Oh, Sylvia

Words - Sylvia Plath

I feel as though this poem is another lamenting her lack of recognition as a poet. Otherwise, I don't know what the title could mean. I believe the image she depicts of the tree being chopped is a metaphor for her work's being "cut down."

The echoes of which she speaks sound, I believe, like horses as they run away. The echoes return in the penultimate stanza as dry words and riderless horses.

The water striving to re-establish its mirror could be interpreted as a symbolic representation of Plath's striving to establish herself as a poet. The rock the drops and turns may be one in the same with the white skull eaten by weedy greens. This imagery sets a desolate picture to reinforce the hopelessness of the tone.

"From the bottom of the pool, fixed stars/ Govern a life." That sounds like another metaphor. Her hopes are drowning under the weight of her predetermined destiny to remain unknown.

Residual Nabokov Resentment?

It's a whole new spin on Spring! Huzzah!

It's not really huzzah-worthy, though, because this one is pretty depressing. It's okay, though, because it doesn't feel like poetry to me unless it's depressing. True story.

Anyway, I was intrigued by the fact that the only incontrovertible evidence that the speaker's husband has died is in the title. I wondered if I would have assumed he had died if I hadn't read the title, but now I can never know, because I did read the title--which, by the way, I feel is proof that there is indeed such a thing as reading, so take that, Nabokov.

Now, let's get back to the Spring thing. This time of year is "poignant" because spring is affiliated so closely with new life--blooming, budding trees, resurrection and whatnot. The lady's husband is dead, which is decidedly the opposite of living. Also, this meadow seems to remind her of her husband. For this reason, the son seems to be trying to coerce her into returning there to remember and mourn and move on. When the widow hears this, however, she envisions, rather than a rejuvenation, a sinking into the marsh which, to the reader, feels permanent, as though she might consider her son's advice only to join her husband in death. While the son intends the white trees "in the distance" to inspire a hope for the future, they only seem to further depress his mother.

Hopping.

"Spring" contained some lovely alliteration, which always just makes everything better. We had "long and lovely and lush" weeds in wheels, and there were five consecutive lines that began with the "th-" sound.

Also, there was an allusion to the Garden of Eden, which brings about the whole theme of the poem. Youth is finite; innocence is temporary, as we recall from Adam and Eve's first sin. Likewise, spring doesn't last forever. Winter inevitably arrives.

EB blogged about how the poem reminded her of Easter, and I could see that; I also pointed out that the author's name is Hopkins, which is just a silly coincidence, but nonetheless.... The Garden of Eden is unquestionably religious imagery, as is "heavens" and "sinning" "Christ, lord." "O maid's child" could refer to Jesus, which would make the final stanza an invocation on behalf of the children. The speaker hopes Christ will save the "girl and boy" before they lose their innocence to sin.

Cold

When I read "Those Winter Sundays," I interpreted it as a grown (wo)man looking back on her younger years, spent in a home with chronic apathy-inducing tension. It felt like there was just so much anger that she couldn't muster the strength for reciprocal anger.

The imagery of the poem fits the title; it's wintery. The air is cold and dry, as is the atmosphere. The "fire" image accentuates this, which might be juxtaposition. Also, the fire and the shined shoes point out a second message of the poem. The speaker seems to regret his or her lack of gratitude toward the father figure. This regret combined with the specific mention of Sundays bring to light the possibility of a religious thread. The father could mean the Father, for our gratitude toward Him will always be a little bit insufficient, so regret for this seems logical.

"Immanent" is not a misspelling. I thought it was a misspelling.

"The Convergence of the Twain"--that's the point where two things meet! Thanks, Trevor!

Anyway, the things meeting are almost indisputably the Titanic and the glacier that drowned it. This becomes more evident when one remembers to read the subtitles: "Lines on the loss of the 'Titanic.'" The "vaingloriousness" of the affair is evidenced in the mentioning of such items as mirrors and jewels which have been ravaged by "salamandrine fires."

Also, the "Immanent Will" seems to me like a description of fate. Is it personification if it's capitalized like that? Probably it is not. Similarly, I believe "Spinner of the Years" to be a metaphor-type-thing for God.

The format of this poem was intriguing as well.... Why eleven stanzas, Mr. Hardy?

Ambiguity?

As it turns out, I rather like this poetry. I remember writing my Famous American Day report on Emily Dickinson back in third grade and really wanting to like her poetry. I didn't, though. I also really hated the costume.

Since I'm apparently talking about Emily Dickinson, I'll go ahead and make this post about "I felt a Funeral, in my Brain."

Worth noting is the seemingly random capitalization; actually, she seems to have aimed for nouns, which is oddly German of her. In any case, her perspective, arguably, could be from the casket, or "Box," in question. If one takes that stance, then the funeral is her own. Although I feel that is the most satisfactory interpretation, this site says that she felt traumatized by several deaths which were not her own, which I suppose she might have had trouble removing from her brain.

This ambiguity receives no clarification from the abrupt end. Dickinson seems to either lose her mind or die, mid-thought. The cynic in me also includes the possibility that she merely grew bored or frustrated in the writing of that particular poem and tossed her pen aside. More likely, though, she lost her mind from the mourning for the funeral in her brain--a funeral which was likely a metaphor for the mourning itself rather than a literal funeral, as funerals aren't things to be "felt [in the] brain." If in fact the funeral she imagined was her own, she was already dead, and she can't be expected to die in the writing of this poem. At the same time, though, if she's dead, can we expect her to be watching her own funeral anyway? Well... maybe.

The Man I Killed: (not me... Tim O'Brien... but not him either, actually)

This chapter shows more of Tim O'Brien's vivid imagination. He imagines himself into people's souls and then writes down what he sees and publishes it, and we the readers end up with page after page of highly realistic semi-truth.

"He loved mathematics," page 121, is when I plucked up my proverbial grain of salt. Nobody loves mathematics, O'Brien. You can't fool me.

In all seriousness, though, he ground (grinded? ground.) that image into our brains. I suppose it's called imagery. The dainty wrists, the star-shaped hole, the jaw in the neck-- I didn't have to look back in the book to think of those descriptions, and I read them half a book ago. O'Brien said it so many times that it's completely convincing that he remembers it vividly himself. It's as if he's so startled/scarred by it still today that he doesn't even notice he's repeating himself. Maybe it's more that he wants to be sure we catch that description even if the rest of the chapter zooms in one eye and out the other.