1 Katie Murt English 458 Professor John Marsh Spring 2013

In Plath-ter: Physical Objects in the Poems Elm, In Plaster, and The Colossus and Sylvia Plaths Attachment to the Physical World

In her own words, one of the most influential poets of the last century said of herself, I too want to be important. By being different. And these girls are all the same. She is painted into literary history as the alternative, espousing eternally provoking poetry and prose that was reflective of her talent and all the more evident of her novelty among her contemporary peers, both female and male. Sylvia Plath has been a staple in the canonized works of poetry spanning the last century, but often for all the wrong reasons. Plath scholars and enthusiasts argue that her intense issues with her father while growing up coupled with her own predisposition for depression shaped the vast majority of her literary works, and perhaps in part they are correct. While it is undeniable that an abject sadness and struggle for self-awareness is present in much of Plaths poetry, she is painted with a broad brush that does not accurately represent the meaning behind so much of her sad poetry. Instead, her poetry gives evidence of intense self-awareness and an attachment to the concrete world as a means to anchor herself in spite of her introspective turmoil.

2 Surely it is necessary to address the themes of anger and sadness in Plaths writing, but in examining such poems as Elm, The Colossus, and In Plaster, is becomes apparent that Plaths ties to her physical and concrete world were much stronger than a literary pop-culture perspective would suggest. In detailing her attachment to physical objects insofar as they represent her internal feelingsobjects like trees and statuesPlath can be seen as a much more down to earth and approachable poet instead of the sensationalized suicidal depressive she is so often pigeonholed into having been. Sylvia Plath put pen to paper and created what are some of the most well written and descriptive introspections into the human soul in modern literary history. Through her use of objects as the centerpiece of much of her poetry, she anchors herself in the real world as a means to cope with the intense state of emotional flux she experiences internally. Plath gave a new voice to feelings that, prior to her penning her works, had never before been described in such a way as Plath was able to describe them. The physicality of her poetry indicates what may be a greater love and appreciation for the physical objects that populate her work at the expense of a deep attachment to other human beings. Evidence of Plaths deep attachment to natural and concrete objects manifests itself in the shape of a tree in Plaths poem Elm, in which an elm tree is the speaker of the poem. The elm in this poem is subjected to a litany of outside forces that seek to destroy her, from a merciless moon to a scorching sunset and a violent wind. Plaths speaker articulates, I am terrified by this dark thing/That sleeps inside me/All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity (31-33).

3 This incredibly articulate depiction is the essence of the poem Elm in that is describes the feelings of an object (an elm tree) than cannot describe its feelings in the real world outside of the poem. Think of a constant feeling of feathery tendrils licking your insides, lying in wait to release their metaphoric poison into your body; that is reality for the poems speaker-elm, though not likely a reality for the elm tree in your nearest park. The specific word choice Plath employs is also important in assessing her use of objects in her poetry. What about the elm tree specifically moved her speaker to utterance? Historically, the elm tree is present in Greek and Roman mythology as a symbol of death and the Underworld, but rather in a sense of overcoming the finality of damnation. Though some critics will draw ties from Plaths own life events to the deathly symbolism of the elm tree, Scott Knickerbocker argues in his essay Bodied Forth in Words: Sylvia Plaths Ecopoetics that, Plath anticipates and problematizes both the claims of the ecocritics who would accuse her of extreme pathetic fallacy (ostensibly a symptom of anthropocentrism) and the biographically oriented critics who quickly conflate the personified elm and the real Plath, brushing the unusual choice of speaker aside as a mere distraction and eagerly diagnosing all sorts of writerly agony behind it (12). Knickerbockers assessment is in keeping with the evidence presented in the poem that highlights Plaths love of the natural, physical world. Plath writes, I am inhabited by a cry/Nightly it flaps out/Looking, with its hooks, for something to love (28-30). This description is not so much a metaphor for Plaths inner turmoil as it is a complex descriptionborne of Plaths appreciation for what it might like to be an elm treeof a bird who inhabits the elm, flapping its wings every night and looking with its hooks (talons) for something to love (food

4 or branches to grasp onto). The speaker-elms woes are not articulated to bind Plath together with the elm and use the elm as a metaphor for Plaths own feelings, but rather represents Plaths empathy for an inanimate objecta elm that sits in her front yard (Knickerbocker, 12). Empathy for an inanimate object is not exclusive to Plaths Elm, as we see again her imbuing of emotions into a plaster cast in her poem, In Plaster. A more person-centered piece, In Plaster is the chronicling of the speakers relationship to her plaster body cast. While the speaker is healing from broken bones in her plaster cast, Plaths speaker says of her cast: Without me, she wouldnt exist, so of course she was grateful. I gave her a soul, I bloomed out of her as a rose Blooms out of a vase of not very valuable porcelain, And it was I who attracted everybodys attention, Not her whiteness and beauty, as I had first supposed. (15-19) The physical object of the speakers attention is this personified plaster cast, shaped to the speakers body, and therefore a physical double of the speaker herself. The relationship between speaker and plaster cast is clearly not purely clinicalthe speaker indicates in the previous lines that her cast is grateful for the speaker, even though the speaker is stealing the attention away from her porcelain double. By personifying an inanimate exterior, Plaths speaker creates a humanoid object with whom she can relatean important distinction being that this relationship with an object is in the absence of a relationship with real person. The relationship between the physical plaster cast and the speaker is discussed in Kathleen Margaret Lanks essay, The Big Strip Tease: Female Bodies and Male Power in the Poetry of Sylvia Plath. Lank addresses the relationship between the speaker in In Plaster and

5 her plaster cast, arguing, the inner ugly, self represents the angry, aggressive, female self which Plath had to liberate, continuing on to highlight, the more basic issue of why the female writer can so easily debase and vilify that self which represents her most cherished beliefs and goals (641). However, Lank does not grasp the full picture when suggesting the links between the speaker of In Plaster and the plaster cast itself are purely vehicles for Plaths own self-loathing as manifested in a physical object. Rather, the poem suggests that the speakers personification of the inanimate cast is built on a deep attachment for the speakers physical surroundings. The cast is not the speakers enemy, but can instead be interpreted as a passing friend that enables ones own personal growth. As the poem concludes, Plath writes, I used to think we might make a go of it together/After all, it was a kind of marriage, being so close/Now I see it must be one or the other of us (50-52). This plaster cast is not a metaphor for the speakers own feelings of duplicity, but rather that the dichotomy of the speaker or the cast winning out over the other is not dissimilar to that of a friendship that has run its course. As the speaker says, Im collecting my strength; one day I shall manage without her it is a parting of the ways, as so many human relationships experience (55). The key to this interpretation of In Plaster is that this relationship is not between two humans, but rather one human and one object which the speaker has humanized. Rather than write a poem about two people, Plath has chosen to write about a human-shaped plaster cast; this is further indication of Plaths obsession with the physicality of her world and her ability to better connect with objects than she can with people.

6 Where the poem In Plaster represents Plaths speakers largely symbiotic relationship with an object, Plaths The Colossus shows the representation of a relationship that can initially be described as anything other than mutually beneficial. However, this poem does share with In Plaster the image of a human-like object, only this time the object is much larger than simply a plaster cast of the speaker. The colossus in question is a massive broken statue for which the speaker laments, I shall never get you put together entirely at the very outset of the poem (1). The speaker makes it immediately clear that (in contrast to a plaster cast of ones body) this broken statue is much larger than she. Plath uses an image of an ant to describe the relationship between the speaker and the statue she is working to mend: Scaling little ladders with gluepots and pails of Lysol I crawl like an ant in mourning Over the weedy acres of your brow To mend the immense skull-plates and clear The bald, white tumuli of your eyes. (11-15) The dynamic of speaker and object clearly shows that the personified object has the upper hand over the ant-like speaker. Scholar Margaret Dickie argues that, The Colossus is Plath's admission of defeat and analysis of her own impotence in dealing with the memories of her fatherthe man who is identified as being the human version of Plaths metaphorical broken statue. However, this does not account for the fact that, though the speaker has communicated her small size in relation to the colossus that she works to fix, she remains largely unemotional and almost sassy in other lines of the piece. Plath writes, You are pithy and historical as the Roman Forum/I open my lunch on a hill of black cypress/Your fluted bones and acanthine hair

7 are littered (18-20). The statue that the speaker is attempting to piece together also doubles as a nice place to stop and enjoy her lunch after a long day of scaling ladders and mending skull plates. Scholar Grace Schulman agrees that the speakers defiant attitude represents a key difference in how this poem is read by those who equate the whole of Plaths work as rooted in her relationship with her father. Schulman writes of the patriarchal overtones, those themes are objectified, or developed presentatively, with minimal description. The Colossus itself exhibits a rather sassy, defiant attitude toward the stone ruins addressed as father (n.p.). Schulmans take on the tone of this poem is spot on in that is captures the speakers attachment to the physical colossus as one that is rooted in a growing sense of disregard. The defiance is most pronounced in the emotional skeleton of the poem, as progress is made from initial desperation (I shall never get you put together entirely) to the resolve of the final lines. The speaker concludes the poem by saying, No longer do I listen for the scrape of a keel/on the blank stones of the landing (29-30). No longer does the speaker wait for the return of the colossus, but instead she has moved on. She uses the colossus for utilitarian purposes, such as hiding in the cornucopia of your left ear to shield herself from the wind, and to watch the sun rise under the pillar of your tongue (24-27). The beauty of Plaths imagery and use of the fictional stone colossus as a metaphor lies in this emotional progression from the beginning to end of the poem. At the outset of the poem when the colossus was representative of a manspecifically the speakers fatherthe speaker was desperate and working tirelessly to piece back together the statue that once was. As the speaker slowly begins to separate her relationship with her father

8 from the stone ruins of the colossus, and therefore begins to see the stone ruins as simply inanimate objects, she finds a place where she can emotionally divest herself from her relationship with another human. The broken pieces of her actual human relationship are replaced with broken pieces of simple, meaningless stone, and it is in this meaningless stone that she can take her shelter from the wind and live without the fear of hearing the scrape of a keel on the stone landing. It is only when the speaker substitutes her relationship with a person to a relationship with an object that she finds peace at the end of the poem, bolstering the argument that her attachment to objects outweighs her necessity for attachment to other human beings. When considering her thoughts on other people while writing in her posthumously published journals, Sylvia Plath wrote, I dont care about anyone, and the feeling is quite obviously mutual. While this may have been a bit of hyperbole on her part, it does echo the evidence in much of her poetry that suggests Plath was much more attached to objects and physical inanimate beings than she was to other people. In her poem Elm we see her vast empathy for a tree in her front yard as she imagines what it would be like if the elm could verbalize its thoughts in her verse. We again see her obsession with human-like (but decidedly non-human) objects like body casts and statues in the poems In Plaster and The Colossus objects she forges relationships with inside of her poems, often in the stead of a real relationship with another human being. It is not that Plath dislikes humans altogether, for if this were true its unlikely that she would have been so skilled at such deep introspection into her own absence or fractured presence of deep human relationships. Additionally, it is not that Plath simply used objects to convey her

9 emotionsthis is a common element of most poetry. What Plath does with objects in her poems like Elm, The Colossus, and In Plaster is to supplant human discourse with a discourse between object and human, or poet and inanimate muse. Because of this, we are treated to a double dose of Plaths poetic ability: her skill in communicating the viewpoint of her speaker in conjunction with her talent in nuancing the viewpoint of her now-animated (traditionally inanimate) object. Plaths self-proclaimed misanthropy manifests itself in her deep attachment to physical objects and where she cannot bring herself to forge and sustain relationships with other people in her poetry, she is moved to poetic utterance time and time again through her empathy for the physical objects that populate her physical world.

10 Works Cited

Dickie, Margaret. Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. Modern American Poetry. 1979. Web. Knickerbocker, Scott. "Bodied Forth in Words": Sylvia Plath's Ecopoetics. College Literature.36.3 (2009): 1-27. JSTOR. Web. 10 Apr 13. Lant, Kathleen Margaret and Sylvia Plath. The Big Strip Tease: Female Bodies and Male Power in the Poetry of Sylvia Plath. Contemporary Literature. 34.4 (1993): 620-669. JSTOR. Web. 10 Apr 2013. Plath, Sylvia. Elm. The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry, Volume 2. Third Edition. Richard Ellman, Robert OClair and Jahan Ramazani. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2003. 602-603. Print. Plath, Sylvia. In Plaster. The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry, Volume 2. Third Edition. Richard Ellman, Robert OClair and Jahan Ramazani. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2003. 599-600. Print.

Plath, Sylvia. The Colossus. The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry, Volume 2. Third Edition. Richard Ellman, Robert OClair and Jahan Ramazani. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2003. 597-598. Print. Schulman, Grace. "Sylvia Plath and Yaddo" in Ariel Ascending: Writings about Sylvia Plath. Modern American Poetry. 1985. Web.