SYLVIA PLATH. The colossus, 1960. Ariel, 1965 (collections)

Many of the facts of her live are reflected in her poems (death of her father, abandonment, suicide, dead babies, bees, references to death). Nevertheless not all the references to death we find in her poems are about her own death, others are about the nuclear holocaust of Hiroshima or the Nazis’ concentration camps. In other poems she explores the family, normally in an angry and resented tone.  “Balloons”- celebrates the mobility of live and the balloons’ ability to be themselves while living with a mother and her children and keeping them company. Through the poems addressed to her children we perceive a passionate maternal love, on e of these poems is “Child, which focuses on the hope for a new beginning that a child inspires. Child carries the strong feeling of something terrible that will happen, since the speaker is unable to release her adult world. Of all her major works only two poems were published during her live, The Bell Jar and The Colossus. In the latter the work fused the poet’s pain and women’s issues in informative poems that would contribute to the popularisation of “confessional” poetry.  Plath resorted to ellipsis and enjambment (continuation of a syntactic unit from one line of verse into the next line without a pause) to speed up the pace of her verse and to shorten the lines in them.  “Daddy”, 1962, when Ted Hughes left. Strong, bitter poem, one of her most autobiographical pieces, writes about the feeling towards her father. Rhythm: nursery rhyme. Father depicted as: Nazi, vampire and devil and then husband and father become one, as she marries the image of her father, who has drunk her blood for seven years. As stated by Plath, the poem is spoken by a girl with an Electra complex. The father had died when she thought he was God. Furthermore, he father was a Nazi and her mother possibly had Jewish blood, two strains which are joined and opposed at the same time. The poem’s end has a triumphant tone of the daughter over her father: Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through, in which the girl removes the seven years of pain by throwing a bet through the male figure. The figure of the vampire represents her own husband to whom she was married seven year. Black has connotations and above all it reflects darkness and sadness, here it also symbolizes the constraint that the speaking voice of the poem suffered. The girl wasn’t able to communicate with her father and he died withut her being able to communicate her love and anguish to him, which can be symbolized in the black telephone “the voices just can’t worm through” probably worm  is used as an allegory to her father being dead. The reference to the wire, the German language, and Jews, remind us straight away of Nazism. She compares her way of talking and thinking like the one of a Jew and compares her father with a Nazi and thus says “I could hardly speak.” Comparing her restrain to the one suffered by the Jews. Other images she portrays like the fact of his Aryan blue eyes and his moustache help to construct his image as a Nazi.High use of irony when the voice talks about women liking fascists and “the boot in the face” a brute heart like his, suggesting women are battered by the males. In “Lady Lazarus” we also find the image of a sinister male figure, the Lady is a survivor who has both the ability of rebirth and the ability to understand her enemy and returns to fight back. At the end of the poem she lashes out at men, their system of male values, and their male god. (use of Herr God, Herr Lucifer). The only trouble this woman goes through is that in order to reborn she has to die first.

DOUGLAS DUNN. Elegies 1985

The poems in this poetic sequence confront his first wife’s death in 1981.  The speaking in these poems is profoundly moving, it’s a story-like pattern in which he depicts his wife. They are short, lyrical and above all, intense observations on loss and pain. The memories of their marriage are grouped around the central them and through the poems we can perceive the poet grief and gradual acceptance of the fact. Although many of these poems are inspired in death, they are often positive statements about life. Through his sadness, he revisits Scotland and remembers all the moments he has shared with Lesley, and finally sees that her presence continues. In “kaleidoscope” the poet uses the word might many times in this poems, suggesting that although he would like to see certain images, he knows that this is impossible (like when he suggests that by taking the tray he might find his wife their with her pillow and her books), or that she will be looking at her kaleidoscope when he enters the rooms. The title of the poem which has a Greek origin means that beauty images can be seen in many different ways. In “Anniversaries” the notion of time is considered with respect to love. The rhyme in this poem (abba) and the lines of 3 or 4 iambic feet, reinforce the mechanical and routine passing of time. In this poem he addresses his wife and remembers when they met in September. He also asks her for a piece of advice: what shall I do? Instruct me, dear.