Poppies in October

I feel like Sylvia Plath always brings to mind a brooding, depressed, angsty girl in her late teens or early twenties. I will admit that I first heard about Sylvia Plath through the film 10 Things I Hate About You, when I was eleven or so. All that aside though, I think she was so marvelously complex and her poems are chalk-full of evidence. They're so strangely worded, they're so full of unusual flavor and intensity and female perspective, that it's only natural that women are drawn to her. I just love her style, and I really like her lighter poems. Some of them are truly gorgeous. In honor of October, here is one of my favorite Sylvia Plath poems:

Poppies in October

Even the sun-clouds this morning cannot manage such skirts.
Nor the woman in the ambulance
Whose red heart blooms through her coat so astoundingly ----

A gift, a love gift
Utterly unasked for
By a sky

Palely and flamily
Igniting its carbon monoxides, by eyes
Dulled to a halt under bowlers.

O my God, what am I
That these late mouths should cry open
In a forest of frost, in a dawn of cornflowers.