I’ll need a little more time to collect my thoughts re: Sylvia Plath’s “Poem for a Birthday”. Especially now that I’ve found Dylan Thomas’ birthday/October themed poem and Sylvia’s “A Birthday Present.”
Reading the collection, Plath (Poems), selected by Diane Wood Middlebrook, I have come to realize how many diverse, female artists, including some of my favourite composers, in the latter half of the 20th century.
I am obsessed with finding more songs with the lyrics, “Dear Sir”, included. It has become a personal Easter Egg! 
Here are a couple I have found, followed by “A Birthday Present” (located on “poemhunter” – my fingers are thankful!).
grrr…must rip Cat Power on to this computer to upload her song with that title.
A Birthday Present
What is this, behind this veil, is it ugly, is it beautiful?
It is shimmering, has it breasts, has it edges?
I am sure it is unique, I am sure it is what I want.
When I am quiet at my cooking I feel it looking, I feel it thinking
‘Is this the one I am too appear for,
Is this the elect one, the one with black eye-pits and a scar?
Measuring the flour, cutting off the surplus,
Adhering to rules, to rules, to rules.
Is this the one for the annunciation?
My god, what a laugh!’
But it shimmers, it does not stop, and I think it wants me.
I would not mind if it were bones, or a pearl button.
I do not want much of a present, anyway, this year.
After all I am alive only by accident.
I would have killed myself gladly that time any possible way.
Now there are these veils, shimmering like curtains,
The diaphanous satins of a January window
White as babies’ bedding and glittering with dead breath. O ivory!
It must be a tusk there, a ghost column.
Can you not see I do not mind what it is.
Can you not give it to me?
Do not be ashamed–I do not mind if it is small.
Do not be mean, I am ready for enormity.
Let us sit down to it, one on either side, admiring the gleam,
The glaze, the mirrory variety of it.
Let us eat our last supper at it, like a hospital plate.
I know why you will not give it to me,
You are terrified
The world will go up in a shriek, and your head with it,
Bossed, brazen, an antique shield,
A marvel to your great-grandchildren.
Do not be afraid, it is not so.
I will only take it and go aside quietly.
You will not even hear me opening it, no paper crackle,
No falling ribbons, no scream at the end.
I do not think you credit me with this discretion.
If you only knew how the veils were killing my days.
To you they are only transparencies, clear air.
But my god, the clouds are like cotton.
Armies of them. They are carbon monoxide.
Sweetly, sweetly I breathe in,
Filling my veins with invisibles, with the million
Probable motes that tick the years off my life.
You are silver-suited for the occasion. O adding machine—–
Is it impossible for you to let something go and have it go whole?
Must you stamp each piece purple,
Must you kill what you can?
There is one thing I want today, and only you can give it to me.
It stands at my window, big as the sky.
It breathes from my sheets, the cold dead center
Where split lives congeal and stiffen to history.
Let it not come by the mail, finger by finger.
Let it not come by word of mouth, I should be sixty
By the time the whole of it was delivered, and to numb to use it.
Only let down the veil, the veil, the veil.
If it were death
I would admire the deep gravity of it, its timeless eyes.
I would know you were serious.
There would be a nobility then, there would be a birthday.
And the knife not carve, but enter
Pure and clean as the cry of a baby,
And the universe slide from my side.
Sylvia Plath
How can you read this and not be inspired, after all?
To me, to give a motif, it is that “perfect day” he wanted to give me. So misguided. Perfect does not exist, did you not know?
Hi! This is kind of off topic but I need some advice from an established blog. Is it tough to set up your own blog? I’m not very techincal but I can figure things out pretty quick. I’m thinking about making my own but I’m not sure where to begin. Do you have any ideas or suggestions? Appreciate it
Hey! I'd love to help! It's actually quite simple and fun, the only thing that takes time – well, more patience than time spent working hard – is obtaining an audience. You could be Yeats or friggin' Shakespeare these days, and it would take a good year for your blog to get noticed. This is simply because of the sheer volume of blogs out there, and the number of them that are not worth the little time us humans have to spend reading "stuff on the Internet(s) (thank-you Mr. Bush) hehe these days. BUT, I, and my dad (before retiring) and probably most folk DO spend the first hour or two of the day, or maybe some other period of time based on personal preference, reading blogs incl. REALLY established ones like "The Daily Beast".
I started on wordpress.com with a free blog. I LOVED working with the HTML and CSS syntax (knew nothing of them beforehand, just learned off sites like W3 web schools for free on the net…really easy once you get the hang of it, I intuit you having a similarly positive experience to me…it's really fun because you get results fast and feel accomplished – I made that graphic pop up when you put the mouse in that spot?? WOW! hehehe) that are much more accessible on the free site for some reason, if you buy the $50 "customization" upgrade (good for one year)…so that's $5 a month….the price of one coffee at Starfucks? Well worth it, I'd say!!! I gained an audience there over about 6 months until I bought a domain (250 dollas for 3 years in 2010) and went private, meaning I can advertise and monetize. The transition of your material from wordpress.com to wordpress.org, the software used when you buy a domain, takes less than 5 mins and is seamless. Unfortunately, the "themes" differ on wordpress.org, and they aren't as customizable. Heh, I doubt many people complain about this – it's much easier to put up a custom header image and play with the sidebars, but I miss my little pop up "art" coding).
So, when I left wordpress.com (free, you'll have a domain like wordpress.com/mywickedblog) I had an audience of about 200 readers a day. Now, after having my own domain for a year and a half, I have over 1500 registered users, a Facebook fan page, 50 folks on the site at a time during top traffic hours…and it's my dream come true. I have wanted to reach people with my writing since age 8 and the Internets <fake Texan accent> and blogging have made it possible. This has been the most positive aspect of my life since I began, really, and now, after being around for about 2 years, I quite suddenly started experiencing way more success than ever before. Maybe I come up on search engines way more or something, but I'm having 60 new registered users (who get – and WANT!! – an email each time I post something) sign up each week, and I have been contacted by advertisers, asking if they can give me money to put a link to their site in a line of my text – they're not pornographers of any sort, i.e. sexual or other, either, they are companies that jive with my morals, like harm reduction for teens addicted to opiates.
I hope I've convinced you to go for it! Please let me know when you start, I'm excited to see your site
Best,
scars XO
I also do design for $10/hour, and I can put together a whole site in a few hours, for anyone wanting to go that way! <END SHAMELESS SELF PROMOTION AND BEGGARY>
http://gourmettraveller.wordpress.com/2010/09/29/mushu