Dear we-all-know-you-don’t-need-those-glasses second-year girls,
I am so frightfully tired of your mousy, guileless utterances of,
“I used to be obsessed with Sylvia Plath, but now I’ve outgrown her.”
or as an exemplar of the solemnity and exquisite vintage of your taste,
“All the girls in my poetry class list Plath as their favourite poet.”
Excuse me? Was it your mastery of poesy and Ancient Greek arcana that lead you to 'outgrow' her? Or perhaps you tried your hand at some sudden glistering adjectives, or was it the impossible nadir of your first-year heartache over jejune art-school poseurs in slack-assed black jeans that saw you vaunting above the cinders of Sylvia Plath.
Girls, I have read your juvenilia—your flat-footed whimsical pieces in local self-published vanity rags and I assure you your fondness for the words ‘oneiric’ and ‘liminal’ does not see you superceding Plath.
I’m so bored of qualifying why I like her work to you twerps with half an arts degree, you who have now ‘moved on’ to proliferate your shelves with unread copies of Deleuze and Zizek.
So, kindly please surrender Sylvia from beneath the friable accoutrements of your insufferable clever-girl phoniness: newly acquired glasses, cupcakes, leather satchels and a yen for ‘discourse’.
Regards,
MV
