Sounds of Sylvia

As many of you already know or finding out for the first time, Plath brings the sounds of her words to the forefront of her poetry. It is almost trite to say, but to truly appreciate her writing is to read it out loud. Plus, certain sounds residing inside her writing seems to make me smile. Try saying "Stasis in darkness. / Then the substanceless blue / Pour of tor and distances" fast and intelligibly. The coupling of enjambment and sound forces the pace to a near halt. The "pour of tor" conjures an image of a thick moving substance like syrup or black tar. I have no definitive reading of this poem, or the exact significance of these opening lines, but nonetheless, they are remarkable in of themselves.

Her focus on sound is no exception in another famous poem, "Daddy".

I hope that this recording will help us all come to a deeper understanding of this piece. Here is a clip:

The "ooo" sound has a multitude of functions within this poem. I would like to discuss specifically how it is associated with the subject of the poem, the speaker's father. Since the first word is "you", then that sound, which reoccurs throughout, has a direct association to the father. Plath is showing through sound, how the presence of the father looms over all aspects of the speaker's struggles. The "ooo" sound finds its way into an "Achoo" and "Ach, du" which has syntactic and aural similarity to "Dachau". When Plath writes, "they stuck me together with glue", the "ooo" sound inside "glue" subtly suggests that the speaker is created and held together by the masculine image of the father. Plath allows the presence of the daddy to transcendence its literal definition when he is compared to a "vampire". He becomes almost immortal and there needs to be "a stake in [his] fat black heart". The monster haunts the town. She conveys the feeling that he can't be killed, the presence of the father can never really go away; just as the "ooo" sound will never escape the poem.

I would love to talk more about this poem in class. I think there is a whole lot of potential for some interesting readings.

-Stephen

Any St. Vincent fans? This is a great new video. An interesting inditement of domesticity.