Poetry Presentations
Take notes on the following requirements
of your presentations.
Ask any questions that come to mind, so
that you are clear about this assignment.
Remember creativity is good, but not at
the cost of comprehension. Keep slides
simple.
Use MLA format to cite material and
create a works cited page.
Project requirements:
5 minute presentation
All research/quotations cited in correct MLA format
Professional presentation
Pick one poem in our literature book (that we have not studied)
Create a Powerpoint that helps you to teach the poem to the
class
You will be demonstrating your analysis, research, and
presentation skills
Meet all requirements on the rubric
200 pts
“Daddy”
By Sylvia Plath
Kara Ellis
English 12
5/11/2012
Author slide



: (picture, biographical info, author’s genre, etc)
Poet and novelist. Among many
poems, she produced only novel, The
Bell Jar. It was published after her
death in 1963.
Married to Ted Hughes (an English
poet)
A Confessional Poet who “put the
speaker herself at the center of her
poems in such a way as to make her
psychological vulnerability and shame
an embodiment of her civilization”
(Uroff 1).
– Plath is known for using her own life in her
poetry as a way to amplify a poems
feelings or come to some sort of self
revelation.
2nd Author slide:
Plath’s father died when she was 8 years old.
She has written more than one poem about her
father. The other famous one is called “The
Colossus” and talks about her father as a god.
Plath’s poem “Daddy” is about her feelings
towards her father and her feelings about her life
after his death.
She wrote this poem as her marriage to Ted was
crumbling and her feelings of depression were
consuming her.
Other Works
The Bell Jar – novel published
after her death. Details the
mental breakdown of a young
woman. Semi-autobiographical.
Ariel – Plath’s final collection of
poetry. This book has the poem
“Daddy” in it.
Crossing the Water
The Colossus
Literary Time Period
What was going on in literature at the time
that my poem was written?
– Who were the big names?
– What where the predominant genres of
literature?
Time Period
How does my poem fit with the time period it was written in? (3 bullet
points at least)
Timeline
Daddy
You do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot
For thirty years, poor and white,
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.
Daddy, I have had to kill you.
You died before I had time—
Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,
Ghastly statue with one gray toe
Big as a Frisco seal
And a head in the freakish Atlantic
Where it pours bean green over blue
In the waters off beautiful Nauset.
I used to pray to recover you.
Ach, du.
In the German tongue, in the Polish town
Scraped flat by the roller
Of wars, wars, wars.
But the name of the town is common.
My Polack friend
So I never could tell where you
Put your foot, your root,
I never could talk to you.
The tongue stuck in my jaw
It stuck in a barb wire snare.
Ich, ich, ich, ich,
I could hardly speak.
I thought every German was you
And the language obscene.
The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna
Are not very pure or true.
With my gipsy ancestress and my weird luck
And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack
I may be a bit of a Jew.
I have always been scared of you,
With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.
And your neat mustache
And your Aryan eye, bright blue.
Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You—
Not God but a swastika
So black no sky could squeak through.
Every woman adores a Fascist,
The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart of a brute like you.
You stand at the blackboard, daddy,
In the picture I have of you,
A cleft in your chin instead of your foot
But no less a devil for that, no not
Any less the black man who
Bit my pretty red heart in two.
I was ten when they buried you.
At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do.
But they pulled me out of the sack
And they stuck me together with glue.
And then I knew what to do.
I made a model of you,
A man in black with a Meinkampf look
And a love of the rack and the screw.
And I said I do, I do.
So daddy, I'm finally through.
The black telephone's off at the root,
The voices just can't worm through.
If I've killed one man, I've killed two–
The vampire who said he was you
And drank my blood for a year,
Seven years, if you want to know.
Daddy, you can lie back now.
There's a stake in your fat black heart
And the villagers never liked you.
They are dancing and stamping on you.
They always knew it was you.
Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through.
Daddy
You do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot
For thirty years, poor and white,
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.
Daddy, I have had to kill you.
You died before I had time—
Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,
Ghastly statue with one gray toe
Big as a Frisco seal
And a head in the freakish Atlantic
Where it pours bean green over blue
In the waters off beautiful Nauset.
I used to pray to recover you.
Ach, du.
In the German tongue, in the Polish town
Scraped flat by the roller
Of wars, wars, wars.
But the name of the town is common.
My Polack friend
So I never could tell where you
Put your foot, your root,
I never could talk to you.
The tongue stuck in my jaw
It stuck in a barb wire snare.
Ich, ich, ich, ich,
I could hardly speak.
I thought every German was you
And the language obscene.
The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna
Are not very pure or true.
With my gipsy ancestress and my weird luck
And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack
I may be a bit of a Jew.
I have always been scared of you,
With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.
And your neat mustache
And your Aryan eye, bright blue.
Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You—
Not God but a swastika
So black no sky could squeak through.
Every woman adores a Fascist,
The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart of a brute like you.
You stand at the blackboard, daddy,
In the picture I have of you,
A cleft in your chin instead of your foot
But no less a devil for that, no not
Any less the black man who
Bit my pretty red heart in two.
I was ten when they buried you.
At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do.
But they pulled me out of the sack
And they stuck me together with glue.
And then I knew what to do.
I made a model of you,
A man in black with a Meinkampf look
And a love of the rack and the screw.
And I said I do, I do.
So daddy, I'm finally through.
The black telephone's off at the root,
The voices just can't worm through.
If I've killed one man, I've killed two–
The vampire who said he was you
And drank my blood for a year,
Seven years, if you want to know.
Daddy, you can lie back now.
There's a stake in your fat black heart
And the villagers never liked you.
They are dancing and stamping on you.
They always knew it was you.
Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through.
Rather than simply having a rhyme scheme
throughout the poem, Plath uses assonance
to create a specific rhythm that runs through
the whole poem. This style is more
characteristic of modern poetry rather than
Romantic or Victorian poetry.
Assonance = the repetition of vowels sounds.
End Rhyme= a word agreeing with another in
terminal sound.
Internal Rhyme = rhyme occurring within a
line of poetry
She uses both end rhyme and internal rhyme
to push this nursery rhyme rhythm. It forces
the reader to pause at the end of each line and
creates that rocking motion, which can then
create a eerie atmosphere.
Symbolism
Plath’s poem is really about her
feelings towards her father. He
died when she was young and she
is angry with him for dying. The
main symbol in the poem is the
image of a Nazi and a Jew.
She compares her father to a Nazi to
emphasize how she is the victim
(Jew) and he is the one who has
caused her suffering (Nazi).
An engine, an engine
Chuffing me off like a Jew.
A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.
I began to talk like a Jew.
I think I may well be a Jew.
I have always been scared of you
With your Luftwaffe, your
gobbledygoo.
And your neat mustache
And your Aryan eye, bright blue.
Panser-man, panzer-man, O You—
Other literary devices
metaphor: a direct comparison of two unlike things
– “Daddy, I have had to kill you / You died before I had time—” (6-7)
– She didn’t really kill her father. This metaphor means that she wants to get him out
of her head .
Internal Conflict: a struggle that takes place within the mind of a
character.
– “I never could talk to you.” (24) ; “At twenty I tried to die / And get back, back, back
to you. / I thought even the bones would do.” (58-60)
– She hates her father for the pain he caused her, but she misses him. She wants a
relationship/connection with him, but she cannot have it because he died too soon.
Allusion: reference to a well known person, event, or place from
history, art, or another literary work.
– “Marble-heavy, a bag full of God, / Ghastly statue with one gray toe” (8-9) ; “A man
in black with a Meinkamp look” (65)
– Plath’s first poem about her father was called “The Colossus” and compared her
father to a statue of a god -The Colossus at Rhodes
– “Meinkamp” was Hitler’s book. She is saying that the man she married (Ted Huges)
had the same looks as her father (Nazi).
Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath
The Colossus at Rhodes
Aurelia, Otto, and Sylvia Plath
Works Cited Page
(see OWL at Purdue)
Author’s last name, First name. Title of Book. Place of Publication:
Publisher, Year of Publication. Type of Source.
Plath, Sylvia. “Daddy.” The Collected Poems: Sylvia Plath. Ed. Ted
Hughes. New York: Harper Perennial, 1992. Print.
Ramazani, Jahan. "'Daddy, I Have had to Kill You:' Plath, Rage, and the
Modern Elegy." PMLA 108.5 (Oct. 1993): 1142-1156. Rpt. in Poetry
Criticism. Ed. Elisabeth Gellert. Vol. 37. Detroit: Gale Group, 2002.
Literature Resources from Gale. Web. 26 Apr. 2011.
Uroff, M. D. "Sylvia Plath and Confessional Poetry: A Reconsideration."
Iowa Review 8.1 (1977): 104-115. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary
Criticism. Ed. Jeffrey W. Hunter and Deborah A. Schmitt. Vol. 111.
Detroit: Gale Group, 1999. Literature Resources from Gale. Web. 26
Apr. 2011.
Name of Site. Date of Posting/Revision. Name of organization affiliated
with the site (sometimes found in copyright statements). Type of Source.
Date you accessed the site.
The Purdue OWL. 26 March 2009. Purdue University Online Writing
Lab. Web. 27 March 2009.