I've been spending time with Sylvia Plath lately. Fairly often I find myself rereading her collection Ariel, usually at moments when I feel as if I'm teetering on the knife-edge of an as yet unwritten poem. When it comes to poetry creation, I frequently have to endure the aura of "about to write." The sensation is not so different from an incipient migraine: something inarticulate is about to require language, yet I do not have a subject, not even a sound. I merely have an almost-imagined pressure, a near-invisible frame, a flickering. This might seem ridiculous, but so do the premonitions of illness seem petty; so do the signs of sudden, mutual, physical desire.

For me, reading Plath can be a way of shifting an embryo poem from its cavern into the articulated air. Between the terrible furor of her imagination and the stiletto precision of her language there remains, always, a palpable, vibrating cord. It is alive; its tremors are frightening. Here, for instance, is a stanza from "The Arrival of the Bee Box":

I lay my ear to furious Latin.

I am not a Caesar.

I have simply ordered a box of maniacs.

They can be sent back.

They can die, I need feed them nothing, I am the owner.

"Furious Latin." "Box of maniacs." "Simply." Here is a poet who comprehends the infinitesimal powers of her grammatical elements. Without using a single unusual verb, she nonetheless composes a stanza that is crammed with frustrated energy. Reading Plath is, if nothing else, a lesson in the subtle ancient art of the modifier.

So this week I copied out Plath poem after Plath poem. I avoided all the famous hysterical ones: "Lady Lazarus," "Daddy," etc.--those pieces in which topic overshadows linguistic substance. I didn't want the tabloid Plath; I wanted the poet. They are, of course, the same woman; but her legend often leads readers to cloak the drama of words with the drama of anecdote . . . as if the words themselves aren't her true sword and blood.