice.

O kindness, kindness

Sweetly picking up pieces!

My Japanese silks, desperate butterflies,

May be pinned any minute, anesthetized.

And here you come, with a cup of tea

Wreathed in steam.

The blood jet is poetry,

There is no stopping it.

You hand me two children, two roses."

- from "Kindness."

"You do not do, you do not do

Any more, black shoe

In which I lived like a foot

For thirty years, poor and white,

Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.

Daddy, I have had to kill you.

You died before I had time -

Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,

Ghastly statue with one gray toe

Big as a Frisco seal

And a head in the freakish Atlantic

Where it pours bean green and blue

In the waters off beautiful Nauset.

I used to pray to recover you.

Ach du."

- from "Daddy."

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