Not until next friday sorry!

i cant remember the map sorry

Hey ILLY_BEE,

below is a sample of my answer for this; if you would like the full answer please email me at ryjolc@gmail.com and please check out my website www.ryjolc.wordpress.com for further answers and notes for Leaving Cert English.

John

If you were asked to give a public reading of a small selection of Sylvia Plath’s poems, which ones would you choose to read? Give reasons for your choices supporting them by reference to the poems on your course.


If I was asked to give a public reading of a small selection of Slyvia Plath’s poems, the poems I would choose to read would be ‘Black Rook in Rainy Weather’, ‘The Times Are Tidy’, ‘Mirror’, ‘Poppies in July’, ‘The Arrival of the Bee Box’ and ‘Morning Song’. These poems are apt for a public reading of Plath’s poetry as they offer an insight into Plath’s depressing life that ended inevitably with suicide on 11th February 1963. Notable aspects of the poetry to talk about are her startling and unusual language and imagery, as well as its paradoxical combination of complexity as well as accessible structure and everyday language.

As said, one reason I would choose the poems mentioned to give a public reading of a small section of Plath’s poetry as they offer an insight into the poet’s depressing life. This allows the audience a platform with which to explore her poetry, but also provides them with details of how and why the poems they read came about. This is seen in ‘Black Rook in Rainy Weather’. Here the speaker can be taken to be Plath, as the viewpoint of the narrator resembles what one would expect from Plath in her difficult life. Her life was bleak, featuring traumatic periods such as her father’s death when she was young, her suffering from depression, and her strained relationship with her mother. Such a life can easily be symbolized with ‘desultory weather’ and unsurprisingly Plath declares ‘I do not expect a miracle/ Or an accident// To set the sight on fire’. She is even skeptical about the nature of miracles, telling the reader ‘Miracles occur./ If you care to call those spasmodic/ Tricks of radiance/ Miracles’. As the poem concludes Plath, who has suffered so much that she cannot look far beyond the present, does not dwell upon the nature of miracles, instead remarking that it will be a “long wait for an angel… that rare, random descent’.
Similar is seen in ‘The Times Are Tidy’. Plath can be seen as ‘the hero born/ In this province of the stuck record’ in the poem, as she refers to her fear of never achieving more in her writing career than she had at the time of writing this poem. She worried over her potential as a writer and justifies this belief by mentioning ‘the most watchful cooks go jobless’, suggesting that talent is not enough to guarantee success. In the next stanza Plath enforces this argument by revealing how there isn’t even a career for the hero anymore, telling the reader ‘There’s no career in the venture/ Of riding against the lizard’, this even thought the lizard puts up little to no fight, as he is ‘Himself withered these latter-days’. She concludes that ‘History’s beaten the hazard’, suggesting that the ‘province of the stuck record’ bears little comparison to the past, when there would be opportunity for the hero. ‘Mirror’ matches the other poems: Plath’s depression is revealed here, through the mirror’s viewpoint. The mirror considers each day as one closer to death, which resembles Plath’s bleak and negative view on life as she suffered from depression, and the woman the mirror refers to can be taken as Plath talking about herself, as she moves nearer to life’s end: ‘In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman/ Rises toward her day and after day, like a terrible fish.’ Plath’s depressed state is epitomized as she says ‘I am not cruel, only truthful’, suggesting she has no motive for self-criticism, and that such statements as moving closer to death are created only by feeling and emotion, rather than any underlying motive.

Another reason I would choose the poems for a public reading is due to the striking images they contain. Throughout her poetry Plath uses a variety of striking images to express and reveal her messages, which is different from other poets who often use simplistic techniques to express their meanings. I would include the poems mentioned above so as to ensure that if my audience had only been exposed to such simplistic ways that they would get to see Plath’s striking imagery, so as to view more advanced means of expression. ‘Poppies in July’ displays this. Here Plath uses striking imagery to convey the poppies as something threatening. Despite their being flowers, she likens them to fire, calling them ‘little hell flames’ and asking ‘Do you do no harm?’, immediately suggesting they are capable of such. Later, even when she says ‘I put my hands among the flames. Nothing burns’ she likens the poppies to an addiction, comparing them to opium and telling them ‘There are fumes I cannot touch./ Where are your opiates, your nauseous capsules?’. While most flowers emit aromas, Plath seems dependant on the ‘Dulling and stilling’ qualities that the fumes will bring, which can be linked to her depression, and it can be taken that she uses the poppies for escapism from her troubled life. While this may provide her with an escape from her troubled life, she admits that the potential for self-destruction through such routes is high, admitting she uses the fumes for such an end, declaring ‘If I could bleed, or sleep!/ If my mouth could marry a hurt like that!’. We see the same in ‘The Arrival of the Bee Box’. Plath likens her mental state to the image of the box full of bees, using the image to display how her depression cannot be controlled permanently. The bees, like her depression, are dangerous due to their capability, even when confined: Plath admits that while ‘The box is locked, it is dangerous’ and ‘I have to live with it overnight/ And I can’t keep away from it’. While the box is full of bees, Plath cannot see them, much in the same manner as she knows her depression is present yet cannot physically identify it: ‘There are no windows, so I can’t see what is in there’. Also, while the bees have no motive to attack Plath, they are still capable of harming her, as is the case with her depression, which she has done nothing to deserve; she cannot be sure that the bees will not attack, even though ‘I am no source of honey’. Her revealing that she will open the box tomorrow as it ‘is only temporary’ symbolizes how her depression will rise from its dormant state, much like the bees will inevitably exit the box, through the ‘little grid’. More of the same can be seen in ‘Morning Song’. In the poem Plath makes use of the image of the museum as the setting for the ‘arrival’ of her child, however this arrival is poignant as Plath suffers a miscarriage. Usually, when a child is born the setting one would think of would be a hospital, but the use of the museum aptly sums up the mood of the situation, as its purpose is to record events and individuals in lifeless forms. Plath’s recently deceased child therefore has its ‘arrival’ in the museum, where it comes as a ‘New statue’, an ironic but sadly accurate image for Plath’s miscarried infant. The poet tells her child that in the museum it is she and others whose ‘voices echo, magnifying your arrival’; usually it is the child’s first cry that is the sound dominating the hospital room at the scene of its birth.