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I Am Vertical by Sylvia Plath

10/8/2008 4:40:48 AM
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Sylvia Plath Sylvia Plath
(1932 - 1963 / America)
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124 poems of Sylvia Plath

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I Am Vertical
 
  But I would rather be horizontal.
I am not a tree with my root in the soil
Sucking up minerals and motherly love
So that each March I may gleam into leaf,
Nor am I the beauty of a garden bed
Attracting my share of Ahs and spectacularly painted,
Unknowing I must soon unpetal.
Compared with me, a tree is immortal
And a flower-head not tall, but more startling,
And I want the one's longevity and the other's daring.

Tonight, in the infinitesimal light of the stars,
The trees and flowers have been strewing their cool odors.
I walk among them, but none of them are noticing.
Sometimes I think that when I am sleeping
I must most perfectly resemble them--
Thoughts gone dim.
It is more natural to me, lying down.
Then the sky and I are in open conversation,
And I shall be useful when I lie down finally:
The the trees may touch me for once, and the flowers have time for me.

Sylvia Plath


Read poems about / on: tree, flower, sometimes, beauty, sky, light, time, sleep, star

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Comments about this poem (I Am Vertical by Sylvia Plath)  more comments >>
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Julia Lam (8/16/2006 5:32:00 AM)
i agree, it's nice even though the referral to death is present. but the only thing which bothers me is i'm confused about what it is about.
Cathy Jackson (12/14/2004 10:47:00 AM)
I like this poem - it has a sense of calm and beauty that I haven't experienced in many of Sylvia's poems - still the ever present fascination with death 'when I lie down finally...' reminding me that it is Plath I'm reading.

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10/8/2008 4:40:48 AM. You Are Here: I Am Vertical by Sylvia Plath

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