I have always loved this poem by Sylvia Plath.  It’s the first piece in Ariel and that makes the first word of the book love - a fact I read somewhere.  The images of the cat’s mouth, the gold watch and moth-breath have always stood out.  Once I had children, I understood the phrase “cow-heavy” and appreciate Plath’s use of the phrase because I doubt breastfeeding was a much discussed topic in the early 1960′s.

I discovered Plath through her novel The Bell Jar and all the dramatic pathos of her short life drew me in.  But the poems are spectacular.  Her work can be overwrought at times, but her power is unmistakable.  If you read this aloud, you’ll hear the music of her lines.  The poem moves easily between small, concrete moments such as The midwife slapped your footsoles and large abstract ideas.  One example of the large and abstract comes with the line, your cry/ Took its place among the elements.  And then there’s the complicated stanza that begins with I’m no more your mother and ends with something as large as the wind.  All through the poem you can trace examples of large and small, sometimes layered right on top of each other as with the opening line - Love set you going like a fat gold watch.  This is a specific watch complete with round face, Roman numerals and minute hand. (Actually, I don’t know what picture Plath had in mind, but this line conjures up images of my father’s watch.)  And a watch tells time so we then zoom out from the tick, tick of the minute hand to Time with a capital T and a fisted hand around us all.

This is more explication than I usual give and will try to restrain myself in the future.  In the meantime, enjoy the poem and don’t forget to read it out loud.  Let me know what you think.

[I had a nagging feeling that I followed up on and it turns out that I wrote about this poem before.  You can check it out here.]

Morning Song

by Sylvia Plath

Love set you going like a fat gold watch.
The midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bald cry
Took its place among the elements.

Our voices echo, magnifying your arrival.  New statue.
In a drafty museum, your nakedness
Shadows our safety.  We stand round blankly as walls.

I'm no more your mother
Than the cloud that distills a mirror to reflect its own slow
Effacement at the wind's hand.

All night your moth-breath
Flickers among the flat pink roses.  I wake to listen:
A far sea moves in my ear.

One cry, and I stumble from bed, cow-heavy and floral
In my Victorian nightgown.
Your mouth opens clean as a cat's.  The window square

Whitens and swallows its dull stars.  And now you try
Your handful of notes;
The clear vowels rise like balloons.

photo credit: Roystan via photopin cc