Reading the Poetry of Sylvia Plath Can Be a Disturbing Experience Essay

I agree with the in a higher place enjoinment as for me reading Plaths poetry was rather disturbing. The ruff poems to explain this experience be blackened Rook in rainy Weather, Finisterre, Morning Song, squirt and of course, Poppies in July. There are poems that arent quite as depressing, such as Pheasant, moreover certainly an unsettled automated teller machine dominates by means ofout Plaths work.Main text The theme explored in Black Rook in Rainy Weather is the lack of brain tiddler and the imprint that arises consequently. Plath is in a state of desperation, she describes her life-time as a eon of fatigue (part of the poems psychic landscape) with brief respites from fear of total neutrality. Her life is annul as she perceives it, to the extent that the nigh banal things may serve inspiration to her tormented mind A minor light may close up lean incandescent out of kitchen table or chair as if a celestial burning took possession of the most obtuse objects thi s instant and then It is comforting to realise that Plath is able to find inspiration in this, but the poem is simply permeated with her pain and fear of losing all(prenominal) want everything is black, it is raining and the background setting seems dull.It is a fairly routine station in which most people put one over probably found themselves at some stage. Therefore, it is likely to that readers can relate to it, but its only put together could be to provoke bad memories and make unrivalled feel uncomfortable. It is significant that the reader attempts to exclude the thoughts of her tragic death and almost permanent state of severe depression when reading her work in order to get around it a chance. However, it seems to just stare at you from the page. Also knowing that, all her work acquires a sinister context, which is indeed disturbing if a somebody to bright and talented couldnt find a solution to her intragroup problems what about the rest of us?Finisterre is an ima ginative masterpiece. But the themes that feature in it are very important too. Sylvia Plath is emphasising the failure of organised religion and therefore rejects the beneficial qualities of the hope that religion normally departs. To take away ones last hope is copiously unsettling. The poet describes a grand statue of Our peeress of the Shipwrecked to whom a sailor is praying and also a peasant who came to pray. However, agree to Plath, Our bird doesnt hear what the sailor or the peasant is saying, she is in love with the beautiful forlmelessness of the sea. The dismissal of hope is harsh, those who are meant to care dont, according to Plath.What is one left with after one loses hope? Some some other poets known for their gloomy outlook, like T.S. Eliot who also submerges the readers in the bleakness of reality, offered us hope in religion, but Plath failed to find refuge take down in that. It is as if this is not only lands end but it is also the end of hope, faith and all good things. She does, however, attempt to provide an alternative. The last line These are our crepes. Eat them before they blow shabby calls the reader to make the most of the present moment but not regain too deeply about life this is emphasised by the very simple language used here.This may seem to get in as a solution, but to me personally this conveys an even worse haphazardness- track from the truth because it is so intolerable. As I said, the images in Finisterre are amazing. The exhibitioner of rocks is describes as fingers knuckled and rheumatic cramped on nothing, rocks hide their grudges under the water, the waves are the faces of the drowned, the mist is made up of the souls of dead people. Everything described here is nothing, dead, or about to die, just like those seemingly doomed flowers at the boundary line of the cliff. This poem kills any hope in the reader and, therefore, I believe it is very disturbing.Morning Song offers us an insight into the relat ionship of a mother and a newborn baby. There are elements of joy in it, but even the arrival of a baby is full of ostracize emotions for the poet. The baby is described as a new statue in a drafty museum Why is a baby, whose life just started described as a statue? A statue is something withdrawn, distant, it even echoes the statue of Finisterre. A newborn is non of those things, but that is how Plath sees it. The museum is drafty. To most of us a museum is a collection of distinct pieces but to her life again appears through the prism of depression. This is nothing new to a Plaths reader but it is a new level of frantic disturbance when not even a new life, the birth of her own child was able to support her mood.The feeling of distance is further developed through an image Im not more your mother than the defame that distils as mirror to reflect its own slow effacement at the winds hoard. Paradoxically, Plath focuses on her own feelings of the lack of attention to herself the misdirect is the mother, who gives birth to a puddle the baby, and the baby is similar to the mother, and therefore, her reflection. Probably Plath entangle disconnected from the baby and felt that her own role is now diminished. I think that this is quite unnatural, although understandable. However, such a description of motherhood is disconcerting.Child and Poppies in July are explicitly disturbing. In Child Plath feels unable to commit her dream of granting her children a happy life pool in which images should be grand and classical, not this troublesome wringing of hands, this dark ceiling without a star. This is terribly upsetting. The reader can just sense the pain and disappointment, feelings of failure and hopelessness that the poet must be experiencing.But Poppies is July is just immersed in her pain, or even the lack of it. The state she describes is profoundly terrifying. It exhausts her to watch poppies flickering, yet she masochistically continues to guardedly obs erve them. She is not just depressed now. We are seeing a rather neurotic and paranoid attitude here which alternates with complete emotional obtundation. She perceives them as hell flames, she wishes for pain or death if I could race or sleep. She is at a point where the mind is so surprise ant tired that it cannot even feel but colourless. Colourless. I think this is the most honest and strongest description of excruciating, suffocating emotional crisis that I have ever read.Conclusion Overall, Plaths poetry is full of ideas, mesmerising images, honest and deep thoughts with no sugar-coating. Almost all of these are destructively negative, which makes her poetry disturbing. She callously rejects hope, cruelly picks out the worst aspects in everything, her soul aches is fear of spill of those rare transient moments of inspiration that kept her alive.