Sylvia Plath - Poetry Flashcards
Morning Song
“Love set you going like a fat gold watch” - precious opening image, iambic pentameter adds a rhythmic quality - mimics ticking
“New statue. In a drafty museum, your nakedness shadows our safety” - unique, cold image - sense of unease - metaphor - shows overwhelming emotions
“And now you try / your handful of notes; the clear vowels rise like balloons - ends on a positive image & simile
Child
“Your clear eye is the one absolutely beautiful thing” - opening statement introduces the central image of the child’s eye
Longs to fill it with “colour and ducks, the zoo of the new” - protectiveness, tender emotions
“Pool in which images should be grand and classical”
Ends on disturbing note; “not this troubles wringing of hands, this dark ceiling without astar”
Mirror
“I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions” - mirror personified through short, concise statements, caesura
“The eye of a little god” - metaphor - obsession with appearance
“Now I am a lake” - stanza 2
“I see her back, and reflect it faithfully”, “I am important to her”
“In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman rises towards her day after day, like a terrible fish”
Poppies in July
“A mouth just bloodied. Little bloody skirts!” - subverts typical imagery
“If I could bleed or sleep!-‘’ - desire to escape, opiates
“But colourless. Colourless” - ‘anti-image’ in final line - contrasts vibrant red of poppies
The Arrival of the Bee Box
“The box is locked, it is dangerous” - symbolic
“With the swarmy feeling of African hands … Black on black, angrily clambering” - grotesque metaphor - slave ships
“It is like a Roman mob” → “I am not a Caesar” - feels she has no control - powerless
“Tomorrow I will be sweet God, I will set them free” - sense of hesitancy despite her emphatic language
“The box is only temporary” - final line, stands alone
→ raises paradoxical question: has the box’s contents been released through the composition of this poem?
