‘Poppies in July’ by Sylvia Plath is a personal poem about the poet’s emotional experience. It details her mental state after learning about her husband’s affairs
Little poppies, little hell flames,
Do you do no harm?
You flicker. I cannot touch you.
I put my hands among the flames. Nothing burns
The poem ‘Sheep In Fog’ describes Sylvia Plath’s feelings of anxiety, uncertainty, helplessness, and depression.
The hills step off into whiteness.
People or stars
Regard me sadly, I disappoint them.
‘Stars Over the Dordogne’ by Sylvia Plath is a personal, confessional poem. It provides the reader insight into the poet’s battle with depression.
Stars are dropping thick as stones into the twiggy
Picket of trees whose silhouette is darker
Than the dark of the sky because it is quite starless.
The woods are a well. The stars drop silently.
‘The Arrival of the Bee Box’ by Sylvia Plath depicts a speaker’s chaotic mind. The poet uses the bee box to represent how confined the speaker feels and the bees as a demonstration of her thought patterns.
They might ignore me immediately
In my moon suit and funeral veil.
I am no source of honey
So why should they turn on me?
‘The Colossus’ by Sylvia Plath explores the poet’s relationship with her father. Through incredibly original imagery, her father is depicted as a fallen statue and her as his keeper.
I shall never get you put together entirely,
Pieced, glued, and properly jointed.
Mule-bray, pig-grunt and bawdy cackles
Proceed from your great lips.
In ‘The Night Dances’, Plath reflects on the fleeting human experience and the inevitability of death and emptiness.
A smile fell in the grass.
Irretrievable!
And how will your night dances
Lose themselves. In mathematics?
‘The Times are Tidy’ by Sylvia Plath is a poem about the past and present. The speaker expresses her dissatisfaction with society.
Unlucky the hero born
In this province of the stuck record
Where the most watchful cooks go jobless
And the mayor's rôtisserie turns
‘To Time’ by Sylvia Plath explores the meaning of time. It depicts time as a machine that moves through history, depleting it of all purpose.
Today we move in jade and cease with garnet
Amid the ticking jeweled clocks that mark
Our years. Death comes in a casual steel car, yet
We vaunt our days in neon and scorn the dark.
‘You’re’ by Sylvia Plath is an ode to an unborn child. It explores the speaker’s expectations of motherhood and what emotions she’s going to feel.
Clownlike, happiest on your hands,
Feet to the stars, and moon-skulled,
Gilled like a fish. A common-sense
Thumbs-down on the dodo's mode.
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