Breakfast of Champions - Modelling Poem #1

“Breakfast of Champions”
Amanda Zalud

You blew it
You bastard
You blew it,
We’re through.
Because you
Were too blind to see
That I was perfect for you
And you for me.

That when we met,
We ceased to exist
independently
And began to exist
symbiotically,
Starting something new.

For better or worse
Through life till the hearse,
That’s how we
Were supposed to be.
You and me
Eternally
Intertwined.

But no.
“I’m sorry,” you said.
“But you just have to go.”
From that point on
No longer to show
Any intimacy
Or affection.

Good guys wear white.
So why did you
Come with the promise of white?
Why did you
Say that all would be right?
Why didn’t you
Come with a disclaimer
That all would go black
And that I couldn’t go back
Once I let you into my life?

I love you.
I cared for you.
I gave you
Everything that was good in me.
So that when you
Left, you
Took me too
And left me
Nothing but
What was terrible
In you.

And now I exist
As a broken thermos might
Whole on the outside,
Shattered on the inside,
And terribly,
Woefully,
Unable to retain warmth
From the inside.

And when I look into the mirror
I see a plaster cast,
Dear,
That I’ve been working on
Just for you
So that maybe you’ll
Love me
Just like you used to do.

Love me, love me, love me.
I can’t make you,
Can I?
You’d tell me if I could,
Wouldn’t you?

And everywhere I go
You’re there too.
In the faces of all the boys
And I
In all the girls.
And I wear headphones to
Ignore life and
Block images of you
As best as I can.

And all the while
My left earbud
snap, crackle, pops
Rice crispies
And tries
To sing once more…
But I twist it.
Snap it.
Kill it.

Because something had to die.
But not you, my dear.
Not I.
We’re too twisted.
Too mangled.
Too broken
Up in each other
To pass without the other.

Pain is only temporary.
Losing a limb
Can’t hurt forever…
So why should losing you?


Discussion:

My poem was modeled after the work of Sylvia Plath. I did not model my poem after a particular work of Plath’s. Rather, I took Plath’s work on the whole and tried to incorporate elements and themes common throughout Plath’s works. I felt that in this way I was able to emulate Plath, but while staying true to my own form; this is something that I feel like Plath was doing with her own work and also something I feel like adds to my model to make it more like Plath.

The rhyme scheme is erratic throughout “Breakfast of Champions.” I could not nail down a rhyme scheme specific to Plath or one that she seemed to favor on the whole, so I tried not to subscribe to a regular rhyme scheme. Instead, I used random end rhymes, near rhymes, assonance, consonance, and repetition scattered throughout the entire piece.

Along those same lines, I tried not to use a constant line length either. In “Lady Lazarus,” for example, Plath’s lines vary greatly from stanza to stanza. Plath does not seem to have a set line length that she favors on the whole. However, I did try to use a fairly similar line length for the poem at large. This is something I noticed she did in poems like “The Arrival of the Bee Box” and “In Plaster.”

A symbolic theme common to Plath that I incorporated is the act of shedding selves. In the poem, the male figure offers the persona a way to drop masks and find a true self. When this does not come to fruition, the persona turns to object symbolism in a mirror. The persona recognizes a mask (the “plaster cast”) when looking into the mirror, but tries to convince herself that by donning this false self she will eventually find happiness. The persona, in essence, builds herself a new mask to replace the one torn away by the male interlocutor.

By building herself a new mask, the persona also touches on Plath’s theme of fragmentation of self and the reunification of self. At the beginning of the poem, we are subject to the persona’s anger and her seemingly erratic outbursts, but by the end the persona has become something new. She is still angry, but she is more of a unified front against the male figure of the poem.

I incorporated both white and black using Plath’s color symbolism. White is used as symbolism for purity, escape, and shedding masks. White symbolism in my poem was what the persona desired and the male interlocutor promised, but, in the end, the male interlocutor could not provide the persona with white. Black is used in my poem is used to describe the male interlocutor, which complies with Plath’s symbolism in that black is a male color. Black also serves to symbolize the void after the promise of white was not fulfilled.

The male figure being larger than life, but also failing to live up to expectations is present in the male interlocutor of the poem. Similar to how Plath used Otto Plath (in “Daddy” in particular), the male figure in “Breakfast of Champions” hurts the persona, but becomes an obsession for the persona. There are echoes of “Daddy” in the very first stanza when the persona declares that the male figure “blew it” and that the persona and the figure are “through.” However, the persona continues to dwell and discusses abuse suffered at the hands of the male in question.

Death and rebirth (a common Plath theme) is also present as a recurrent theme within my poem. On a larger scale, being hurt and rejected by the male interlocutor is a sort of death for the persona, discussed in the metaphor of the broken thermos. Death is also discussed within the context of the broken earbud (“Something had to die”). Rebirth is then introduced at the end of the poem when the persona asks why she should hurt forever over “losing you.” On a smaller scale, death and rebirth is visited in the second and third stanzas. Meeting the male figure caused a death of the persona and the male figure and caused the two to be reborn as one.

Over all, I felt that, while my poem did not conform to an exact poem of Plath’s, there is a lot of Plath present within the poem.

Fin.

Sept 21 - 27: Takin' a tour with the Olds-mobile (LAME PUN... couldn't come up with anything better.)

When I read the Sharon Olds poems this week, I wondered how much of the subject material Olds felt and how much of it was for shock value. I know that I sound like something of a “hater” (as the kids these days say), but the fact of the matter is that I have a hard time thinking of a situation in which I felt the need (for example) to compose a short poem about the Pope’s genitalia. Along those same lines, I have never felt the need to compose anything about my father being naked or any sort of sexual fluid either. I realize that I’m not the yard stick by which the world is measured (thank goodness for the world), but something within me is having a hard time relating to Olds’ poetry.

However, I did really enjoy “Photograph of the Girl” by Olds. Her poem really was the reading equivalent of looking at a photograph: all of the visual details were heart-wrenchingly there in words. While reading the first part of the poem, I felt like I was standing right next to the girl, watching her suffer, but unable to do anything. When the poem shifts to read the “caption” in line 12 I felt like I was reading the caption over the persona’s shoulder and that I should make some sort of follow up comment to the persona. The imagery involved at the end of the poem in lines 14-16 (“Deep in her body/ the ovaries let our her first eggs,/ golden as drops of grain.”) was both beautiful and terribly depressing. Yeah, this girl is reaching an exciting time in her life (starting to grow up), but she’ll never need to. She’s dying. The ironic juxtaposition of life (manifested by the eggs) to the death the reader is told will happen a few lines back just feels wrong. Stylistically, it’s wonderful; in practice, the girl’s imminent death is all different colors of wrong.

The one line in particular in “Photograph of the Girl” that really haunted me after finishing started on line 10: “She cannot be beautiful, but she is/ starving.” Yikes. Olds is shockingly honest and hits adolescence on the nose. I would argue that many adolescent girls at some point in time feel the pressure to be beautiful. However, I would also argue that while adolescence has its own beauty, most adolescents aren’t what it considered traditionally beautiful. Olds flat out says that this girl “cannot be beautiful.” Then, as if to compensate for that fact, the reader is told that the girl is starving. Well, she can’t be beautiful, but whatever, doesn’t really matter, she’s starving. Yikes.

I realize the role of shock and pushing the limits in conventional anything, and I know that it makes me sound completely establishment, but I’m still not the biggest fan of Olds. She’s a gifted poet, but I just can’t get into/relate to all of her subjects in a way that would lead to the enjoyment of her poems.

Fin.