If You're A Scorpio, Here's The Poetry Collection You Should Read
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Passion, power, ruthlessness — with so many fiery qualities, it's easy to forget Scorpio is linked to water, not fire. According to Co-Star Astrology, if you have Scorpio as your sun, moon, or rising sign, you probably prefer that people believe they'll get burned if they cross you. You wrap yourself in mystery and it takes navigating a labyrinth in order to get close to you.
With Pluto as their ruling planet, Scorpio energy is tied to death as much as it's tied to life, per Parade. Rebirth and reinvention are domains you're masters of, and according to InStyle, Scorpios are master excavators of human emotion. Just don't expect them to share what they're feeling with you unless you somehow make it into their very close, very small inner circle.
Perhaps this is why so many Scorpios turn to writing, and writing poetry especially, when it comes to expressing their thoughts and feelings. Sylvia Plath, Margaret Atwood, Zadie Smith, and Anne Sexton are just a few Scorpios whose writing has become legendary, per The Famous People. The works of these, and other Scorpio writers, have been dissected over and over in search of the true, deeper meaning the writer meant. With Plath and Sexton's suicides, their deaths are just as big of a mystery as their work is.
No matter where Scorpio falls in your astrological birth chart, the poetry collections we've pulled together are meant to intrigue the darkest parts of your Pluto-ruled selves. Caution: feelings may arise.
If your sun is in Scorpio, read 'Ariel: Poems' by Sylvia Plath
Scorpio suns, Allure explains, are the masters of reinvention, their sign signifying "life, death, and resurrection," and nothing feels as constantly reinvented and reinterpreted as the life and writing of Sylvia Plath.
Brimming with Scorpio energy, Plath's writing is often dismissed as nothing but angst; a woman with too many emotions to be taken seriously, despite all the evidence to the contrary. The evidence was there in Plath's writing, Lit Hub points out: in Plath's journals and the letters to Plath's therapist. Plath was as much a survivor of domestic abuse as she was a revolutionary poet.
Published following her suicide, Plath's "Ariel: Poems" was a collection Plath worked on in the months leading up to her death, per The New Yorker. Darkness, Co-Star Astrology explains, can be a Scorpio's favorite hiding place, but in this collection, you'll find not just company but inspiration for your next resurrection.
Ranking 17 on The Guardian's list of "100 best nonfiction books," Plath's "Ariel: Poems" is described as "a collection of strange, disturbing, and confessional poems whose wild and exhilarating ferocity exerted a remarkable grip on the imagination of [its readers]." This collection, The Guardian explains, breathed fire and life into the mythology surrounding the poet who didn't fear the darkness. If you need your own reinvention, let "Lady Lazarus" — one of Plath's most famous poems, included in "Ariel: Poems" — be the match that starts your own fire.
Moon in Scorpio? Read Kim Hyesoon's 'Autobiography of Death'
Only in the dark can we see the moon and it's in the darkness and depths of their emotional landscape where lunar Scorpios shine. According to AstroStyle, where the moon sits in your astrological birth chart can shed light onto what will help us feel safe, vulnerable, and the most at home.
If your moon sits in Scorpio, you may feel emotions deeply and at times, AstroStyle warns, obsessively. But at the same time, you're not afraid to explore the how's and the why's of what you're feeling. These water signs prefer depth to superficial and for them, there's no point in talking about something if you're not going to dive headfirst into the deep end. Reading Kim Hyesoon's "Autobiography of Death" is the poetic deep end you're going to want to sink into.
Poet Sally Wen Mao told Oprah Daily that for her, "Autobiography of Death" is one of the best poetry books because it has an "emotional rawness" that is "a lyric journey that unravels with wonder in the face of the oldest human fears — death, decay, burial."
With what Allure calls your reputation for "high-octane emotional intensity," lunar Scorpios will find an emotional and intellectual challenge reading Hyesoon's "Autobiography of Death." As Publisher's Weekly explains in their review, the collection is a "moving juxtaposition of the mundane and terrible" as poems explore the liminal space between death and resurrection.
Read 'We Are the Ones Possessed' by Adrian Ernesto Cepeda if Scorpio is your rising sign
While our moon sign helps us map out our emotional landscapes, Cafe Astrology explains that it's your rising or ascendant sign that can have the biggest influence on the mask you wear in public.
Like Halsey and Lana Del Rey, fellow Scorpio risings according to AstroStyle, you probably exhibit a calm, cool, if not aloof personality to the rest of the world. Perhaps this is why people find you so attractive: There's a deeper mystery to you that everyone is dying to be the first and only person to solve (via Allure).
To help you get in touch with your emotional side, even if you're not ready to share that part of you with the world, pick up "We Are the Ones Possessed" by Adrian Ernesto Cepeda. Named one of the "five poetry collections to read this summer" by LitReactor, Cepeda's collection is described as an "intimate study of trauma, memory, and obsessions." Obsession can blur the lines between love and possession and Scorpio risings have a hard time letting go of either.
Other reviews of Cepeda's collection touch on how "atmospheric" his writing is, and how he evokes "an image of death that's horrific and lovely" and more hopeful than its horror elements suggest (via Clash Books). In "We Are the Ones Possessed," Cepeda dares the reader to believe in second chances, reincarnation, forgiveness after death.