Aimly Sirisarnsombat, Period 4

Sylvia Plath's Voice: Meant to be Heard

When students today study poetry, the general attitude towards the curriculum is, for the most part, unenthusiastic. The majority of the literate population, therefore, is unfamiliar with the true purpose of poetry and view it as laborious and time consuming, because poets almost never say directly what they mean. However, one poet, Sylvia Plath, used the sounds of her words in such a way to reveal the feelings behind her writing. Her strategically placed pauses give her poems rhythm and a musical quality. But it is the sounds evoked from her poetry when it is read outloud that has made her such a popular confessional poet, because they form a connection between reader and poet. Sylvia Plath uses sound familiar to her readers to her poems “The Swarm” and “Morning Song” to form a bridge between the readers’ personal experiences with their significance, as well as to enhance their mood.
The poem, “The Swarm”, is Sylvia Plath’s way of portraying her personal feelings towards war and violence. Rather than portraying soldiers fighting each other, she uses bees to represent the futility of violence and the insignificance of their lives to the leaders directing them, in particular, Napoleon and his wars. The first stanza begins with “Someone is shooting at something in our town--/A dull pom, pom in the Sunday Street” (“The Swarm”, Plath, 1.1-2). Immediately, what comes to mind with the use of onomatopoeia in the words “pom, pom” is the sound that we associate with bullets being shot. Plath begins her readers with this image in order to set the tone of the poem as one of violence and conflict so that the reader may have a “backdrop” with which to view the rest of the poem. Plath also uses onomatopoeia in stanza 8, Line 5: “A red tatter, Napoleon!”, which alludes to many bullets being fired, as in a scrimmage or a battle. But in stanza 5, line 1, Plath deviates from onomatopoeia, instead comparing the sound of bullets to an all-mighty God: “So dumb it thinks bullets are thunder/It thinks they are the voice of God.” Here, Plath not only uses the metaphor of bullets as the voice of God to give the poem a mood of importance, but she is also emphasizing the lack of reason and blindness of those who murder because they feel God commanded them to do so for the sake of one man’s glory—in this case, Napoleon. Consequently, while Plath uses bees as the main characters in her poem as opposing armies, she is in actuality speaking of men and their obsession with violence. The sounds in this poem add to that effect and overall meaning. Without it, Plath would not have been able to convey that sense of futility in violence so easily.
In contrast to “The Swarm”, “Morning Song” is gentler and on a smaller scale because Plath’s intent is to spotlight the intimacy between a mother and her child rather than a broad theme. In this poem, Plath uses metaphors and similes that superficially do not have a meaning directly associated with the objects or actions they describe; but rather, aid in giving the sounds a visual effect as well as an auditory one. In the first line of the poem, Plath writes, “Love set you going like a fat gold watch” (“Morning Song”, Plath 1.1). The simile of the gold watch has a double significance: while it gives a value to the birth of the baby and serves as a symbol for the beginning of a life, the “ticking” of the watch also resembles a heartbeat. In the next line, Plath compares a baby’s first wail out of a mother’s womb to a “bald cry”, visually portraying the nakedness of the baby himself and the rawness of his first breath, as she continues to say “[your bald cry]/Took its place among the elements”. Simile is used also in the last lines of the poem: “Your handful of notes;/The clear vowels rise like balloons.” Readers can picture the baby making sounds, but also the comparison of the sound to balloons gives a childlike, happy element to them, and also an airy, carefree quality. On the other hand, Plath feels deeply moved by her baby’s sounds, as seen in stanza 4, lines 1-3: “All night your moth-breath/flickers among the flat pink roses. I wake to listen: A far sea moves in my ear.” So even though the baby’s voice and breath is not loud, it impacts Plath to the point where she feels a tumultuous, tender emotion when she hears it.
Although the two poems, written at different times and emotional stages in her life, stand on their own, both “The Swarm” and “Morning Song” feature sounds that have a emotional connection to Plath’s feelings. Despite the fact that the text of poetry can be analyzed, dissected, and interpreted literally line by line, Plath wanted everyone to “listen” to what she had to say, even when it is not read outloud, for it is not always the dictionary definition of a word that gives it meaning but its sound. Even as a person who closely protected her privacy, Plath felt obligated to make herself understood to everyone. As a confessional poet, Sylvia Plath is still effective because her writing truly captures the manifesto of poetry: to be heard.
Word Count: 898