Sylvia Plath
LIFE:
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THEMES
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HER POETRY
- Plath was a fiercely intelligent ambitious, beautiful American poet who was a talented artist: she had been showered with awards
- Many feminist critics find in Plath's poetry and death evidence of what why see as a patriarchal oppression
- Plath grew up in an era when woman were expected to be submissive and decorative and to hide their feelings. She strove for perfection in that role as in every other. However she gave free reign to her suppressed fury in her poems and in this way she shattered the lie of decorous femininity
- Her poems mirror incidents in her life, making her poetry reflect her rollercoaster ride of emotions. These emotions are illustrated through clever imagery and comparisons making the reader identify with these emotions
- Her poetry has urgency and intensity. It has been termed hysterical and self-dramatising but such descriptions ignore the clear-sighted understanding she has of a situation and the carefully shaped poems on the page
- She wanted her poetry to mirror the life she lived, it's ordinaries and extraordinaries
- A strong and striking personality is evident in her poetry and yet she succeeds in engaging the reader
- Her poems express feelings of inner turmoil, describing a speaker who is haunted by a raging storm of emotions
- From her childhood, her role as a poet was what defined her - it was her consolation for her mental turbulence
- It was her way of explaining herself to herself and to the world. It enabled her to exercise some control over her self-absorption, her obsession with death, and her deep seated anxiety
- To quote herself, she does it 'exceptionally well.'
STYLE
- FORM: varies from free verse to lyrics to highly pattered stanza form
- RHYTHM: many of Plath's expressions echo everyday speech, giving those poems a light and easy rhythm
- TONE: many contrasting tones which reveal her inner state when she wrote these poems and reveals a lot about her
- IMAGERY: poems are dark and moody in their imagery, surreal, ironic, clever and emotional
- METAPHORS
- HYPERBOLE: integral to poetry the extravagance of Plath's imagery is a striking feature of her imagery
- BALANCE: antithesis
POEM 1 - BLACK ROOK IN RAINY WEATHER
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BACKGROUND
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MAIN POINTS
- Is a poem about poetry, about the agonising wait for the inspiration that makes a poem possible
- Throughout history poets have been inspired by nature, by birds, storms and sunsets. In this poem the speaker longs for nature to 'speak to her', to provide her with the inspiration for a poem
- To be inspired is to experience a 'radiance', a strange optical illusion or trick of the light. It is to see the world in an intense and heightened way as if everything around you was filled with light it 'sets the sight on fire in (your) eye.'
- Presents a spiritual view of inspiration - the poem suggests it's a holy or sacred phenomenon. It is described as a rare, miraculous event
- This poem powerfully depicts artistic insecurity. She is haunted by the fear of total neutrality that her artistic gift will desert her completely preventing her from ever writing other poems
- For her such creative neutrality meant not only artistic frustration and inspiration but also a grey, blank and passionless existence. She would be plunged into a limbo-like existence similar to that endured by the ghosts of the drowned in 'Finisterre.'
- She uses a scene from nature or an element of the natural world in order to convey an inner state of mind - the speakers dull and uninspired state of mind is reflected in the 'dull ruinous landscape' she trudges through in the rainy, grey and 'desultory' atmosphere that dominates the scene.
- Amidst the gloomy, hopeless depression immersing her mind, it is still possible to find a glimmer of inspiration
- Plath is exploring the subconscious and this makes it hard to discern a logical pattern
- Uses of personal pronoun 'I' lends the poem a confessional feeling
TECHNIQUES
- RHYME: similar words in the same place of each five lined stanza, half rhyme
- TONE: droll and dreary
- SYMBOL: a wet black rook arranging and rearranging its feathers in the rain is a symbol of how the 'minor light' of life can shine suddenly from banal objects
- CONTRASTS: 'desultory', 'mute', 'ruinous' fatique all convey a negative mood, but paralleling this feeling is an opposite one captured by 'fire' 'light' 'celestial' 'honor'
POEM 2 - MORNING SONG
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BACKGROUND
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MAIN POINTS
- The parent's lovemaking set this child's life in motion. The poet likens the creation of life to the winding of a watch
- The first word of 'Morning Song' is 'love'.This sets the tone as the young mother responds to her newborn infants cry, still unsure of her role
- When her child is born the poet experiences doubts and uncertainties about her role as a mother
- She initially feels distant from the child. She likens herself to a cloud that she has shed its rain and no longer bears a connection to that which it once carried
- New life may not be strong enough to stave off anxiety and that inability to feel that Plath so dreaded
- However when the poet is at home with the child she begins to feel more at ease and comfortable about her role as a mother
- The description of her rising during the night to feed the child is tender and suggests that the poet is less troubled by doubt and uncertainty
- The final image of the baby's 'clear words' rising 'like balloons' is uplifting and positive
- Often she forced herself to conform to what society believed to be her role, she did not let her natural instincts kick in straight away
TECHNIQUES
- TONE: warm, she is proud and protective
- COLOUR: plays important role in setting the scene
- FORM: 6 measured tercets (not oversentimental)
- METAPHORS: make clever comparisons
POEM 3 - FINISTERRE
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BACKGROUND
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MAIN POINTS
- For Plath, the place conjures up a bleak, psychological landscape, where nature plays out a sinister drama of despair
- It is full of hellish images of old age, ghostly soldiers and doomed souls. Here the dead are condemned to the seas eternal battering and the living suffer the agonies of hell
- The seas violent fury is often taken to represent Plath's tumultuous mental state. The ocean is presented as a terrifying, vast 'exploding' force that 'canons' into the coastline, making an endless oppressive roaring sound; a 'doom-noise'. The images associating it with an invading army reinforce our sense of its violence
- Self destructive thoughts or desires as she describes herself walking into the sea-mist. She describes how this mist 'erases' the rock and yet she enters it. It's as on some level she desires to be erased from existence herself
- This is a 'psychic landscape' - a scene from nature used in order to convey an inner state of mind. The description of the bay can be taken to suggest either a storm of emotional turmoil or a state of complete mental numbness or perhaps even both
- Peaceful place 'tropical and blue' is the only slight note of hope. End to mental turmoil possible enter new tranquil mental state left with impression this is a distant prospect
- Sea represents chaos, 'formlessness' while the order is associated with the solid and stable coastline. Poem shows chaos slowly encroaching on order as the sea reduces the coastline to nothing
- Touches on idea of mother failing her child through depiction of Our Lady of the shipwrecked. Despite her serene and beautiful smile she is cold and distant and uncaring. She is unmoved by the plight of the lost souls that drift around the place like mist
- The poem is written in four nine line stanzas, but is in black verse the lines are of irregular length and unrhymed just like the rugged cliffs
TECHNIQUES
- RHYTHM: the heavy four beat lines capture the sombre and depressed atmosphere. The dull and weighty rhythm reinforces the depressing descriptions and the profound theological theme
- TONE: baleful and sinister
- IMAGERY
- PERSONIFICATION: Protruding rocks of a cape to be a hand
- METAPHORS
POEM 4 - MIRROR
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BACKGROUND
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MAIN POINTS
- The speaker - the mirror itself - claims to reflect reality as it is not as women might wish it
- It is 'exact' and has 'no preconceptions.' Its voice unlike a well-bred woman's is strongly assertive: the poem contains a total of 17 references to 'I', 'me' or 'my' in just 18 lines
- Tells how a woman scrutinises her reflection in the mirror, how she is gripped by a fit of loneliness or despair, examining herself as she cries and wrings her hands
- Over time, the young girl she once was is 'drowned.' In her place 'an old woman rises towards her like a terrible fish.'
- While the mirror claims to reflect dispassionately only what it sees, the language suggests otherwise. According to the mirror, old age is hideous and menacing like a 'terrible fish.'
- The mirror, like society reflects only whats on the surface. However, the poet sees through the mirror and by writing the poem highlights society's prejudice against women
- We get a sense that much of the woman's turmoil stems from the fact that she has lost her way in life, has lost her sense of her own identity. She gazes into the mirror in an attempt to locate and reconnect with her true self
- It's as if staring at her own reflection allows her to explore the depths of her own psyche and discover what really makes her who she is
- Perhaps she feels her personal appearance does not measure up to the standards of beauty demanded by the fashion industry, or is reminded of what she sees as failings in her, that she is somehow living a lie, presenting a false impression of herself to the world
TECHNIQUES
- PERSONIFICATION: inanimate object has thoughts, ideas and emotions, has truthfulness, faithfulness and jealousy
- TONE: mostly confident and assured, sometimes of need and sorrow
- IMAGERY: unusual and memorable
- FORM: is structured in a symmetrical manner, the poems form mirrors the subject matter
- METAPHORS
- LANGUAGE: Captures the essence of the mirror in chilling detail
POEM 5 - ELM
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BACKGROUND
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MAIN POINTS
- 'Elm' personalises this idea of hell by telling Plath's terrible anguish on discovering Hughes infidelity
- It's speaker is an elm tree, who knows the damage lovers can inflict. Love, she pronounces, is only a shadow and it has galloped off like a horse, it's hooves echoing on Plath's head
- The elm-spirit catalogues the blistering pain of rejection. It means being scorched to the root (may be reference to electro-convulsive therapy prescribed for Plath's depression), breaking up, being terrified of a dark malignant thing
- Plath uses the elm tree to personify her own mental turmoil. The elm suffers different torments - it is lashed by poisonous rain, burned by the sun, whipped by the wind, and 'dragged' and 'scathed' by the moon
- These torments serve as powerful metaphors for Plath's own mental ordeals reflecting the tortured state of mind she experienced around the time of the poem's composition
- Plath is disgusted by the faults and failings within her psyche just as the elm is disgusted by the 'soft feathery turnings' of the creature
- The creature drips acid from its mouth, suggesting how Plath's awareness of her own failings corrodes her mental health
- The elm believes that this 'murderous' creature will be the death of it. Similarily Plath believes that her own failings will eventually be the death of her
TECHNIQUES
- PERSONIFICATION: elm capable of human emotion, speech and suffering
- TONE: cold and confident at first, fear and agitation
- IMAGERY: nightmarish
- METAPHORS: Elm metaphor for Plath herself
POEM 6 - THE ARRIVAL OF THE BEE BOX
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BACKGROUND
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MAIN POINTS
- It explores what goes on in the deep recesses of the human mind, which resembles the microcosmic world of the bee box
- The din coming from it suggests that it is a box of maniacs, of 'swarmy' clamoring.The box, the unconscious seems to be as unpredictable as a Roman Mob, as alien as black slaves
- The speaker reveals no wish to understand its inhabitants, those warring emotions that she suppressed. She believes she is in total control and displays no empathy with them
- She considers allowing them to die by starving them or liberating them
- This suggests either indifference or foolishness: uncontrolled emotions can only lead to trouble
- Finally, she decides she will play God and free them 'tomorrow.' The ending is full of apprehension since she realises that the liberated bees, symbol of her emotions, may well turn on herself
- There is a sense here she is anticipating her own demise and on some level even desiring it
TECHNIQUES
- IMAGERY: rich and Unusual
- METAPHORS: sounds of bees
- CACOPHONY: hard b, r and t sounds create harsh musical effect
- EUPHONY: broad vowel sounds pleasant musical effect