SYLVIA

SYLVIA PLATH
PLATH

THE
THE POETIC
POETIC LANGUAGE
LANGUAGE IN
IN ‘SHEEP
‘SHEEP IN
IN FOG’
FOG’
 “A poem with it’s head in the oven?”

HOW DO WE READ A POEM?

WHAT IS THE THRILL IN READING A POEM?

CAN WE STICK WITHIN ONE APPROACH?

MICHEL FOUCAULT – IS IT THE AUTHOR WHO IS THE

UNITY AND ORIGIN OF THE TEXT’S MEANINGS?
Stasis in darkness.
Then the substanceless blue Hauls me through air – The dew that flies
Pour of tor and distances. Thighs, hair; Suicidal, at one with the drive
Flakes from my heels. Into the red
God's lioness,
How one we grow, White Eye, the cauldron of morning.
Pivot of heels and knees! – The furrow Godiva, I unpeel –
Dead hands, dead
Splits and passes, sister to stringencies.
The brown arc
Of the neck I cannot catch, And now I
Foam to wheat, a ‘AI’ PHONEMES

Nigger-eye glitter of seas.

Berries cast dark The child's cry
Hooks –
Melts in the wall.
Black sweet blood mouthfuls, And I
Shadows. Am the arrow,
Something else
 SHEEP IN FOG

The hills step off into whiteness.

People or stars A flower left out.
Regard me sadly, I disappoint them. My bones hold a stillness, the far
Fields melt my heart.
The train leaves a line of breath.
O slow They threaten
‘O’ SOUNDS
Horse the colour of rust, To let me through to a heaven
Starless and fatherless, a dark water.
Hooves, dolorous bells –
All morning the
Morning has been blackening,
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Repetition of the ‘AI’ phonemes (alliteration) is replaced with the repetition of the ‘O’ (assonance) sounds

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Erasure of the voice of a subjective I-dentity. Hence, the death of the subject

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Language is inadequate to express the silences and unspeakable

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A possibility of mastering the absence in Plath’s poem. Jacques Derrida - “One cannot help wishing to master
absence and yet we must always let it go”.

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Sylvia Plath - “Words are dry and riderless”

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Julia Kristeva on Sylvia Plath – a poet “disillusioned with meanings and words”
Triple Face portrait

Sylvia Plath - “Technically, I suppose the

visual appearance and sound of words,
taken alone, may be much like.. the color
and texture in painting”