I think I knew I was a writer from about the age of 6, but it wasn’t until I was 13 that I fell in love with Poetry.  I will never forget it.  I had just finished reading “The Bell Jar” and there in the notes, at the end, was a poem by Sylvia Plath called , “Mad Girls Love Song”.  It changed  my life.  It shaped my love of language and taught me the power poetry can have over your heart and mind and all of the senses.  It was magic woven by words and it would determine the kind of writer I would become.

Sylvia Plath can sometimes get a bad wrap these days.  She is often associated with angsty teenagers and the horrible manner of her death, but before all that, there was the poetry.  Brilliant and haunting poetry written with the kind of talent I could only ever dream of.  Sylvia Plath wrote “Mad Girls Love Song” when she was just 19.

Mad Girls Love Song

“I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell’s fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan’s men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you’d return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)”