Colossus - Sylvia Plath Sylvia

¶ … Colossus - Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath was a troubled, suicidal creative artist, but her work is thought-provoking, eerie, mysterious and stimulating on a level few poets have achieved.

What reaction did I have after reading the book? Sylvia Plath's poetry at first reading appears to be very dark, with ample painful, dreadful, and also death-image-dark themes sprinkled in. She seems to seek to shock with her poetry. And as with all quality poetry, a lot of sensual images - smells (a pig barn with "mire-smirched" sow), sounds ("Mule-bray, pig-grunt") - were present, along with plenty of thought-stirring metaphors ("granite grin"; "blood-spore"; "glassy updraft"; "cabbage-roses"). I reacted with some sense of sadness, but also of being impressed with a poet coming up with such stark, angry, edgy lines and images.

Why did I react that way? Probably, when one is aware that the poetry being reviewed is the work of a person who committed suicide in 1963, and when one reads the poem "Suicide Off Egg Rock" on pages 35-36, a feeling of great sadness is clearly part of any reaction, and mine is not unique in that sense. Was she talking about what she eventually planned to do - kill herself? Or is the dark thought of suicide a very universal idea, because at one time or another in everyone's life, they perhaps think of ending it all; and, aware of this, she lays out those dark emotions for consideration.

The suicide poem "Hot dogs split and drizzled," is an image of grease flowing out of a frankfurter, which could perhaps be blood flowing out of a person, while in the background there are "gas tanks, factory stacks." The two images of gas and a smokestack combine, adding up to a potential explosion from the gas while foul smoke is going up and the man's bowels are as imperfect as the landscape? Is that telling the reader that the man has diarrhea? Did the greasy hot dog caused the bad intestinal action - or is the whole scene a kind of metaphor for bad food, bad indigestion, foul air, death, blindfolded (failure to see the misery surrounding life?) and deaf. What is her point, I ask myself, then read it again and see more in it than before.

And continuing to react to "Suicide Off Egg Rock"; the poet paints a picture of a dog chasing birds off the beach, and flies going in and out of what would seem to be a skull on the beach ("the vaulted brainchamber"), and she has words "wormed off the pages" (skulls, worms, a body "beached with the sea's garbage") - all in all a bleak, battered series of thought made into images.

How did I feel about "The Colossus"? I have emotions of empathy for her mixed with feelings that take me to a bizarre and unpleasant place in my head. This is a moving and mostly likeable poem, apparently about Plath's father, who is pictured (in a way that probably many girls and women think of their dads) as a huge statue, a relic, and a landmark from another era perhaps. She is trying to piece him back together - or is it just the pieces of the puzzle from her memory that she is trying to put into a clear family perspective? Did she not get a chance to say goodbye to him prior to his passing, and she is mournful of that now?

No matter as to why she felt this way, maybe it is a feeling of perhaps gaining some "closure" for her, following his death, that she crawls "like an ant in mourning Over the weedy acres of your brow..."? How could she realistically "mend the immense skull plates and clear the bald, white tumuli of your eyes" for him? Is he really that big, or is she very small juxtaposed with his memory?

And for her to continue, and to squat in the "cornucopia of your left ear, Out of the wind," as the sun rises "under the pillar of your tongue," is adding a kind of Greek god-like image ("pillar" sounds ancient Greek) to the story. But she knows he is dead, apparently, is the impression I get when she spends her hours "married to shadow" and no longer listens "for the scrape of a keep on the blank stones of the landing." Does "married to shadow" to mean her actual marriage isn't working well? Or that she is in a dark place due to her dad's passing, and she must observe the living world from the point-of-view of a kind of living death?

Was there an overall theme to the book of poems? In a way she seems to be conveying a rebellion against the world, against her life, and there are death and dying images throughout the book. She rebels against her piano lessons ("The Disquieting Muses") though she was "tone-deaf" and "unteachable"; she rebels against love ("Love is the bone and sinew of my curse" she writes in "The Stones").

What kind of voice does the poet have? Plath has many voices in these poems, which is one of the strengths of the book. Plath's voice is at once a screech ("...a racket of echoes from the steely street" in "Hardcastle Crags"); then a shrill cry for help ("When the splinter flew in and struck my eye, Needling it dark" from "The Eye-mote"); then it becomes a groan of protest ("The small birds converge, converge With their gifts to a difficult borning" in "The Manor Garden"); and in a few lines it becomes a dead fetus ("In their jars the snail-nosed babies moon and glow" in "Two Views of a Cadaver Room").

Was the voice believable? All her voices are believable, and because of the depth of her intellect, and her skill at manipulating imagery, readers are brought into her consciousness and there is nothing to do but believe her. She put the work in to create these poems, she deserves to be believed; and after all, poetry is not journalism, it is not raw basic facts; and it is a poet's license to take the poems wherever the poet wishes the story to go.

What are underlying themes of the book? Death is certainly a frequent theme of this book; the sea (and water) is a frequent theme; blood is a theme that appears again and again; the moon is used often as an image of night juxtaposed with light; knives, meat, animals (moles, dogs, foxes in "Blue Moles") and insects are also themes that appear often. Are there secondary themes? Some of the poems feature shadows and echoes, and mirrors - but it also seems a secondary theme is her father, and his memory and legacy in terms of her life and times.