My Favorite Poem

Whenever anyone asks for my favorite poem or poet I always struggled to pick just one poem or poet. If I had to pick out a handful of my favorite poets or poetry though, I think that Sylvia Plath and her poetry would definitely be on that list. The vivid imagery, complexity, and generally disturbing vibe of some of her poems have always fascinated me. I was first introduced to Plath last year, in Mitchell's Coming of Age Novel Class where I read The Bell Jar, which was an amazing novel. But I think my favorite Plath poems would have to be "Nick and the Candlestick". Seriously, if you haven't read it yet you should. Here's the link: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49006/nick-and-the-candlestick. But honestly, this is one of those poems that I think sounds better when read aloud. I remember watching this video in a previous English class where a man read aloud his favorite poem (which was "Nick and the Candlestick") and explained why he liked it. And I don't know, but something about the way he read the poem just elevated it to the next level for me. I've tracked down the link if you want to watch the video: https://youtu.be/uKCVsUIWLrQ . Here's also a video of Slyvia Plath reading her poem aloud too: https://youtu.be/yHJsJBm413U .

So the man from the video described "Nick and the Candlestick" as crazy and I would 100% agree with his description. I'll confess that this poem confuses me and I don't fully know what the poem is about (if anyone has any interpretations of the poem feel free to comment them!) but the raw, almost brutal, emotion in the poem really gripped me. "Nick and the Candlestick" has some of my favorite lines in poetry, so this blog post is mostly going to focus on individual lines or stanzas that I felt were powerful. Because so much of Plath's work is confessional and based on her life, I think it's important to consider what was going on in Plath's life when she wrote this poem. Plath actually has a son named Nicholas so it's highly likely that this poem is addressed to him. This poem was written shortly after Plath separated from her husband, Ted Hughes. At the time, she lived alone with her two children a house that Hughes originally bought.

Honestly, if you want a deeper understanding of this poem I would read this essay on poetry foundation: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/143643/sylvia-plath-nick-and-the-candlestick.

Here are some of my favorite stanzas in Plath's poem:

"A vice of knives,

A piranha

Religion, drinking

Its first communion out of my live toes.

The candle

Gulps and recovers its small altitude"

These stanzas emphasize one of my favorite features of this poem -- its fluidity. The poem transactions from one brutal image to another, which gives the entire poem a chaotic feeling. Yet at the same time, the transitions feel natural and kind of make sense. For me, I just felt like the image of "a piranha religion" was powerfully horrifying. Some aspects of these lines were fascinatingly paradoxical to me. Normally, I would think of religion or communion to be uplifting things but in "Nick and the Candlestick" creates this almost-parallel world that subverts that expectation. Here communion becomes this nightmare-ish act. The poetry article I read also mentioned how these lines symbolized both life and death. The article mentioned how these lines could be referring both to the way nutrients are passed from the mother to an embryo and to the martyrdom of Christ. 

If I'm going to write about this poem, I have to talk about the ending. The ending is such a gut punch for me. I just absolutely love it.

"You are the one

Solid the spaces lean on, envious.

You are the baby in the barn."

Again, I mostly love this stanza because of how paradoxical it is. Take the phrase "the one solid the spaces lean on". On one hand, this line conveys a feeling of strength and reliability. According to this line, the baby is literally the only solid thing who is supporting the "spaces". One the other hand, this line conveys a feeling of vulnerability. If the baby is the only solid the spaces are lean on, then that situation must be pretty precarious. And of course, all of this is being addressed toward a baby which adds another layer of complexity to the lines. I wonder what makes this baby so important to the extent that it is the only "solid" and the spaces lean on him. And then there's the last line. Honestly, I don't know what to make of the allusion to Christ's birth. I don't know, this last line felt like a satisfying ending for me but I can't quite make sense of it. 

If you've read "Nick and the Candlestick" and have a favorite line or stanza, feel free to mention them in the comments!