How do poets use ‘voice’ to instil their poems with personality? Consider with reference to three poets.
How do poets use 'voice' to instil their poems with personality? Consider with reference to three poets. For poetry to be truly personal, a voice is needed. It is through the voice of a poet that the reader can glean some sense of that poet's identity and nature. Who are they? What are they trying to say? Why? One could even go so far as to say that the voice of a poem or poet is fundamental to its aesthetic value and 'readability' - without a distinct and clear voice, how can we distinguish a poem from the surrounding, ambient babble? It is the voice which endears a poet to the reader - without a voice, how can we identify with a poet? All these questions must be considered carefully. The voice of a poet can be a vehicle for political, personal, and social expression, as well as instilling a poem with a sense of personality - one might say the function of a poet's 'voice' is to stamp their poem with their identity. It is the idea of an author's voice, rather than the voice itself which draws us towards the author as an entity - someone with whom we can identify, converse and understand. The actual process of reading may be, on one level, entirely one-sided, but in reading a poem (or any piece of literature for that matter) we bring as much to the work as we take from it. In this way, reading a poem is not one-sided at all, and is instead a rich progression towards a higher
Investigation Into The Theme of Entrapment in The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
Investigation Into The Theme of Entrapment in The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath Sylvia Plath was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1932 to Austrian parents. She studied at the prestigious Smith College with a scholarship and in 1955 she went to Cambridge University where she met and later married Ted Hughes. Plaths life was one of success, and intense ambition and perfectionism. In an early journal entry, aged 16, she described herself as 'The girl who would be God'. Her desire to be a perfect writer and a perfect woman is set however in her understanding of the constraints placed on women in the 50's. The early death of her father when she was just 8, and the combination of fear and adoration she felt towards him had an immense and lasting effect on her life, and subsequently he appears as a major theme in both her poetry and prose works. The Bell Jar was first released in England in 1963 under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas. It received lukewarm reviews with most critics highlighting the personal yet detached voice of novel. An anonymous review stated 'it read so much like the truth that it is hard to disassociate her from Esther Greenwood, the 'I' of the story, but she had the gift of being able to feel and yet to watch herself: she can feel the desolation and yet relate this to the landscape of everyday life'. This shows how the novel was seen to be autobiographical
Sylvia Plath; The Imperfect Perfectionist.
Sylvia Plath; The Imperfect Perfectionist Sylvia Plath's poetry is an expression of "a personal and despairing grief". She had the gift of recreating her own past experiences in a complex form, so as to remove them from her present, that it started to seem like an obsession. Within this obsession her poems show a regular pattern of self-centeredness. It was this characteristic that lead her far from any "self-discovery" and "self-definition", and drove her to her death, "an art" as she words it. Plath readily exploits her emotions through the personified language to build a sinister and super-natural atmosphere, in attempt of creating a "valiantly unremitting campaign against the black hole of depression and suicide". However, her attempts went to waste when she committed suicide in the February of 1963. Plath's poetry enables the reader to unravel and look deep into her victimised mind. It was for this talent that she had received much praise, but much more criticism. Plath's poetry mirrors the life of Plath, and to make sense of her poetry it is important to try and have an understanding of Plath, to see things through her perspective. This is what most critics' lack, and so I have taken a step to try and understand her. It is for this reason I will take into consideration the perspective of psychoanalysts to aid me in my understanding of her, in particular the theories
Present the way in which imprisonment is presented in 'The Bell Jar' The bell jar is an inverted glass jar, generally used to display an object of scientific curiosity
Present the way in which imprisonment is presented in 'The Bell Jar' The bell jar is an inverted glass jar, generally used to display an object of scientific curiosity, contain a certain kind of gas, or maintain a vacuum. For Esther, the bell jar symbolizes madness. When gripped by insanity, she feels as if she is inside an airless jar that distorts her perspective on the world and prevents her from connecting with the people around her. At the end of the novel, the bell jar has lifted, but she can sense that it still hovers over her, waiting to drop at any moment. The narrative technique used in The Bell Jar is a first person narrative. Straight away we get the idea of imprisonment through elements of the unhappy narrative voice in the early chapters. The first sentence of Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar alerts the reader to the conflicts that will be dealt with in this semi-autobiographical novel: "It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenberg's, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York." The speaker will tell us in the next few sentences that she is "stupid" and that she feels "sick," and that she is preoccupied with death. Like Holden Caulfield in Catcher in the Rye, this young, college age, girl-woman is experiencing an adolescent crisis. When Esther Greenwood tells us in the first sentence that this is "the summer they electrocuted the
Analyse the poem "Daddy" by Sylvia Plath
Analyse the poem "Daddy" by Sylvia Plath The title "Daddy" evokes images of nurturing fathers, willing to do anything for their children; it suggests innocence and protection. Plath could be using this in a number of different ways. It may be ironic - she uses this word to describe her father because he should have been a model for her, and he was the precise opposite of her ideals. It also suggests a longing for her father to have been this model. It may relate to the feminist issues at the time Plath wrote "Daddy" - fathers were all believed to be a perfect model for society, and women and daughters who were victims of them were mostly ignored. The repetition of "you do not do" gives the persona an assertive edge; she is standing up to her father. It also makes her sound a little immature, as though she has to express herself in this way. Indeed, the syntax throughout the poem is stilted, with little complicated vocabulary, giving the persona a childlike quality. Plath writes that she "lived like a foot" in the "shoe" of her father. It implies that her father, as the "shoe", surrounded her. It could suggest that she could not escape him, and she "wore" him - he was a burden to her. She also writes that in her father's presence, she is "barely daring to breath" - she is terrified of him. This ties in with the shoe point made earlier - her father seems a tyrant, overbearing
Sylvia Plath,
A commentary of "Daddy" by Sylvia Plath "Daddy", one of Plaths most famous and detailed autobiographical poems, was written in the last years of her life and is saturated with suppressed anger and dark imagery. The sixteen stanza poem, through Plaths use of ambiguous symbolism, arguably is bitterly addressing Plaths father, who died when she was only eight, and her husband Ted Hughes, who had broken her "pretty red heart in two" (st.12, line 1). The poem is intense with once suppressed emotion, setting an aggressive, desperate, almost psychic tone and is highly concentrated on the theme of death. With Plath's application of various techniques including diction, imagery, enjambment, contrast, repetition and oxymoron, the poem comes across as shocking with the intensity of feeling and the passionate sadness that highlight the suicidal messages conveyed. As is pointed out, the context of the poem "Daddy" is that of Plath's husband's affair with another woman. Grieved to the point of psychotic anger Plath's use of imagery throughout the piece accentuates the hopeless despair of the speaker at the conflicting male relationships in Plath's life: first her father and then husband. "Any more, black shoe In which I have lived like a foot..." The metaphor of 'black shoe' possibly used to denote a person, suggests a stifling image. The speaker claims to have lived in that shoe,
I Wanna Be Special : Plath and Nazi Germany.
I Wanna Be Special : Plath and Nazi Germany E. Michele Bradley (200106335) Sylvia Plath is a poet who writes in a confessional style. Her poetry shows her strong opinions towards patriarchy. By examining her works and researching her past, one can see that the two prominent male figures in her past are her father and Ted Hughes, her husband. In her poetry Plath uses Nazi Germany as a metaphor for the oppressive system of patriarchy women live under, while she portrays the victim as Jews. Two examples of poems where this appears are "Lady Lazarus" and "Daddy". Because the Holocaust is such a sensitive subject, there are two schools of thought to Plath's metaphor. One belief is that she belittles the Holocaust. The other belief is that a metaphor is simply a metaphor. Obviously, Plath has no first hand knowledge if she uses the metaphor so trivially. There are aspects of Plath's works that people may find hard to understand if they don't know about her history. To understand Plath's poetry, one has to understand Plath. Sylvia Plath writes confessional poetry. Because she writes in this confessional style, those who study her work must become familiar with her past. Confessional poetry is when poets write about their own experiences; thoughts, feelings, and experiences become the basis of the poetry. Thus the poems become an expression of poet's innermost
Poetry is often written as a result of reflecting on an intense emotional experience or a significant event.
Q: Poetry is often written as a result of reflecting on an intense emotional experience or a significant event. Examine the techniques used by one poet to convey the significance of an experience or event which gave rise to a poem or a sequence of poems. "Daddy"is a very emotional poem by Sylvia Plath. She wrote it just before she committed suicide in the early 1960's. It is a very angry poem which is centred around Plath's relationship with her father, who died when she was much younger. Much of her anger and emotion arises from this event. Despite the fact that he has been dead for some time, it is still certain that she feels affected by it. The first verse of the poem creates the tone followed throughout, and helps to set the rest of the poem in context: "You do not do not do, you do not do Anymore, black shoe In which I have lived like a foot For thirty years, poor and white, Barely daring to breathe or Achoo." Here, the poet is stating that they have "...lived like a foot for thirty years...", a simile that is giving the sense that she has felt oppressed for her whole life, as living "like a foot" is a claustrophobic image, showing how she cannot break free of the "black shoe" which it is made apparent is representing her "daddy" figure. The opening line, "You do not do..." is similar to how a parent would tell a child off, but the poet is reversing the role
The Applicant by Sylvia Plath places both men and women as victims in a society which disallows them any sense of free-will. To what extent to you agree with this view?
‘The Applicant’ places both men and women as victims in a society which disallows them any sense of free-will.’ To what extent to you agree with this view? ‘The Applicant’ by Sylvia Plath is a poem centred on the idea that relationships between humans are only a regime to fill a physical need, and marriage is the only way to be free of a crippling lifestyle, and women are seen as being a set of appendages and functions, men as the consumer and worker, key to the success of the Marxist viewpoints ideal. It suggests a close connection between the capitalist economic system, the patriarchal family structure, and the general depersonalisation of human relations. The man and woman in the poem are portrayed as having limited to no free will in the society they live in and are victims of the social order. A constant theme of the poem is the inadequacy of a person; they have no personalities or major roles in society. The people in the poem are de-humanised, especially the woman, and their bodies being portrayed as just mechanisms. The voice asks the man if he has “a brace or a hook” as if he needs to be held up like a puppet, and even questions his sexual identity by asking if he has “a rubber crotch”. Suggesting his crotch may be rubber implies that it is only there for a mechanical function; to procreate, and has no other purpose. The voice of the poem has a
Blackberrying by Sylvia Plath.
Blackberrying by Sylvia Plath Within the poem "Blackberrying" by Sylvia Plath, she positions herself as the lonely walker and speaker, self-consciously communicating with and reacting to nature yet all the while assuming that at her worst this may cause her immediate surroundings to justifiably consume her (by the overwhelming sea ) and that at best her surroundings are malciously indifferent. The theme of "Blackberrying," on the surface at least , is of "place." Aside from this theme of "place" and some regularity of structure there are other panoramic factors in this poem. Most striking is the underlying sense of threat and the images of willing death which are anticipated. Plath uses imagery, metaphor, simile and other many elements of poetry in this poem. The imagery is used mostly in the poem to stimulate our senses and recall our imaginations and experiences. The progress of the walk in "Blackberrying" does not describe the journey's outset, yet there is a defined middle and end. There is a definitive purpose namely to relish in and gather blackberries. The three nine-line stanzas within the work fulfil three detached purposes-the first to describe the berries and the luscious sensations experienced in their harvest; the second to define the environment and to point to failings which can exist when the berries' become overdeveloped;
