On October 21, 1962, Sylvia wrote her therapist-turned-confidante Ruth Beuscher a long letter in which, describing her writing, she said, “I have become a verb instead of an adjective.” About three months later, in a letter to her close friend Marcia Brown Stern, she took this a step further: “I feel like a very efficient tool or weapon,” she wrote.
"My first book, The Colossus, I can't read any of the poems aloud now. I didn't write them to be read aloud. They, in fact, quite privately, bore me. These ones that I have just read, the ones that are very recent, I've got to say them, I speak them to myself, and I think that this in my own writing development is quite a new thing with me, and whatever lucidity they may have comes from the fact that I say them to myself, I say them aloud."
It was a pleasure to read this. Really look forward to your book.
"My first book, The Colossus, I can't read any of the poems aloud now. I didn't write them to be read aloud. They, in fact, quite privately, bore me. These ones that I have just read, the ones that are very recent, I've got to say them, I speak them to myself, and I think that this in my own writing development is quite a new thing with me, and whatever lucidity they may have comes from the fact that I say them to myself, I say them aloud."
~ Peter Orr Interview
Scary to feel you are being moved by another force even if it's poetry. Also exciting to be so immersed in such richness. Hold on tight!