poetry and psychedelics
You hear a lot about music and psychedelics, but no one ever seems to talk about reading/reciting/listening to poetry while tripping. I think part of this has to do with the fact that poetry is in many ways a less accessible art form. Poetry is often obscure, and a deep feat of concentration is often required to hear the 'meaning' of a poem. Fortunately, psychedelics induce just that state of heigtened concetration/awareness. Or at least that's been my experience.
To everyone reading this, I say you MUST pick up a copy of Sylvia Plath's 'Ariel' and read aloud from it during your next trip (being sober's okay too). Plath's poetry has often been described as hallucinogenic, and oftentimes the sound and rhythm of her works alone is enough to carry one to that state of transcendence that language alone can offer.
In the following work, the speaker's fever is rendered as a purging fire. Though the poem starts out in a nightmarish mode, by the end the speaker has undergone a spiritual transformation into a "pure acetylene virgin." By the way, I thik the "tongeus of hell" in the second line refer to the oppressive heat she feels as a result of her sickness. The "low smokes" that "roll from" her "like Isadora's scarves" is the steam emitted from her own body. As will become clear, the steam is a spirtually cleansing force. (Isadora refers to the American dancer Isadora Duncan).
Fever 103°
Pure? What does it mean?
The tongues of hell
Are dull, dull as the triple
Tongues of dull, fat Cerebus
Who wheezes at the gate. Incapable
Of licking clean
The aguey tendon, the sin, the sin.
The tinder cries.
The indelible smell
Of a snuffed candle!
Love, love, the low smokes roll
From me like Isadora's scarves, I'm in a fright
One scarf will catch and anchor in the wheel.
Such yellow sullen smokes
Make their own element. They will not rise,
But trundle round the globe
Choking the aged and the meek,
The weak
Hothouse baby in its crib,
The ghastly orchid
Hanging its hanging garden in the air,
Devilish leopard!
Radiation turned it white
And killed it in an hour.
Greasing the bodies of adulterers
Like Hiroshima ash and eating in.
The sin. The sin.
Darling, all night
I have been flickering, off, on, off, on.
The sheets grow heavy as a lecher's kiss.
Three days. Three nights.
Lemon water, chicken
Water, water make me retch.
I am too pure for you or anyone.
Your body
Hurts me as the world hurts God. I am a lantern ----
My head a moon
Of Japanese paper, my gold beaten skin
Infinitely delicate and infinitely expensive.
Does not my heat astound you. And my light.
All by myself I am a huge camellia
Glowing and coming and going, flush on flush.
I think I am going up,
I think I may rise ----
The beads of hot metal fly, and I, love, I
Am a pure acetylene
Virgin
Attended by roses,
By kisses, by cherubim,
By whatever these pink things mean.
Not you, nor him.
Not him, nor him
(My selves dissolving, old whore petticoats) ----
To Paradise.
*
