In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle ponders the significance of the humble toothbrush in modern poetry
‘As a poet I would say everything should be able to come into a poem but I can’t put toothbrushes in a poem, I really can’t!’ Sylvia Plath’s statement – made in a 1962 interview with Peter Orr – has become well-known for its articulation of the supposed limits of the poem’s ‘paraphernalia’: what can and can’t be worked into a poem.