Poet and artist Frieda Hughes hasn’t picked up a copy of her mother’s 1963 novel since she was 16, but she’s been re-reading...
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THE BELL JAR
At mealtimes, pages held fast
By mobile phone and TV channel changer,
And in the creaking chair at the garage table
While my Land Rover fails its MOT,
Steaming in the maintenance bay
With callipers that bind and scalding brakes,
I am reading The Bell Jar again.
Last time I was sixteen. This copy is new,
And as colourfully optimistic as Esther’s first steps
Into the office of a New York magazine, guest editor
For a month, even as her mind shifts and alters its kilter
Over the stumbling blocks of stifling days.
I’ve read as far as the crab meat food poisoning
And mounds of caviar, and wonder which embellishments
Are my mother’s pure invention, and which descriptions
Are experience, defying the conventions that constrained
The 1950’s woman like a too-tight corset, for the men
To whom the little carts of their lives must be hooked
