Poetry
Sylvia Plath
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 Sylvia’s father was stricken
with lung cancer, but refused treatment.
• Sylvia’s father passed away in 1940.
• Sylvia’s first poem was published in 1940 in
Boston’s newspapers
Plath – Early Life
• Plath’s 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
Scholastic’s Literary Contest
• Won Achievement Certificate from Carnegie
Institute.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
Plath/Hughes
• In 1961, Plath became pregnant again, but
had a miscarriage.
• After this, they moved to Devon, England.
• In 1962, Plath’s son was born, Nicholas.
• This same year the couple’s marital troubles
began.
• That summer, Sylvia learned of Ted’s infidelity
and they separated.
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.
Plath’s Poems “Metaphor”
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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
“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.
“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.
“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.
“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.
“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.
“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.
“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.
“Mad Girl’s 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.
“Mad Girl’s 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.
“Mad Girl’s 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 poem’s 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.”
“Mad Girl’s 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.
“Mad Girl’s 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.
“Mad Girl’s 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.
“Mad Girl’s 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 selfdeception.
“Mad Girl’s 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.
“Mad Girl’s 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.
“Mad Girl’s 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.