The Poetry of Sylvia Plath

Mental Nature
Anguish +
Femininity
Images of Nature
Mother and Child Relationship
Harsh
Inadequacy/Mortality Slapped your footsoles
Im no more your Bald cry
mother / than the Morning
cloud that distils a Comforting
mirror... Song handful of notes
Humour balloons
cow-heavy
Victorian nightgown

Detachment Connection

Fat gold watch, New moth breath, clear

statue, blankly as walls vowels rise like balloons
Describes an inanimate
object
Mental
Personification
I am silver and exact Anguish
I am not cruel only
truthful

Uneasy relationship between Searching my reaches for

woman and mirror
Turns to those liars
I am important to her
Femininity
what she really is
Mirror She rewards me with
tears and an agitation of
hands
Natural Images -Water

Inadequacy/Ideas of beauty

In me she has drowned a

young girl, and in me an
old woman rises
 Decides what to do with her fear inside
1.They can be sent back 1. Dont think about them
2.They can die 2. Starve the thoughts
3.Undo the locks 3. Face the thoughts

Literal Metaphorical

Nature Mental
Dangerous Anguish
The box is locked, it is Inadequacy Powerless
dangerous The Arrival I am no Caesar
It is dark, dark
of the Bee Symbolises her dark thoughts
I have to live with it overnight
Beautiful Box I cant keep away from it
labernum It is dark, dark
petticoats of the cherry Small, taken one by one, but my
god, together!

Style Assonance-
Sibilance-
angrily clambering - emphasis
box of maniacs -creates sound of the bees
Isolated last line- The box is only temporary emphasis
-Is it optimistic or pessimistic?
 Mental
Anguish
Poppies Poppy Seeds

Violence Sleep/
Yearns for pain
Death
Do you do no harm?
Poppies in Escape from Mental Anguish
A mouth just bloodied July If I could bleed, or sleep!
If my mouth could marry a
hurt like that Numb
It exhausts me
Feminine Dulling and stilling
Little bloody skirts But colourless. Colourless

Fire
I put my hand among the
Style
flames Constructed in couplets and choppy rhythm
suggest an agitated state of mind
Lots of repeated words and images
e.g. flicker, flames, blood, colourless
 The Elm and
The Woman
The Elm taunts the woman
It is what you fear
How you lie and cry after it
The Elm describes the
torment it has endured
The rain...like arsenic
atrocity of sunsets Elm
a wind of such violence
the moon, also, is merciless
Inadequacy
Need for love linked with weakness
The bird is looking for something to
love
He own failings will end up killing her
It petrifies her and these are the
thoughts that kill, that kill, that kill.
Mental Femininity
Anguish Women as weak
The woman endures torment
The elm is depicted as female
and also suffers
Nature
Nature destroys or causes mental
anguish and can be linked to the
annihilation of nuclear war
Sea/Horses/Rain/Sunsets/Wind/
Moon/Bird/Snake
Style
The poem concerns a dialogue between the voice
of the Elm and the voice of Plath these become
mingled towards the end of the poem
 Femininity Mental
and
Motherhood Anguish
Plath cherishes her son Inadequacy
Your clear eye is the one
absolutely beautiful thing. Plath feels she is letting herself
down as a mother
She views the child as innocent Images should be grand and
Stalk without wrinkle Child classical

She wants the child to She is worried that her mental

experience good things in life anguish will affect her son
I want to fill it with colour and Not this troublous
ducks Wringing of hands, this dark
the zoo of the new Ceiling without a star.
Style
Like a lot of Plaths poetry, she starts with pleasant imagery
and ends up in darker territory towards the end. This has
the effect of easing us into the poem and therefore the
darker thoughts are more surprising towards the end.