Poppies in July - Sylvia Plath Essay - 1470 Words

Poppies in July - Sylvia Plath â€Å"Poppies in July† is a short poem written in free verse. Its fifteen lines are divided into eight stanzas. The first seven stanzas are couplets, and the eighth consists of a single line. The title presents an image of natural life at its most intense—at the height of summer. It evokes a pastoral landscape and suggests happiness, if not joy or passion. The title is ironic, however, because the poem is not a hymn to nature but a hallucinatory projection of the landscape of the speaker’s mind and emotions. Sylvia Plath begins the poem innocently, even playfully, as the speaker addresses the poppies, calling them â€Å"little poppies.† The tone changes immediately, however, as the poppies become â€Å"little hell†¦show more content†¦In a derangement of her senses, she confuses smell with touch and says she cannot touch them, as she could not touch the earlier â€Å"flames.† She asks the poppies where their opiates are and thinks of â€Å"nauseous capsules.† She thinks she could achieve relief if she could â€Å"bleed, or sleep,† but an emotional wound does not bleed, and her state of mind will not let her sleep. An alternative is to â€Å"marry a hurt like that,† but she cannot accept or tolerate the situation. She wants the â€Å"liquors† of the poppy to â€Å"seep† to her in what she calls â€Å"this glass capsule.† She feels separated from reality; this is why she cannot touch anything. She wants the liquors to be â⠂¬Å"colorless,† with everything suggested by the color of poppies to be refined away. Forms and Devices The couplet form traditionally exemplifies order, balance, harmony, and reason. Each line exhibits the same grammatical and metrical structures. Each couplet forms a complete unit of meaning, and often the lines rhyme. Plath draws on this tradition by writing the poem in couplets, but she violates the form by writing free-verse lines. Her couplets represent the speaker’s effort to control her thoughts and feelings, which are expressed in the lines of free verse. The length, rhythm, and grammar of these lines vary with the ebb and flow of the speaker’s emotions. For example, the longest line in the poem evokes the image—â€Å"the skin of a mouth†Ã¢â‚¬â€which precipitates the speaker’s anger in the next couplet, which in turn refersShow MoreRelatedSylvia Plath was American short-story writer, poet and novelist that was born on October 27, 1932900 Words   |  4 PagesSylvia Plath was American short-story writer, poet and novelist that was born on Oc tober 27, 1932 in Boston, Massachusetts and died on February 11, 1963. Sylvia Plath is best known for, her books of poems, â€Å"The Colossus and Other Poems Collection† and the â€Å"Ariel Collection† of Poems.Plath’s poetry was known for its rhyme, alliteration and disturbing and violent imagery. Plath’s poetry is considered part of the Confessional movement, which became very popular in the United States during the 1950sRead More Precursors to Suicide in Life and Works of Sylvia Plath and Sarah Kane2581 Words   |  11 PagesPrecursors to Suicide in Life and Works of Sylvia Plath and Sarah Kane Introduction We are going to describe factors associated with the suicidal process in lives of Sarah Kane and Sylvia Plath as reflected in the late works of these two female authors who committed suicide when they were 27 and 30 years old. Antoon Leenaars and Susanne Wenckstern (1998) have written: ?Suicide notes are probably the ultrapersonal documents. They are the unsolicited productions of the suicidal person, usually