The Sylvia Plath Riots

In 1980, as her daughters rebelled,
She joined them on stage at school,
A proto riot grrrl, always in, and black and white,
Spitting out the blood of her enemies,
That dissolved in the TLS she ate as fuel
For the venomous next phase,
The boyfriends cowered and left,
Excusing themselves to cocktails,
At F&F with Valerie and Ted,

It was revolution, nothing less,
Made cool again by low-slung bass,
And all her grammatical attitude,
Though the boys demanded choruses,
She stood tall upstage and faced them,
Making her own, new manifesto,
In just verse, truth and three chords,
Opening the set with drama,
And the dropping of a burning book,

So revolted by her lack of scansion,
The purring critics, missing rhyme,
Counting syllables and prime numbers,
In songs that were just prose to music,
Missed the point of drone and throb,
And called upon more subtle emotions,
To excuse the stench of politics,
Arguing themselves to singularity,
In the end of the Post War,

Sylvia burned the theatre down,