Sylvia Plath Poems
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| Sylvia Plath Poems |
Sylvia Plath: Poems Summary
Most of the work in this study guide comes from Plath's two major collections of poetry - The Colossus and Other Poems (1960) and Ariel (1965). However, there are many more dating back to his early days at Smith College or the period between the publication of the two major volumes. Plath's poetry, along with the novel The Bell Jar, made her one of the most talented and imaginative literary writers of the 20th century. It is difficult to summarize the poems, many of them suggest several meanings, but nevertheless, each has a specific theme that can help differentiate them.
The oldest poem discussed here is "Cinderella", which is a retelling of the fairy tale. Plath's adaptation focuses on the moment Cinderella hears the clock strike in the middle of the night as she dances with the prince. It is topped and tight.
"Metaphors" is a short poem describing a pregnant woman through symbolic language. The woman, uneasy and detached by her huge, sprawling body, presents herself like an elephant and like a watermelon walking on tendrils. She knows that even if she feels unloved and just a "hurry cow", there is nothing she can do about it.
"The Colossus" is a complex and powerful poem that is supposedly about Plath's father, who died when she was eight. Imagine him as a powerful statue that she tried to fix so he could talk to her. She stays in her ear at night to protect herself from the wind and remarks that no ship will come for her - she will forever remain in this ruin of memory.
"A Life" is about a woman in the hospital (possibly after a suicide attempt) staring at a painting and looking at the happy, motionless occupants inside. She comments that real life is more "straightforward" and unsettling. She is overwhelmed with emotion and worried about the future, which she compares to a "gray seagull" who cries and chatters.
In 'Tulip', a woman is recovering from an operation in the hospital. She likes peace and quiet and likes to be separated from the baggage of her life (which includes her husband and children). However, a bouquet of tulips arrived, and she violently confronted them with their amazing vitality, color and life force. Over time, she allows herself to live again by accepting the lily.
The "mirror" is a mirror that spends its time staring at the opposite wall. Often a woman looks at herself in the mirror, but is upset and confused by the reflection of her own image, upset to see herself growing up.
"Dad" is a bold and violent poem addressed to Plath's father. She sings in nursery fashion, comparing him to terrifying parental characters such as a vampire, a Nazi, and a demon. By comparing herself to a Jewess in a concentration camp, she details how she must finally be done with her father. In the end, she implied that she had placed her husband, Ted Hughes, in a similar noble position, and decided she should kill him and his father.
Ariel tells the story of a woman riding a horse through the countryside in the early morning, full of fire and energy. The rider feels she becomes one with the horse as it flies through the scorching sun. It can be suicide or poetic creativity.
In "The Cut", the speaker accidentally cuts her thumb with a kitchen knife. Although she was initially aroused by the pain and the look at her blood and skin, she eventually became dizzy and took a painkiller. Some believe that this poem is a reference to the Cuban Missile Crisis.
"Mrs. Lazare" is shown telling a "crowd of peanut-tasting people" about her latest suicide attempt. It was his third time. She claims that "dying is an art" and that she does it well. She wants to die and be reborn as a phoenix.
"Sheep in Fog" is about riding a slow horse through a foggy morning in the countryside. It is a dark poem in which the speaker confesses his fear of entering a starless paradise and his father. She regrets that people are disappointed in her.
"The Child" is a poem addressed to a Plath child, expressing the pleasure of the child's new experiences. However, she ended on a worried note, with Plath commenting that she hoped the child wouldn't have to experience "protruding hands" and the dark "starless" ceiling.
In "Bruise", Plath talks about color flowing in a bruise on a white body, then uses grim imagery of death and the end to set the agonizing mood of surrender.
Edge, Plath's last poem, describes the dead woman as "complete". She's overjoyed to find an end after traveling so far, and she has two dead babies wrapped inside her. This poem, in its sadness, appears as an unfiltered vision of his commitment to suicide.
Sylvia Plath: Poems Themes
Death
Death is an ever-present reality in Plath's poetry, and it manifests itself in different ways.
A common theme is the void left by the death of his father. In "Full Fathom Five", she talks about his death and burial, mourning his banishment forever. In The Colossus, she tries in vain to reconstruct it and make it speak. In "Dad", she goes so far as to pretend that she wants to kill him herself, ultimately expelling his evil hold on her mind and business.
Death is also approached through the lens of suicide, which eerily matches his suicide attempts and eventual death by suicide. In Lady Lazarus, she claims to have mastered the art of dying after several suicide attempts. She doesn't care that everyone is so used to rushing around and watching her destroy herself. Despite this, suicide is presented as a desirable alternative in many of these works. The poems imply that it will free her from the difficulties of life and bring her a transcendence where her spirit can free itself from its physical cage. This desire is joyfully expressed in 'Ariel', and it is expressed darkly and obediently in 'Edge'. Death is a very vital aspect of Plath's work, both in figurative and literal depictions.
Victimization
Plath felt like a victim of the men in her life, including her father, her husband, and the larger, male-dominated literary world. His poetry is often understood as a response to these feelings of victimhood, and many male form poems can be interpreted as referring to any or all of these male forces in his life.
Concerning her father, she realized that she could not escape his terrible hold on her; She expressed her sense of victimhood in "The Giant" and "Father," using powerful metaphors and similes to coerce the man who stood out so powerfully in her psyche.
Her husband also victimized her by the power he wielded as a man, assuming he should have had a literary profession, and by his infidelity. Plath felt relegated to a subordinate "feminine" position that deprived her of any autonomy or authority. Her poems from the "Colossus" era express her frustration with the limitations within which she worked. For example, "A Life" evokes a dark and threatening future for Plath. However, in her later poems, she finally appears to be able to transcend her victimhood by fully embracing her creative talents ("Ariel"), figuratively killing her father ("Papa"), and committing suicide ("Mrs. Lazarus ", "Edge").
Patriarchy
Plath lived and worked in England and America in the 1950s and 1960s, societies characterized by very strict gender norms. Women were to stay safe at home, motherhood being the joy and the ultimate goal. Women who ventured into the arts found it difficult to engage with their work and were often marginalized and looked down upon. Plath explored and challenged this reductionist tendency through his work, providing poems with intense dynamism and stunning language. She portrayed the bleakness of the family scene, the disappointment of pregnancy, the despair of her husband's infidelity, her tormented relationship with her father, and her attempts to find her creative voice amid the crushing weight of patriarchy. She avoided using soft language and avoided writing except on traditional "feminine" topics. What's even more impressive is that the work remains poetic and artistic - not political - due to its willingness to admit contradicting all of these expectations, acknowledging that both perspectives can prove to be a trap.
Temper nature
Imagery and allusions to nature permeate Plath's poetry. She often evokes the sea and the fields with great effect. The sea is usually associated with his father. He is powerful, unpredictable, charming and dangerous. In the Full Fathom Five, his father is depicted as a sea god. The image of the sea was also used in the "blue", indicating a terrible sense of loss and loneliness.
She also retreated from her personal life, writing about riding in English fields, in 'Sheep in Fog' and 'Ariel'. In these cases, she uses the activity to suggest a mystical spiritual arena in which creative thought or unbridled feelings can be expressed.
Nature is also evident in the bright red tulips that shake an icy Plath from her post-operative stupor, insisting that she return to the world of the living. Here, nature is an instigator, an instigator - you don't want her to give up. Nature is a common theme in Plath's work. It is a powerful force that is sometimes unpredictable, but which generally serves to encourage its creative output.
The Self
Plath has often been lumped into the sectarian poetry movement. One of the reasons for this classification is that she has written extensively about her life, her thoughts and her fears. Every great artist creates or creates their own art, and Plath has always sought to get to know himself better through his writing. She tried to come to terms with her personal demons and tried to overcome her problematic relationships. For example, she tried to understand her ambivalence about motherhood and she tried to express her anger over her failed marriage.
However, her exploration of herself can also be understood as an exploration of the idea of self, as she stands against society as a whole and other people whom she particularly disliked. Joyce Carol Oates wrote that even Plath's children seemed like mere targets she had considered, not subjective extensions of herself. The details of Plath's work were drawn from her life, but she sought to go beyond those details to ask more universal questions. Most famously, Plath imagined herself as a Jewess, another injured and persecuted victim. She also tried to engage with the idea of self in terms of body-mind dialectics. "Edge" and "Sheep in Fog" explore his desire to leave earthly life, but express some ambivalence about what's next. Ariel suggests it's glory and oneness with nature, but the other two poems don't seem to know what will happen to the spirit/soul once the body is excised. This conflict - between self and the outside world - can be used to understand almost all of Plath's poems.
The body
Many of Plath's poems deal with the body in terms of motherhood, wounds, operations, and death.
She describes in "metaphors" how her body doesn't feel like hers; It is simply a "path" to the birth of a child. In "Tulip" and "Hayat", the body underwent surgery. Comes with surgery to get rid of emotion, attachment, connection and responsibility. The physical cut resulted in an emotional cut, which is comforting for the depressed woman. "Cut" depicts the almost thrill that Plath felt when she cut her thumb. He suggests that she feel more energized thinking about her almost severed thumb, watching the pool of blood on the floor. 'Bruise' goes further - she was bruised for a reason, but unlike 'Cut', where she ultimately seems to feel uncomfortable with the cut, she seems to welcome the physical pain, as the bruise suggests a imminent end to his suffering. Suicide, the most profound and dramatic thing one can do with one's body, is also central to many of his poems.
Overall, Plath was clearly constantly aware of the relationship between mind and body and was fascinated by the effects of physical pain.
Motherhood
Motherhood is a major theme in Plath's work. She was fiercely ambivalent about this portrayed role of a woman, writing in Metaphors about feeling unimportant as a pregnant woman, merely a "means" to an end. She lamented her odd appearance and quit over her perceived lack of options. However, in the film "The Child", she delights in her child's perception of the world and her interaction with him. Of course, Child ends up suggesting that she knows her child will one day see the harsh realities of life. Plath did not want his children to be tainted by his despair. This fear may also have manifested itself in her last poem "The Edge", in which some critics note a desire to kill her children and take them with her away from the horrors of life. Other poems in his works express the same tension. In general, Plath clearly loved her children, but was not entirely satisfied with pregnancy or motherhood.
Sylvia Plath: Poems Character List
Otto Plath
Sylvia Plath's father plays a role in many of her poems, including "Full Fathom Five", "The Colossus", and "Daddy". He died when she was eight, and she put a lot of energy into trying to come to terms with the impact it had on her life and work. portraying him as a colossal statue and an influential force in the early poems; Obviously, she is afraid of him. In "Daddy", there is an even more malevolent creature that must be destroyed.
Narrator "Tulip"
Narrator in hospital room after surgery. She is happy and calm, happy to have given up her memories and accessories. It is only when the vibrant, noisy tulips arrive that they come out of their stagnant comfort, come to life again.
Cinderella
The young heroine of the film "Cinderella" who dances with the prince until she hears the sound of the clock signaling her imminent departure.
narrator "Hayat"
The narrator is listless and devoid of energy as she recovers in the hospital room. She dreads the future, which she compares to a roaring seagull.
Our Lady of Lazarus
Spokesperson for the poem "Mme Lazare". She has attempted suicide on several occasions, and considers "death" to be an "art" which she practices very well. She blames the audience for watching her public spectacle and basking in her pain and humiliation.
Arielle
The horse that Plath rides to Ariel. The character can also be understood as a reference to Shakespeare's The Tempest.
child
Most likely, the "baby" child is the second child of Nicholas Plath, Sylvia and Ted Hughes. In the poem, he is young and innocent. Plath wants to protect him from the realities of existence and doesn't want him to feel his anxiety and fear.
Mirror
The mirror hangs on the wall and reveals to those who look within the truth of who they are. His most frequent guest is a woman who mourns the onslaught of aging.
Narrator "Ariel"
The narrator rides her horse at breakneck speed in the early morning in the English fields; Through this, she and the horse become one being as they achieve transcendence.
Narrator "Metaphors"
A pregnant woman expresses a duality in her condition, the narrator uses color comparisons and dark imagery to indicate that she feels she has lost her identity.
Narrator "The Giant"
A woman scales a giant statue in an attempt to fix it despite major contradictions about the statue and its legacy.
the giant
A gigantic statue rises to the level of the speaker in the poem, possibly a representation of Otto Plath.
Narrator "Dad"
A woman with a serious ambivalence towards the figure of the emeritus (probably a representation of Otto Plath). His journey is a poem about gathering the strength to kill him in his memory.
Narrator "Contusion"
A disturbed and clearly unknown speaker observes and draws implicit links between images of loneliness and death.
Narrator "The Edge"
A woman who recently or recently committed suicide considers herself "complete" because of it.
the moon
The Moon in Edge doesn't care about the tragedy of human affairs and looks at the dead speaker without any concern.
Narrator "Full Five Understanding"
A woman watches the ancient god of the sea rise from the waves with excitement and displeasure. She had a previous relationship with him, but she was banished from his kingdom.
Narrator "Cut"
A woman who cut her thumb while chopping an onion has strong but conflicting feelings about the pain and the blood.
Narrator "Sheep in the Mist"
Seemingly a woman on horseback, the speaker is defined more by her apparent depression than her physical experience of riding a horse.
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