Plath

Plath

1. Black Rook in Rainy Weather

   • "I cant honestly complain: A certain minor light may still lean incandescent Out of kitchen table or chair"
     • Even through her depression there is a light or ray of hope at the end of the tunnel
   • "A brief respite from fear of total neutrality"
     • A state which is empty of any feeling or direction
   • "with luck, Trekking stubborn through this season of fatigue, I shall patch together a content of sorts"
     • season represents her depression, never really expects to be completely free of it so decides to make the most of it
   • "Arranging and rearranging its feathers!
     • Presenting itself as best it can to the world
   • suggests gloom

2. Poppies in July

   • "little hell flames"
     • Poppies are untouchable. Have no effect
   • announces summer flowers but by end of first line poem has a sinister quality
   • "I put my hands among the flames. Nothing burns"
     • impulse for self-inflicted suffering, trying to get a reaction
   • "A mouth just bloodied"
     • reference to own life, blow taken when husband cheated on her
   • "Where are your opiates, your nauseous capsules?"
     • wishes for the drugged state the poppy is associated with. Violence or sleep are preferred to her present state
   • "But colorless. Colorless."
     • longs for escape, opiates seen as a means of releasing her into a numbed inert state where everything is...

3. Morning Song

   • "Love set you going like a fat gold watch"
     • child conceived in love,
       • simile suggests baby is precious and the moment of her birth golden but reminds us the child has entered world of time, world where transience and mortality are unalterable realities
   • Sympathise with Plath, intensely personal poem
   • morning captures sense of beginning, song captures feeling of celebration in mother
   • "bald cry", "took its place among the elements"
     • declares she has now assumed her place in the wider world, "to..."
   • "New statue In a drafty museum"
     • child is unique & precious but also conveys her vulnerability in the cold "drafty" world
   • Key theme - complex mother-child relationship. Unusual sometimes starling imagery. Tone varies - detached to affectionate
     • In stanza 2 & 3 Changes in stanza 4 rest portray the mother-child relationship - mood of happiness and contentment
     • portrayal of the different emotions experienced by a new mother. Vividly depicts the complexity of these emotions.
   • "we stand round blankly as walls"
     • Feels helpless to protect her child, seems to feel separated from child as she takes her place in the universe
   • "moth-breath", "among the flat pink roses", "a far sea"
     • underlines the fragility of baby, & suggests her delicate beauty. Plath straining to listen to child, can hear the sea
   • "One cry, and I stumble from bed"
     • attentive mother responding instantly to child's cry
   • "handful of notes; your clear vowels rise like balloons"
     • closing image appropriately joyful, baby experiments with her voice and her...

4. Mirror

   • "I am silver and exact"
     • gives itself in clear direct manner, reflects things exactly as they are
   • dark poem, reflects on number of inter-related themes. Inevitability of old age/death, our preoccupation with image, search for identity. Woman's world is dismal, cold, loveles.
     • Mirror is personified & speaks for itself, describing its relationship with a woman. Giving the mirror a voice gives poem sense of immediacy
   • "no preconceptions", "unmisted"
     • does not pre-judge, it is without bias, ensuring the image is..by any feelings.
   • "I am not cruel, only truthful"
     • mirror is cold & emotionless,
       • immediately swallows whatever it sees, reminded of the inexorable passage of time. Image captured by the mirror at a particular point will never be exactly the same again
   • "the eye of a little god"
     • sounds arrogant, implying we worship at the mirror that reflects our image
   • "Now I am a lake"
     • metaphor - flat surface of a lake reflective like mirror but lake has hidden depth so suggests connotations of danger
       • woman searching for her identity and find her way of life. Suggestion that mirror reveals more than outer physical appearance, reveals deeper realities
   • "turns to those liars, the candles or the moon"
     • light has a softening effect on her reflection
   • "tears and agitation of hands", "important to her"
     • points to woman's inner torment, fact that mirror is...idicates her insecurity
   • "drowned a young girl", "like a terrible fish"
     • lake metaphor developed, with the mirror/lake describing how the woman has..in its depths, while watching old age daily rise towards her...
       • day by day the mirror has recorded the aging of the woman, witnessing her anguish