What Number Is Used Again and Again in the Construction and Design of Plaths Metaphors
Andrew has a great interest in all aspects of poetry and writes extensively on the subject area. His poems are published online and in print.
Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath with her first child.
Metaphors was written in March 1959 when Sylvia Plath mistakenly believed she might be significant.
In her periodical of 20th March the original title was Metaphors for a Pregnant Adult female but this was shortened for publication, which came a year later.
And so the verse form kind of looks forward - Sylvia Plath anticipates through the use of metaphor what she will be feeling like when she really is with kid. And just to confirm, she did become significant a few months afterwards, with her first child to fellow poet Ted Hughes.
From a poetic angle Metaphors is fascinating. In nine lines, each with nine syllables, the poet creates numerous images that bring to the reader's mind a variation on a theme of a swollen female parent-to-be.
The poem was included in a slim volume The Colossus, published in the UK past William Heinemann in 1960.
I'm a riddle in nine syllables,
An elephant, a ponderous house,
A melon strolling on two tendrils.
O red fruit, ivory, fine timbers!
This loaf's big with its yeasty rising.
Money's new-minted in this fat purse.
I'm a ways, a stage, a moo-cow in calf.
I've eaten a bag of green apples,
Boarded the train there's no getting off.
Metaphors is a single stanza poem of nine lines. Each line has 9 syllables in it, to coincide with the nine months of gestation of a human pregnancy. For example:
I'm / a / rid / dle / in / nine / syll / a / bles,
An / el / e / phant /, a / pond / er / ous / house,
A / mel / on stro / lling / on / two / ten / drils.
This is the poet playing with language, building up a series of exact pictures to reverberate the nine months of pregancy.
There is no set rhyme scheme but note the imperfect rhymes of certain lines - syllables/tendrils/apples...house/purse...calf/off. The poem is costless verse, with a metaphor or more than in each line.
And look out for alliteration - ii tendrils/money new-minted/moo-cow in calf - and some near internal rhyme and assonance such as riddle/syllables/melon strolling on/eaten a pocketbook of green apples.
Metaphors
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The word metaphor means carrying across, something the umbilical chord does when the embryo is growing in the womb. Sylvia Plath uses this most poetic of devices to explore her future pregnant country.
In result she is saying that she will be equal to a riddle, an elephant, a house, a melon, red fruit, ivory, fine timbers, a yeasty loaf, a fat purse, a means(to an end), a stage, a cow, a bag of light-green apples and a train.
Metaphors can be seen every bit a way into what is unknown, a vehicle for exploration. They are also a magical device for creating imagery which can assistance the mind in its agreement of the world.
In this particular poem each metaphor becomes the poet'due south physical body, helping release feelings of happiness, tension and fright.
Line 1 I'm a riddle in nine syllables
First line, kickoff metaphor. This person is a riddle, an enigma, something to be puzzled over and worked out, the answer containing nine syllables just. Riddles oft involve the ingenious employ of wordplay, imagery and lateral thinking, left brain versus right brain, earlier the definitive conclusion is arrived at.
The speaker is giving the reader a hint - in this get-go line and every other line that follows - this is a nine-fold riddle made upwardly of metaphorical images.
Line 2 An elephant, a ponderous house
A fully significant woman might well feel that she is likewise heavy, having to carry all that extra weight around. Elephants are by and large slow to move, deliberate in their action and could be described as bulky.
Here is the female parent-to-be experiencing herself as a potential matriarch, having to make decisions with the baby in listen, having to reduce move, to have things at a slower pace.
The word ponderous reinforces the feeling of slowness, of deadening plodding being. The house introduces the idea of safety, of domestic space, the cosy home.
Line 3 A melon strolling on two tendrils
This is a baroque and comical prototype, conjuring up bright pictures of a rounded, swollen stomach casually strolling along on two thin leg-like appendages. Institute tendrils ofttimes grow in spiral form, climbing upwardly and clinging on; and the fruit carries the seed (like the ovary), so the whole sentence is total of natural fertility and so to speak.
Line 4 O reddish fruit, ivory, fine timbers!
The first 3 lines are summed up in melodramatic fashion - the melon is a water melon (echoes of waters breaking at the end of pregnancy), red only like blood; the ivory relates to the elephant, being of loftier value and just available when the elephant has died; fine timbers are what hold upward the roof of well congenital houses, the strongest wood being oak.
The speaker is in near atheism, equally proven by the assertion marking.
Line 5 This loaf's big with its yeasty rising.
When the dough is kneaded and set for prooving it'due south left to one side in a warm place to ascension. Ofttimes this means a doubling in size of the dough. Then of class the terminal baking takes place in the oven. Colloquially (in the United kingdom) having a 'bun in the oven' ways that someone is with kid.
This metaphor is more than traditional and wholesome and has no comical side-effect, unlike the melon in line three.
Line 6 Coin's new-minted in this fatty purse.
The child is the new money, the mother'south large stomach the handbag, belongings the precious currency of life. Having a full purse means that there'due south sufficient wealth held then it's of swell value.
More than Analysis
Line seven I'm a means, a stage, a moo-cow in calf.
The last of four lines with finish stop punctuation, suggesting a abyss. The speaker refers to being a means, a means to an end; something done to produce a result. And that effect will be the birth of a child. Hopefully the mother will keep her inherent value and non experience as if she were simply a carrier, a vessel - one time the child is born the mother won't feel empty or worthless.
A stage - a part in a process or a stage on which to perform? Probably the former. The speaker is in the early on stages of pregnancy, as the saying goes, and is therefore an integral office of the process of growth.
Over again, the speaker sees herself every bit an creature, a big one, a cow. Pregnant cows are particularly heavy, with swollen stomach, udders and wide strange gait. This mother feels that she is a cow in calf.
Line 8 I've eaten a purse of greenish apples,
Why greenish apples? Does that mean they're unripe, unlike ruddy apples? So many apples would crusade stomach ache and astringent discomfort. Did she eat them all at once? That would be obscene.
Perchance the green apples reflect the pop but misplaced idea that Eve gave Adam an apple tree to eat in the Garden of Eden (although in Genesis apple isn't mentioned, only fruit) - from the Tree of the Knowledge of Adept and Evil. Every bit penalization God banished them both, maxim that women would take to endure the pain of childbirth.
Line 9 Boarded the railroad train there'due south no getting off.
These last 2 lines bring a little uncertainty to the poem. Gone is the comical sense of the heavy, slow moving caricatured mother, with swollen abdomen and thin legs. Now the speaker leaves the reader with the idea that this situation is somewhat serious, the child-carrying female must stay on to the finish of the line, come what may.
Baby and mother are heading off into the hereafter, the wheels are turning and both will have to wait until the train reaches the terminus.
Sources
The Poesy Handbook, John Lennard, OUP, 2005
www.poetryfoundation.org
www.hup.harvard.edu
© 2017 Andrew Spacey
Source: https://owlcation.com/humanities/Analysis-of-Poem-Metaphors-by-Sylvia-Plath
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