I don’t read/write much poetry, but I really do like this poem. When I first read it, I was really confused.
Metaphors - Sylvia Plath
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 means, a stage, a cow in calf.
I’ve eaten a bag of green apples,
Boarded the train there’s no getting off.
After reading it, our teacher explained that the first line (“NINE syllables”) was hinting that she was pregnant. So, the metaphors connecting the author to things such as an elephant, a house, etc. make sense. I love the third line, it just cracks me up.
The fourth line refers to the baby. (red fruit, ivory, fine timbers…the fine parts of the metaphors she described herself with. Melon - red fruit. Elephant - ivory. House - fine timbers.)
Angel of flight and sleigh bells, do you know paralysis,
that ether house where your arms and legs are cement?
You are as still as a yardstick. You have a doll's kiss.
The brain whirls in a fit. The brain is not evident.
I have gone to that same place without a germ or a stroke.
A little solo act--that lady with the brain that broke.
In this fashion I have become a tree.
I have become a vase you can pick up or drop at will,
inanimate at last. What unusual luck! My body
passively resisting. Part of the leftovers. Part of the kill.
Angels of flight, you soarer, you flapper, you floater,
you gull that grows out of my back in the dreams I prefer,<<<<
stay near. But give me the totem. Give me the shut eye
where I stand in stone shoes as the world's bicycle goes by
Its about her time in a mental asylum and about how, as "crazy" as it seems, she prefered her time there.. there were moments when she even preferred being crazy and deranged to her reality.
