Poetry

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Poetry

• Sylvia Plath

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Poetry Sylvia Plath

• Born October 27, 1932 in Boston, Mass.
• Moved to Winthrop, Mass. In 1936 close to ocean
  which fascinated Sylvia.
• During this time Sylvias father was stricken
  with lung cancer, but refused treatment.
• Sylvias father passed away in 1940.
• Sylvias first poem was published in 1940 in
  Bostons newspapers

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Plath Early Life

• Plaths family moved away from the ocean to
  Wellesley, Mass. When Sylvia was ten.
• Sylvia excelled in school, winning many awards
  and scholarships while in middle school.
• Won Honorable Mention in National Scholastics
  Literary Contest
• Won Achievement Certificate from Carnegie
  Institute.

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Plath High School Years

• Entered Bradford High School in 1947.
• Graduated in 1950 with a full scholarship to
  Smith College.
• In August 1950, Seventeen magazine published her
  short story, And Summer Will Not Come Again.
• The Christian Science Monitor published her poem,
  Bitter Strawberries.

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Plath

• In 1953, Sylvia won the chance to be a guest
  editor at Mademoiselle magazine in NY.
• She spent the summer there and upon her return
  home in late July, she learned that she had been
  rejected from a writing class at Harvard summer
  school.
• Exhausted and depressed from her stint in NY, the
  rejection amplified her depression.

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Plath

• Her mother sought psychiatric help resulting in a
  series of unprofessional shock treatments.
• On August 24, 1953, Sylvia tried to commit
  suicide.
• She left a note saying she had gone for a walk,
  then proceeded to swallow a large number of
  sleeping pills, then crawled into a small space
  under her house.
• She was discovered three days later and rushed to
  a hospital.
• She spent five months at a private hospital which
  was paid for by Mrs. Olive Higgins Prouty, a
  generous benefactor of Plath.
• In 1950, Plath had won a scholarship from the
  Olive Higgins Prouty fund.
• This time of her life is chronicled in her book,
  The Bell Jar.

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Plath

• In 1954, Sylvia won several poetry contests at
  Smith College.
• She graduated summa cum laude and won another
  scholarship this time to Cambridge University,
  England
• Sylvia had great academic success at Cambridge.
• Met Ted Hughes, the British poet in 1956.

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Plath

• Sylvia married Hughes just four months later on
  June 16, 1956.
• In 1957, the couple moved to Massachusetts
• Sylvia began teaching English at her former
  college Smith.
• The next year, they moved again to Boston.
• Here Plath wrote and attended poetry classes at
  Boston University ( taught by Robert Lowell).

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Plath/Hughes

• They remained in the US until 1959, when they
  returned to London, England.
• The very next year, their first child, Frieda,
  was born.
• That same year Plath published her first major
  work a collection of poems called The Colossus
  and Other Poems.

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Plath/Hughes

• In 1961, Plath became pregnant again, but had a
  miscarriage.
• After this, they moved to Devon, England.
• In 1962, Plaths son was born, Nicholas.
• This same year the couples marital troubles
  began.
• That summer, Sylvia learned of Teds infidelity
  and they separated.

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Plath/Hughes

• Platt moved with her children to a flat in
  London.
• Here she started writing poems quickly and
  voluminously.
• In 1963, The Bell Jar was published under a
  pseudonym, Victoria Lucas.
• Plath lived just long enough to see her book
  published tragically committing suicide on
  February 11, 1963.

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Plaths Poems Metaphor

• Written in first person
• Rhyme scheme aaaabcdad
• Use of simple sentences
• Very few adjectives due to use of metaphors
• Consists of nine lines of poetry
• Each line has nine syllables
• Represents nine months of pregnancy

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Metaphor

• Each line has metaphorical meanings and symbols.
• Elephant, ponderous house, ivory refers to her
  size, slow movement with a huge stomach.
• Red fruit, melon, two tendrils refers to fetus
  that is strolling on two tendrils (ovaries)
• Fine timbers (house), this loaf refers stomach
  growing the way loaf of bread rises before being
  baked.

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Metaphor

• Symbols
• Money, fat purse represents weight she has
  acquired due to pregnancy also refers to fetus
  which makes her appear fatter.
• Bag of green apples causes one to bloat also
  green apples can cause nausea.
• Cow in calf reference to state of pregnancy.

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Metaphor

• The Train shows possible regret of being
  pregnant but there is no concrete sign that
  this sentence shows the regret so it cannot be
  proved that this poem has a negative, gloomy
  atmosphere.

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Mirrors by Sylvia Plath

• Use of Personification
• Stanza I Addressed by an inanimate object
• Sets out to define itself and its function
• Has no preconceptions because it is without
  memory or ability to reason.
• It is omnivorous swallows everything it
  confronts without making judgments that might
  blur, mist, or distort.

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Mirror

• It is god-like in its objectivity and
  incapability of emotional response.
• Most of the time it meditates on the opposite
  wall, faithfully reproducing its colors and
  design until darkness intrudes or intervenes.
• These happenstances occur regularly.

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Mirror

• Stanza II The mirror becomes a perfectly
  reflecting lake, unruffled by any disturbance
• Woman bends over the lake like the mythical
  Narcissus.
• No matter how deeply she searches, she sees only
  her actuality or surface truth.
• Unlike Narcissus, the speaker cannot fall in love
  with what she sees.

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Mirror Stanza II

• The candles and moon to which the woman turns are
  liars capable of lending untruthful shadows and
  romantic highlights unlike the lake
  surface/mirror, which renders only faithful
  images.
• Unhappy by what she sees, she weeps and wrings
  her hands.
• The youth and beauty once reflected during her
  morning visits are drowned in the metaphorical
  depths of the lake.
• What slowly emerges from those depths is the
  terrifying fact that she is aging.

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Mad Girls Love Song

• Type of poem called a Villanelle
• Consists of nineteen lines
• Six stanzas
• Each stanza has three lines except the last which
  has four lines.
• The most important rhyme is between the first and
  third lines.

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Mad Girls Love Song

• Written in 1954 while Plath was a student at
  Smith College.
• Tackles feelings of alienation.
• Plath often composed Villanelles while sitting in
  Chemistry class.
• Contains many germinations of later Plath
  writings.

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Mad Girls Love Song

• Religious reference is brought to bear on her
  personal life.
• Creates a deft dance between the real world and
  internal (imaginary) one.
• The poems extreme narcissism, I shut my eyes,
  and all the world drops dead, makes it closely
  resemble her later poems, especially those in her
  most famous work, Ariel.

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Mad Girls Love Song

• Introduces readers to a unique protagonist who is
  an unconscious practitioner of solipsism.
• Belief that world exists in her mind and nobody
  else exists except as highly defined figments of
  imagination.

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Mad Girls Love Song

• First Stanza reveals solipsism with opening
  lines.
• Narrator believes world to be born and razed
  with the opening of her eyes.
• The world exists only when she is aware of it
  through sensation.
• Final line Has the protagonist invented an
  imaginary friend.
• Is she simply dreaming up the world around her?
• Unaware of her own actions, the speaker continues
  her introspection unhindered by the consequences
  of her findings.

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Mad Girls Love Song

• Second Stanza Imagery leads protagonist to
  confusion
• Why is she experiencing such vivid color and
  movement?
• She is experiencing a false memory of the worst
  kind an event that has never occurred
• Conditioned to respond our unknowing solipsist
  closes her eyes to reset the world.
• Instantly her universe contains a gentle lover
  who woos her beyond her wildest expectations.

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Mad Girls Love Song

• Her lover says everything she wishes to hear and
  everything she wishes to do.
• Closing line written whimsically as if her
  lover is too good to be true.
• The false memory of the first half of stanza is
  already forgotten in a shroud of self-deception.

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Mad Girls Love Song

• Protagonist undergoes a awakening in the third
  stanza
• One in which her universe crumbles
• Good and evil myth created (by her) for a need
  of feeling constrained and righteous.
• Good and evil, outside of the reference frame of
  her mind, do not exist.
• God and Satan become tired metaphors as she comes
  to the realization that she is the creator of her
  world.

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Mad Girls Love Song

• Everything (table she dines at, pillow she cries
  in, boy she first kissed, men who break her
  heart) has been created by herself in an
  elaborate web of self-deception to perhaps
  obtain happiness while being unwise to the truth
  of her creations.
• But now she has learned the truth.
• When the foiled pair of God and Satan disappear,
  the protagonist herself is left as the only moral
  compass.

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Mad Girls Love Song

• Final Stanza appears to come after a period of
  contemplation on the part of the protagonist.
• After her awakening in the previous stanza, she
  has thought about the implications of herself
  being in charge of her own world.
• She has created a world which is fickle and
  ever-changing.
• She has created a love that is distant and
  unattainable.
• She is wishing now that she knew of her creation
  from the first so that she could have done a
  better job.
• She wishes she could have created a world more to
  her needs instead of ephemeral wants.