Sylvia Plath

Everyone reads Sylvia Plath's poetry in the shadow of her suicide. The troubled marriage to Ted Hughes (a more successful poet), his treatment of her and her tragic death have created such interest in the details of her life that it is impossible to read any poem without feeling that you are being pushed in a particular direction by the weight of biographical information. Occasionally, the reader leaps to conclusions that perhaps are not warranted by the poem. However, on the whole, the following poems give a reasonable sense of Plath's work and her preoccupations. They focus on the bleakness of her life and on her growing sense of despair. (Have a look at her novel, The Bell Jar, if you get a chance. It is a brilliantly evocative account of a young girl's struggle with depression.)

Main features of her poetry: A sense of the world balanced between miracle and despair Bleakness/discontent Sense of a troubled life Distant, disengaged tone in many of her poems.

Black Rook in Rainy Weather

Theme: This poem deals with those 'spasmodic tricks of radiance', special moments of inspiration when you are particularly aware of life around you, when you see things in a new light or when you are open to new feelings and experiences. For Plath, these are a kind of

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miracle. However, these miracles, the moments when the angel appears, are 'spasmodic','rare, random' events. Development: The poem opens with cold, depressing images and sounds: 'a wet black rook rearranging its feathers in the rain'. The harsh sound of 'black' is echoed exactly in 'rook'; the wet, wintry weather causes the rook to 'hunch'. Plath does not expect any miracle or accident to set this sight on fire. She is content to let the dull weather do its work, to let the leaves fall. Nothing contains 'ceremony, or portent' - it's all meaningless and routine. However, from the third stanza on, she admits that sometimes life can surprise you. Sometimes, a kitchen table or chair can seem to shine in an unexpected way as if possessed by 'a celestial (heavenly) burning'. These strange moments 'hallow', or make holy, ordinary intervals of time and are part of her feelings of love - love of life, of the world. These unexpected moments occur often enough to make her 'wary' - because at any minute an angel may 'choose to flare suddenly at [her] elbow' and seize her senses, 'haul [her] eyelids up and make her look at the world in a new way.

The poem concludes on a downbeat note. She admits that although she feels as if she is 'trekking through this season of fatigue' she will try to patch together 'a content of sorts' she will try to make the best of things. In the final verse, she reminds herself that miracles do occur - it's simply a matter of waiting for them. A sense of bleakness is created by the notion of the long period of waiting that's required: The wait's begun again The long wait for the angel, For that rare, random descent.

The Times are Tidy

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Theme: In this poem, Plath is lamenting the way the modern world has caused excitement and skill to disappear. Although people have more money and consumer goods now than ever before, the world is poorer in terms of its imagination. Romance, in its broadest sense, has been killed. The poem, like many of her poems, displays a sense of discontent with the world, a sense of unhappiness at how the world is developing.

The poem begins with her bemoaning the fact that the world today is no place for the traditional hero of old. Today's world is a world of 'the stuck record' and cooks going jobless because the mayor has bought himself an electric rotisserie. In other words, it's a place where bravery, knowledge and skill are no longer needed. The world has moved on. Yet, as the image of the 'stuck record' suggests, it is a world that doesn't quite work. The heroes of old who used to ride out to fight against the dragon are all gone. So too are the dragons themselves - they have now shrunk to the size of lizards from 'lack of action'. History has 'beaten the hazard' - removed all the risks. Everything has been 'tidied up'. This sense of the world having been made too safe, too bland, too unexciting is continued in the third stanza. The last crone (witch) was killed years and years ago and her potions and cats are now a thing of the past. You can clearly hear the sarcasm in her voice in the last two lines when she says that 'the children are better for it' - all the improvements of the modern age - because now 'the cow milks cream an inch thick'.

Morning Song
Theme: This poem seeks to express the feelings of a woman new to motherhood. The poem is addressed to her new-born baby, Frieda. It begins with a striking image: 'Love set you going like a fat gold watch.' Taken on its own, this image seems pleasant suggestive of a doting mother who regards her baby as something precious. Yet something about the words 'bald cry' seems out of place with images of cosy maternity and prepares the reader for the cold emptiness of the second stanza. There is a sense of isolation and abandonment in this verse. The baby is regarded as a 'new statue' in a 'draughty museum', somehow a threatening presence. The adults look on 'blankly as walls'. There is no sense of warmth or love.

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In the third verse, Plath seems to reject her baby. She says that she is no more connected to this child than a cloud is connected to a lake in which it is reflected. The constantly changing nature of the cloud implies that Plath will also be changing: she has her own life to live. Eventually the cloud will disappear; so, too, will Plath. Yet, the last three verses capture the intimacy between the mother and child. The lines are full of delicate images: 'your moth-breath flickers', 'flat pink roses' (on the child's cot?), 'a far sea moves in my ear'. Her description of herself as being 'cow-heavy' (with milk) and wearing a Victorian nightgown seems to indicate that she is happy, or at least resigned, to sacrifice something of her physical beauty and perform her duties as a mother. The final four lines of the poem convey the picture of a mother keeping a long vigil over her child. As she feeds her baby, the sky outside gradually lightens and the stars disappear. It is not entirely clear if Plath is enjoying this experience or not. When she says, 'And now you try your handful of notes; the clear vowel rise like balloons' is she referring to the sweet gurgling of a contented and well-fed baby? Or is she referring to the incessant wailing of a baby who will not feed and who delights in keeping her mother awake through the night?

Mirror
Theme: The poem captures the sense of despair suffered by many who feel that life is slipping away from them. Unusually, this is a poem related from the point of view of the mirror. As if to emphasise that growing old is one of the cold facts of life, the mirror states unemotionally: 'I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.' It simply reflects what is there. It doesn't try to beautify or improve the world. With the same dispassionate detachment of a hidden camera, this mirror sees everything and can judge everything in a cold, objective way, like a 'little god, four-cornered'. Mostly, all the mirror sees is the wall opposite. Occasionally, however, a woman appears before it. The mirror seems to have an understanding of the woman's sadness. It knows that she looks into the lake of the mirror as if 'searchingfor what she really is.' That ageing and lost beauty seem to be part of the reason for her sadness is suggested by the words 'those liars, the candles or the moon'. Their soft light is kinder to wrinkles and blemishes and can conceal the unpleasant truth concerning her age. Her anxiety is suggested by the line: 'She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.' The final lines have a nightmarish quality. It is as if the woman is losing control of herself. The verb 'drown' inevitably triggers associations with despair and suicide. The passage of years and its depressing effects are conveyed in the second last line when the
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mirror states that 'In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman/ Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish'.

Pheasant
This could not really be described as a nature poem in the traditional sense of that term. Here, although the poet is describing something from the natural world, she seems somehow disengaged and at a distance. The poem presents a picture of the poet almost at ease with the world, but yet it is a world not entirely free from the threat of danger. As in many of her poems there is a sense of menace, a feeling that whatever peace exists is not entirely secure. The poem begins in an eerily calm way given that the subject matter is killing. Her request to her husband not to kill it is calm, unemotional and matter-of-fact. She feels the pheasant has a right to be there, as if 'it is in its element'. She, on the other hand, feels like she is 'trespassing'. The details of the pheasant are left vague. There is no description apart from mention of its tail and its 'green and red' colouring. What has attracted her seems to be simply its oddness, its rareness. The concluding 'Let be, let be' contains the same detached air as the early part of the poem and contributes to its slightly unreal feeling.

Poppies in July
Plath's biographical details can illuminate this otherwise difficult poem. It was written around the time she discovered that her husband, Ted Hughes, was having an affair with Assia Wevill, the wife of another poet. It is full of images of menace, violence and selfharm ('hell', 'put my hands among the flames', 'a mouth just bloodied', for example) that, it is fair to conclude, reflect something of the depression and turmoil in her mind. She committed suicide some seven months later, perhaps driven to the final act of despair by the knowledge that Assia was pregnant. Shortly after Plath's death, Assia decided to have an abortion. Six years later, she herself committed suicide after killing the daughter she bore with Hughes. The poem is a series of couplets with a concluding single line. Each couplet contains a suggestion of violence or a reference to self-harm. The staccato shortness of the lines and the verses contributes to the sense of a distracted mind groping confusedly for answers. Many of the couplets read more like the jotting down of random thoughts than the finely polished words of an accomplished and careful poet: ' A mouth just bloodied. Little bloody skirts!' and 'If I could bleed, or sleep!' They are the exhausted utterances of

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someone deserted by the power to form coherent speech, unable to formulate anything longer than a few words. The poppies are suggestive of so much: they are associated in the poet's mind, and in everyone else's, with a dangerous narcotic. But the vivid red of the poppy seems also to evoke the lipstick of her husband's lover, a mouth that she would like to bloody, the blood that she would like to smear on her skirt. The poem has a falling, swooning motion to it. It seems to sink to the ground as it approaches lines thirteen and fourteen until it gives up the ghost in the final three-word line. It is as if Plath has allowed the liquor to seep into her from the 'glass capsule' and, escaping from her torment on earth, everything becomes dim, blurred and 'colourless'.

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St Andrews College