Sylvia Plath Poetry Analysis

📌Category: Literature, Poems, Writers
📌Words: 833
📌Pages: 4
📌Published: 21 May 2021

Sylvia Plath is a poet who consistently offers vivid images throughout her poetry that expand upon the subject matter and which also add weight to her poems. Her poems such as ‘Morning Song’, ‘Mirror’, ‘Poppies in July’, ‘The Arrival of the Bee Box’ and ‘Child’ all provide an array of imagery from which the reader can find further subtext. 

Plath’s poem ‘Morning Song’ explores the experience of become a mother. In this poem she focuses on the idea of how love for your child comes gradually with time. The opening line of the poem sees Plath comparing her son to a ‘fat gold watch’. This image is an unusual one as typically a new-born child would not be compared to a cold, inanimate object. However, by using this comparison, the poet is involving us with the theme. I believe she wishes for us to think about time here, so we understand that her love is not immediate. Yet the use of the word gold suggests there is some love here which we see grow as the poem progresses. We see Plath highlight the features her child has that she is not found of, ‘your moth breath’. Though following this description is the image of ‘flat pink roses.’ I feel this entanglement of positive and negative imagery shows her ambivalence subsiding. 

In a similar vein, the poem ‘Child’ explores Plath’s worries and regrets for her child. Plath conveys these feelings by using contrasting imagery in the poem. The poem starts with bright and cheery imagery. The poet describes what she wishes for the child, a world full of ‘color and ducks’. She differentiates what she wishes for her child and what has happened to her in the line ‘Stalk without wrinkle’. Plath communicates her hopes to us by giving this image while also making us imagine that she herself is perhaps wrinkled. She paints the child to be a ‘Pool in which images/ Should be grand and classical’. Plath hopes her child can see great things and age well like something classic. I find the last stanza to add a sense of drama, as the poet likens herself to ‘this dark/ Ceiling without a star.’ The sharp juxtaposition of colourful imagery to one void of any light is startling and illustrates to me clearly the anxiety she feels. 

Within the poem ‘Mirror’ we see more images of what Plath sees herself as. In this poem she explores the theme of our youth fading which see tells through the point of view of a personified mirror. In the poem the mirror describes itself as ‘The eye of a little god’ which implies it may be worshipped by those who gaze into it. The poet is acknowledging her dependence on this mirror. Plath then has this concept of a mirror identify itself as a lake. This image adds the implication that you can drown within your reflection. This cleverly chosen image makes the poem more morbid until the final line where we see the ‘like a terrible fish.’ In my understanding this image is representing the process of aging.  

The poem ‘Poppies in July’ deals with the themes of grief and escapism. Within this poem is the use of imagery, particularly in reference to colour. These images serve to clue us in on the speaker’s state of mind. The main focus of the poem are poppy flowers, which are described to be ‘little hell flames’. This dreary interpretation of these summer flowers alludes to the viewpoint the poet has on the world, one full of pessimism and grief. The red of the poppy flower is compared to blood twice, ‘A mouth just bloodied’, ‘Little bloody skirts!’ Images of blood within a poem which already focuses on a dark subject matter leaves a worrying impression. The poem ends with a description of Plath’s world after ingesting the poppies’ ‘liquors’. She sees the world as nothing ‘But colorless. Colorless.’ I find this to be a poignant depiction of this escapism which Plath is yearning for in this poem. 

We are shown more of Plath’s inner mind in the poem ‘The Arrival of the Bee Box’. This poem deals with the idea of control, which is explored through the speaker’s relationship with a box of bees which she had ‘ordered’. The opening of the poem has us confront sinister imagery of the box, which the speaker grimly compares to a ‘coffin of a midget/ Or a square baby’. The bees within the box are described to be akin to African slaves ‘With the swarmy feeling of African hands’. This description reminds us of the theme of control, that the speaker is in the position of power. Though the image of the bees ‘Black on black, angrily clambering’ may be a reference to her thoughts. As such her control is called into question as she doubts if she can handle them all at once, comparing their sheer numbers to be like a ‘Roman mob’. Plath does not believe she can control them, ‘I am not Ceasar.’ By using images of the Romans, the power struggle is clearly established to me.  

With the above poems mentioned, I think that Plath is an expressive poet who uses her sharp ability to paint her ideas in our minds. I think she effectively captures her thoughts and enhances the emotional meanings within her poems by using descriptive imagery.

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