Friday, April 3, 1998 | 9:12 a.m.
As you've no doubt surmised from the parades, official proclamations and educational TV spots featuring serious-faced sitcom actors, April is National Poetry Month. What better time to turn our attention to Sylvia Plath, who, while never penning a line as immortal as "There once was a man from Nantucket," was nonetheless a major poet, at least among tragically unhappy girls. Before, of course, she killed herself by sticking her head in an oven. It's a sad -- did we mention tragic? -- tale that, naturally has "box office bonanza" written all over it, in the eyes of Meg Ryan, anyway. Ryan has reportedly written and rewritten a Plath biopic, in which she will assume the tragic title role. "Meg is taking Plath very seriously," reports a Ryan friend, "seeing her as a way of breaking with her own fluffy past." Plath's husband, British poet Ted Hughes -- whom Ryan's script blames for driving Plath to suicide -- is expected to oppose the production. Also opposed: tough-gal feminist Camille Paglia. To her, Meg as Sylvia is the Plath of most resistance. "The prospect is too horrible for words," she said. "The cutesy role model who set American women back 20 years wants to play a real woman who helped us forward? It's too depressing. How do you film a poet anyway?" Tragically!
Miscellany
Matt's lament
Poor, tragic Matt LeBlanc -- he and his "Friends" friends are no longer on every magazine cover at the newsstand! It's almost too horrible for words. Fortunately, he was able to eke out a soundbite which, perhaps because it's National Poetry Month, breaks nicely into LeBlanc verse: "I sometimes get this washed-up/ ex-rocker feeling/ like someone that/ used to be in the limelight but/ now is just/ lying/ low." Self-pity mixed with cheap pop-culture imagery -- that's poetry all right! Hand that man a black turtleneck! Now, second free verse, same as the first: "If I'm ever again involved/ in a project whose/ path is as golden from edge to edge/ top to bottom/ front to back/ as 'Friends'/ it'll be a miracle." Just think: Every Entertainment Weekly that passes without LeBlanc on the cover brings him closer to becoming America's poet laureate -- if he can keep his head out of the oven.
Compiled by Scott Dickensheets
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