Sylvia Plath

Plath - excerpts from Ariel

Lady Lazarus


Like Lazarus she emerges from death and from the grave yet it seems she is bound by it at the same time. Interesting oxymorons when she implores Herr Lucifer, Herr God.
She challenges the reader to look at her, at every facet of her.
Unwrapping her like  mummy, like she is a relic that can die 9 times. She seems to describe her different attempts to kill herself. The first time was an accident. The second time she couldn't pull through and she turned in on herself. Compares dying to an art and she is a pro at it- maybe like writing? The angst of not pulling off a masterpiece? She actually uses the image of herself as an opus. She seems to consider dying as easier than living. Dying can be done anytime anywhere, it is the living part, confronting other people that is so taxing. At the end she seems to disintegrate into a puddle of goop, with only a few things that identify her: soap, ring and a gold filling. She seems to taunt even death by rising up, resuscitating and eating men voraciously "like air".


Tulips


Snow covered world, like she is in emotionally; the tulips are a jarring element. She considers herself to be nobody and she leaves her body to the nurses and surgeons. They treat her body like a pebble, she is like a baby rocked in a silent world. Anything exterior to that world jar: her family photo, patent leather overnight case. Yet her ties to those things have been erased as she clung to them. She is a nun now, forsaking all ties for a greater good. Communion tablet - religious imagery used again.


All she wants is silence and peace and those tulips nag her and taunt her. The tulips are personified like awful babies; they mirror her wound, their color is an echo of what she holds. They are insidious and weigh her down despite their apparent lightness; they suck her oxygen and force her to look at herself; she is eyed. All she wants is anonymity. Happiness was well as long as it didn't commit itself. Now the tulips are invading that space with their sound. The tulips are like dangerous animals and should be barred; they're like an African cat ready to devour her, yet, they make her aware of her heartbeat. Her heart loves her, wants her to live and the water she tastes comes from the country of health. It's like life is using the tulips to make her want to live whether she wants to or not.


Cut


She compares cutting her thumb instead of an onion much better and fulfilling. Imagery of skin like a lifeless hat, like a scalped pilgrim (because of the blood). The blood trickling out she compares to Redcoats and she celebrates the event with a bottle of pink fizz. She doesn't know whose side the Redcoats are on. She takes painkillers and compares them to kamikazes, saboteurs perhaps of the exhilarating feeling of the pain? Uses imagery of dried blood, "small mill of silence" as if somehow, the open wound is important because it's not stifled, whereas the bandage kills the 'heart' of the wound. Seems like the wound is trying to escape its trappings; "how you jump - Trepanned veteran"


Elm


The narrator is addressed to by the elm? The elm tells her that she has known the bottom, the worst of things and thus doesn't fear it anymore. Is the sound of the sea  madness or discontent? Love is personified as a horse and the more she chases after it the faster it goes away. Maybe the galloping horse is a nightmare as well? with the imagery of the pillow being a turf and head being a stone? Sound of poisons, like the rain and the product is arsenic: maybe contemplation of suicide? Narrator and/or speaker speaks of sunsets and sunburn, and the cumulating climax of the shriek (stripped to pieces because of the heat) The barrenness of the moon also hurts her, yet its light as well. Seems she is imbued by the moon's essence " Or perhaps I have caught her". Yet she releases the moon diminished and flat and it gives her nightmares. Maybe it was a miscarriage? She wants to scream nightly, looking for something to love; maybe the lost child. Dark feeling inside of her that sleeps; the dead child? Or on the contrary a healthy fetus and it scares her with its imperceptible movements "soft feathery turnings"? The clouds are the faces of those she loves. Yet they are ghostly "pale irretrievables"....A face haunts her in the strangles of branches. One memory, one memory of a person, "it petrifies the will". The "isolate slow faults" kill kill kill. Maybe the memory, the regret of the said haunting person allows her to be killed emotionally by that person?


You're


"A clean slate with your own face on" yet it is very ironical seeing as the person has been compared to a great many things in  the poem!!! The person seems to be happiest on his/her hands, mute, is a "high riser", enjoys snugness yet is always sought after like mail; is as jumpy as a Mexican bean. It seems all these traits the narrator observes in that person, for all her comparisons, she considers very unique traits.


Fever 103


"The tongues of hell are dull" she uses imagery of Cerberus guardian of the underworld, yet its powers are not scary or creepy, it is ineffective; incapable of licking clean sin. Smoke "rolls away from her", like love. The smoke will not rise but sluggishly travel the globe and choking the weak in all their forms. Strange imagery of the baby, with the orchid hanging ghastly over it, yet it is dead from radiation. Radiation theme is continued with Hiroshima, "adulterers" bathing in sin and which the radiation eats in. The imagery becomes more concrete as she describes how she is physically feeling ; the sheets grow heavy on her; she's been having the fever for 3 days and the water  makes her ill; ironically as water is one of the purest forms. She is too pure for the speaker and anyone, even water! Her skin and face is like a Japanese lantern, too expensive and delicate. Because the fever is rendering her like  this or something more.... The fever gives her heat and she is a big camellia pulsing; but she seems to be talking about her personality, different from the norm. The temperature is going up, she is going up.... to Paradise attended by all things pink but not by anyone else, not even god it seems?! "My selves dissolving, old whore petticoats" interesting imagery; like all of her, her past sins are gone now she is going to heaven.


Daddy


He died before his time, yet she had to kill him...she used to pray to recover him, which are two absolute contrary actions. Sense of alienation with him; she could never sense where he was, could never talk with him. She compares herself to a Jew and every German is her father. She's been shipped from concentration camp to another. Her tongue was stuck in a barb wire snare.She sets up contrast between what makes her different "strange luck, Taroc pack" and what makes him an Aryan and thus her enemy "Luftwaffe and mustache". He scares her. Every woman is a fascist is a slur against her mother? Mother who fell in love with a brutish heart, a swastika so black nothing comes through? Image of him at the blackboard scares her, yet after his death when she's ten she tries to come back to him in any way.... But she always stopped in her attempts and so she tries to create similar man to him, who she wants to marry. This ghost man, this vampire has abused her for seven years but it seems she's killed him. Her father as a vampire now can rest in peace for her actions have staked him and people dislike him now. It seems they knew who he was all along and it takes her time to actually see it.




The Bee Meeting


All the people seem prepared for something but she is not ready with her "sleeveless summery dress". The secretary of bees robes her so the bees can't get her, but she is afraid. All the people seem to be dressed the same way; as knights. Hawthorn etherizing its children like when she is dressed to resemble the people? She cannot run away and she has to see the hive which pure and waiting. Maybe like the narrator is trying to be herself if only she was left alone? They are hunting the queen but she is old and crafty, yet the new virgins lie in wait. Maybe the narrator wishes she were the queen? Clever and uncatchable? The virgins are moved but not killed; the queen doesn't appear to save them. The narrator is tired and wonders whose white casket is lying there in the grove. Maybe it is hers as she allowed herself to be changed by the village people.


The Bee Box


The box is compared to the casket of a baby. It is locked and she can't see what's inside, yet she wants to know what is inside. There is no darkness, but a small grid, a grid that swarms with blackness. A whole crowd of sounds in that darkness she fears to release.She has the power to feed them or not, the power to release them or not. She is afraid of the because she is no Caesar.She wonders if they would ignore her if she turned into a tree, as she is no source of honey. Yet, she will herself become God when she sets them free. It seems like this was the final decision all along as the box was temporary. Maybe it was the fear of herself?


Stings


She and the bee handler handle the combs bare handed their wrists brave lilies, vulnerable. Yet she isn't afraid of the comb of being stung. She loves the hive, it is like a teacup; it is sweet and clean. yet she is afraid of greyness; of an old queen, of honey drudgers.She wonders if they will hate her, if their mediocrity will turn them against her. She is in control and tries not to care, even as another person watches them both and leaves. He comes back though and he is sweet, but the bees seem to kill him, lying on lips like lies; maybe like the sweet lies he said? For the narrator talks about having herself to recover; a queen. She wonders if she was dead or sleeping; but the queen has risen again , more terrible than before from her prison; the mausoleum where she was kept inert. Maybe it is the narrator speaking of herself and her realization of the freedom she attained from her efforts, her "bees".....


Snow White and the Seven Dwarves - Anne Sexton

Depiction of Snow White as a virgin, as a doll, as some fragile creature. Thrust of unicorn could be interpreted as penile but unicorn is a symbol of purity.... The stepmother refers to her mirror like a weather forecast (implies uncertainty of forecast) interesting foreshadowing reference to how the queen will die. Eerie reference to the Queen as a cannibalism ; she actually wants to eat Snow White's heart in contrast to the original story. She also notices the physical manifestations of her age also in contrast to the original story. The forest is like a labyrinth with the animals actually directly threatening her virginity. The dwarves immediately recognize Snow White's "virgin" value. plucked daisy, soda pop are some of the modern images that are comic relief despite the dire situation with the Queen.  "She lay as still as a gold piece"; interesting imagery when the dwarves find her. Like they only value her because of her virginity. Even the author describes her as a "dumb bunny". Interesting twist from original story where the prince himself ages from waiting for Snow White to wake up.  Intriguing diversion from original story as well: the Queen is warned of what will her befall her if she puts on the shoes but she puts them on anyways. Creepy allusion to Snow White at the end, with the mirror as if she will keep on the Queen's tradition.

Bosswell " 'Black Phones': Postmodern Poetics in the Holocaust Poetry of Sylvia Plath":

references to Holocaust scandalous because it was confessional and/or she dared relate to such an intense tragedy of the Jews' suffering? controversy lies in it can't be related to: bad daddy vs. holocaust doesn't compare: emotional plagiarism; theatrical act elevated to art form. In her defense she says things like "it feels like", distinction between art and reality; regeneration to perform for audience via her art. Lady Lazarus is a pastiche of past and modern femme fatales.... also her poems are pastiches of her favorite works. Prostitute/poet and echo that Holocaust was mostly perpetuated by men....Art can distort or commodify public memory. Telephone form used in most of her poems; allusions, call and response... Deafness of memory and distortion through language; she shows absent history through symbolic imagery; poem is a black phone that is useless and conveys incommunicability of vocabulary, ideas...."Lending structure to the unsaid through its form"summarizes the heart of the effectiveness/controversy of Plath's poetry.

Greenberg & Klaver  "Mad Girls’ Love Songs"

Plath as idol for teenage girls; an interesting poet but with stigma of depression, bad marriage and suicide. Some of her poetry is stereotyped. Sylvia Plath cult is there for different reasons: drama, or depression, or strength of poetry..... Plath helped girls understand themselves better. emotional relatibility or linguistic complexity? confessional poetry. Desire to idol either the "sane" poet or the "crazy" poet. emergence in pop culture of women writers; appealed to some but was some gross caricatures to others. Love and shame mirror: beauty ideals and destruction/angst. Suspended adolescence in her poems. "outlaw" mystique. controversy about confessional poems; claims Plath's characters were generalized. Themes that appeal to teens: Insider/outsider rhetoric, marriage, defective applicant, physical vulnerability. Did not being a housewife imply suspended adolescence? Girl poet, mom poet and artist. Plath's poetry doesn't necessarily offer closure; transformation. Is Plath's poetry self-pitying? Does poetry need to highlight culture not the girl? Cultural poem vs. imaginative poem. Olds mirrored Plath in the frankness of the confessions, like sexuality. "...very different one than Olds and Rosemurgy chose: that sense of mystery, of blanks left open in the poem, of prizing slipperiness and symbol- ogy over sense." Female poets imitate now Plath's rhyme, sound. "So contemporary poets can be “Plathy” in any number of ways: through a dark, witty, mythic approach to experiences of womanhood; through powerful and self-possessed narrative; through a nursery-rhyme- inflected attention to creepy and powerful sonics; or any combination there-"