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Rikkilynn Cavelli
Mrs. O’shane
English 11 honors
8 May 2012
Poetry Project
Table of Contents:
Biography
Poem 1 and analysis: “Child”
Poem 2 and analysis: “Family Reunion”
Poem 3 and analysis: “Morning Song”
Music video:
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Sylvia Plath was born on 27 October 1932, at Massachusetts Memorial Hospital,
in the Jennie M Robinson Memorial maternity building in Boston. She was a very
popular and a straight A student. She won a scholarship to Smith College in 1950
and even then, she had an enviable list of publications. While at Smith, she wrote
over four hundred poems. However, beneath the surface of her seeming
perfection were some grave discontinuities, some that was probably caused by
the death of her father, only at the age of eight. During the summer after her
junior year in college, Sylvia made her first attempt at suicide by overdosing on
sleeping pills. After a period of recovery, which involved electroshock and
psychotherapy she once again pursued academic and literary success,
graduating from Smith summa cum laude in 1955 and winning a Fulbright
scholarship to study in Cambridge, England. In 1956 she married Ted Hughes,
an English poet, and in 1960, at the age of twenty-eight she published her first
book, The Colossus in England. She and Hughes settled for a brief time in an
English country village in Devon, England. However, less than two years after the
birth of their first child the marriage disintegrated. In the winter if 1962-63, one of
the coldest in centuries, Sylvia lived in a small flat in London, with her two
children, ill with the flu and nearly broke. The difficulties in her life seened to
reinforce her need to write and she often worked between four and eight a.m.,
before the children awoke. She would sometimes finish a poem a day. She would
sometimes write poems all day. In her last works it seems as though some
deeper and more powerful self had grabbed control of her. In those poems death
is given a cruel, physical allure and psychic pain becomes almost tactile. On
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February 11, 1963, Sylvia Plath succeeded in killing herself with cooking gas at
the age of thirty.
Poem 1
“Child”
Your clear eye is the one absolutely beautiful thing.
I want to fill it with color and ducks,
The zoo of the new
Whose names you meditate ---
April snowdrop, Indian pipe,
Little
Stalk without wrinkle,
Pool in which images
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Should be grand and classical
Not this troublous
Wringing of hands, this dark
Ceiling without a star
This poem is about someone wanting to fill up their childs life with joy and
laughter. It’s like trying to bring sunshine and happy things through life. Instead of
dull, blue things that bring you down, it’s more of a happy moment. They want to
bring out the best things for their child and give them the best happy life that they
can. Sylvia Plath is describing a happy setting for a child. With animals,
sunshine, and beautiful things in life.
Poem 2
“Family Reunion”
Outside in the street I hear
A car door slam; voices coming near;
Incoherent scraps of talk
And high heels clicking up the walk;
The doorbell rends the noonday heat
With copper claws;
A second's pause.
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The dull drums of my pulses beat
Against a silence wearing thin.
The door now opens from within.
Oh, hear the clash of people meeting ---
The laughter and the screams of greeting :
Fat always, and out of breath,
A greasy smack on every cheek
From Aunt Elizabeth;
There, that's the pink, pleased squeak
Of Cousin Jane, out spinster with
The faded eyes
And hands like nervous butterflies;
While rough as splintered wood
Across them all
Rasps the jarring baritone of Uncle Paul;
The youngest nephew gives a fretful whine
And drools at the reception line.
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Like a diver on a lofty spar of land
Atop the flight of stairs I stand.
A whirlpool leers at me,
I cast off my identity
And make the fatal plunge.
In this poem, Sylvia Plath is talking about a family reunion where all family meets and
gets together. She describes family members and what to expect out of each of them.
She describes it perfectly as if were a routine thing. This poem is meant for family and
family get togethers. She could also be saying that each family is different and that her
family is different as well. Each family is not the same, and they all have different
qualities. Sylvia Plath could be saying appreciate your family; you don’t see them often.
Poem 3
“Morning Song”
Love set you going like a fat gold watch.
The midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bald cry
Took its place among the elements.
Our voices echo, magnifying your arrival. New statue.
In a drafty museum, your nakedness
Shadows our safety. We stand round blankly as walls.
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I'm no more your mother
Than the cloud that distills a mirror to reflect its own slow
Effacement at the wind's hand.
All night your moth-breath
Flickers among the flat pink roses. I wake to listen:
A far sea moves in my ear.
One cry, and I stumble from bed, cow-heavy and floral
In my Victorian nightgown.
Your mouth opens clean as a cat's. The window square
Whitens and swallows its dull stars. And now you try
Your handful of notes;
The clear vowels rise like balloons.
This poem compares a lot of things. She’s trying to talk about her rough night and all the
thoughts she’s had through out the night. She is talking about it in the morning and by
that, she compares a lot of things. Sylvia Plath is comparing good thoughts with some
bad thoughts. It seems more depressing thoughts from her. It is talking about the past
comparing things. Its like a flash back in her mind.