Post by ♥Mary♥ on Oct 31, 2004 14:41:34 GMT -5
So I just did a google search and found myself feeling slightly validated in my wondering.... or at least slightly like someone at Rolling Stone may agree with me.
We all know Tori has mentioned bee-related things in her lyrics:
Bobby's collecting bees and hammers...
Counting your bees, oh me, honey....
This is where you know the honey from the killer bees
Sweet, sweet, between the boys and the bees....
And I also know I've heard/read her mention that she's read Sylvia Plath, so I've looked upon one of Plath's poems, The Bee Keeper's Daughter, before and wondered if or how much Tori may have been influenced by it in some of her own writing in those previous songs.
The life of bees is fascinating and just the kind of metaphorical meal Tori could sink her teeth into for writing interesting stuff.
And NOW, with an album title that suggests she might just be taking a closer look into the beehive, I'm wondering more than ever if this particular poem may have inspired or influenced her.
Here's a Rolling Stone blurb that briefly mentions it, also questioning the idea.
And here's the actual poem I'm talking about:
(a friend of mine is a beekeeper and likes Plath, too. Her daughter, Zinnia, printed and framed this poem for her Mom and it hangs on a wall in their house.)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Beekeeper's Daughter
-Sylvia Plath
A garden of mouthings. Purple, scarlet-speckled, black
The great corollas dilate, peeling back their silks.
Their musk encroaches, circle after circle,
A well of scents almost too dense to breathe in.
Hieratical in your frock coat, maestro of the bees,
You move among the many-breasted hives,
My heart under your foot, sister of a stone.
Trumpet-throats open to the beaks of birds.
The Golden Rain Tree drips its powders down.
In these little boudoirs streaked with orange and red
The anthers nod their heads, potent as kings
To father dynasties. The air is rich.
Here is a queenship no mother can contest ---
A fruit that's death to taste: dark flesh, dark parings.
In burrows narrow as a finger, solitary bees
Keep house among the grasses. Kneeling down
I set my eyes to a hole-mouth and meet an eye
Round, green, disconsolate as a tear.
Father, bridegroom, in this Easter egg
Under the coronal of sugar roses
The queen bee marries the winter of your year.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hmmmm.
PS- If you don't know much about Plath, her own father, Otto, was a college professor and a noted authority on the subject of.......... bees.
She wrote a few other poems on bees, too... a series, I believe. Most of them were pretty dark, I think.
PPS- I hope this is a 'darker' album! (organs and choirs and such... it sounds like it might be! Yay!)
We all know Tori has mentioned bee-related things in her lyrics:
Bobby's collecting bees and hammers...
Counting your bees, oh me, honey....
This is where you know the honey from the killer bees
Sweet, sweet, between the boys and the bees....
And I also know I've heard/read her mention that she's read Sylvia Plath, so I've looked upon one of Plath's poems, The Bee Keeper's Daughter, before and wondered if or how much Tori may have been influenced by it in some of her own writing in those previous songs.
The life of bees is fascinating and just the kind of metaphorical meal Tori could sink her teeth into for writing interesting stuff.
And NOW, with an album title that suggests she might just be taking a closer look into the beehive, I'm wondering more than ever if this particular poem may have inspired or influenced her.
Here's a Rolling Stone blurb that briefly mentions it, also questioning the idea.
And here's the actual poem I'm talking about:
(a friend of mine is a beekeeper and likes Plath, too. Her daughter, Zinnia, printed and framed this poem for her Mom and it hangs on a wall in their house.)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Beekeeper's Daughter
-Sylvia Plath
A garden of mouthings. Purple, scarlet-speckled, black
The great corollas dilate, peeling back their silks.
Their musk encroaches, circle after circle,
A well of scents almost too dense to breathe in.
Hieratical in your frock coat, maestro of the bees,
You move among the many-breasted hives,
My heart under your foot, sister of a stone.
Trumpet-throats open to the beaks of birds.
The Golden Rain Tree drips its powders down.
In these little boudoirs streaked with orange and red
The anthers nod their heads, potent as kings
To father dynasties. The air is rich.
Here is a queenship no mother can contest ---
A fruit that's death to taste: dark flesh, dark parings.
In burrows narrow as a finger, solitary bees
Keep house among the grasses. Kneeling down
I set my eyes to a hole-mouth and meet an eye
Round, green, disconsolate as a tear.
Father, bridegroom, in this Easter egg
Under the coronal of sugar roses
The queen bee marries the winter of your year.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hmmmm.
PS- If you don't know much about Plath, her own father, Otto, was a college professor and a noted authority on the subject of.......... bees.
She wrote a few other poems on bees, too... a series, I believe. Most of them were pretty dark, I think.
PPS- I hope this is a 'darker' album! (organs and choirs and such... it sounds like it might be! Yay!)
