We are looking at imagination in class this week! K xx

SYLVIA PLATH'S TOOTHBRUSH, 11TH FEBRUARY 1963


Night bleeds away on the frozen razor of a snow-filled dawn.
My bristles stand sentinel like frosted strands.

The bathroom door opens and then is softly closed.
She presses her head lightly against it, and the melancholy
of her breath drifts dry-ice, wrapping me round.
The strength of her cold fist suddenly closes about me.
I am pressed hard against its severed heart line.

In the bedroom, she lifts the lid of an empty valise
and locks me inside. I am plunged into a deeper darkness.
Alone. Suffocating.

Downstairs, so is she: the kitchen door shut, the oven door



wide open.





This poem stems from notes that I have made taken from Sylvia Plath's own comments about her views on poetry and prose. Among other things, she likens the poem to a moment that changes the place of things, like the opening and closing of a door; she says that a poet becomes "an excellent packer of suitcases", containing both beginning and end in one breath. She also likens the poem to a closed fist and the novel to an open hand. And says that she has never put a toothbrush in a poem - and that, if she did, it would probably think itself singled out and rather special! The door closing in a poem does so with more manic and unanswerable finality than that of a novel.

These notes and paraphrased comments are taken from "Strong Words: Modern Poets On Modern Poetry", published by Bloodaxe in 2000.