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BBC Radio 3 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced Third Programme.

BBC Radio 3

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The Essay Podcast

The Essay

Discussion & Talk

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

Essays from leading writers on arts, history, philosophy, science, religion and beyond.

Leading writers on arts, history, philosophy, science, religion and beyond, themed across a week - insight, opinion and intellectual surprise.

The Essay: Five Poems I Wish I Had Written

The Essay: Five Poems I Wish I Had Written: Episode 4: Sylvia Plath's 'Cut'

Five Poems I wish I had written

Episode 4

Episode 4: Sylvia Plath's 'Cut'

Five Poems I Wish I Had Written

Sylvia Plath's 'Cut'

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Poet Don Paterson reflects on Sylvia Plath's poem 'Cut'.

Poet Don Paterson reflects with a mixture of admiration and rueful envy on five poems he wishes he had written. Sylvia Plath's poem 'Cut'.

Don Paterson is an award-winning poet, editor and teacher, but for all his technical ability and the recognition that has been paid to his work Paterson is acutely aware of awe and sometimes envy when he looks at the work of other writers. Here he applies his wit and skills of technical analysis to discussing the five poems he wishes he had written.
Tonight, Sylvia Plath's poem 'Cut'.

Cut
For Susan O'Neill Roe

What a thrill -
My thumb instead of an onion. 
The top quite gone
Except for a sort of a hinge

Of skin,
A flap like a hat, 
Dead white.
Then that red plush.

Little pilgrim,
The Indian's axed your scalp. 
Your turkey wattle
Carpet rolls

Straight from the heart. 
I step on it,
Clutching my bottle
Of pink fizz.

A celebration, this is. 
Out of a gap
A million soldiers run, 
Redcoats, every one.

Whose side are they on? 
0 my
Homunculus, I am ill.
I have taken a pill to kill

The thin 
Papery feeling. 
Saboteur, 
Kamikaze man

The stain on your 
Gauze Ku Klux Klan
Babushka
Darkens and tarnishes and when

The balled
Pulp of your heart 
Confronts its small 
Mill of silence

How you jump - 
Trepanned veteran, 
Dirty girl,
Thumb stump.

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Poet Don Paterson reflects on five poems he wishes he had written

Poet Don Paterson reflects with a mixture of admiration and rueful envy on five poems he wishes he had written

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