Sylvia Plath

Lady Lazarus

I have done it again.
One year in every ten
I manage it--

A sort of walking miracle, my skin
Bright as a Nazi lampshade,
My right foot

A paperweight,
My face a featureless, fine
Jew linen.

Peel off the napkin
O my enemy.
Do I terrify?--

The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?
The sour breath
Will vanish in a day.

Soon, soon the flesh
The grave cave ate will be
At home on me

And I a smiling woman.
I am only thirty.
And like the cat I have nine times to die.

This is Number Three.
What a trash
To annihilate each decade.

What a million filaments.
The peanut-crunching crowd
Shoves in to see

Them unwrap me hand and foot--
The big strip tease.
Gentlemen, ladies

These are my hands
My knees.
I may be skin and bone,

Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.
The first time it happened I was ten.
It was an accident.

The second time I meant
To last it out and not come back at all.
I rocked shut

As a seashell.
They had to call and call
And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.

Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.

I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I've a call.

It's easy enough to do it in a cell.
It's easy enough to do it and stay put.
It's the theatrical

Comeback in broad day
To the same place, the same face, the same brute
Amused shout:

'A miracle!'
That knocks me out.
There is a charge

For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge
For the hearing of my heart--
It really goes.

And there is a charge, a very large charge
For a word or a touch
Or a bit of blood

Or a piece of my hair or my clothes.
So, so, Herr Doktor.
So, Herr Enemy.

I am your opus,
I am your valuable,
The pure gold baby

That melts to a shriek.
I turn and burn.
Do not think I underestimate your great concern.

Ash, ash--
You poke and stir.
Flesh, bone, there is nothing there--

A cake of soap, 
A wedding ring,
A gold filling.

Herr God, Herr Lucifer
Beware
Beware.

Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.

Reaction: I found this to be a very haunting poem. It made me feel a little depressed, but I enjoyed it.

Meaning: This poem seems to be about the narrator's suffering and pain. I think the narrator in this poem, maybe Lady Lazarus or Plath herself, had experienced something traumatic when she was younger and it has carried through her during her life.

Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.
The first time it happened I was ten.
It was an accident.

The second time I meant
To last it out and not come back at all.
I rocked shut

She seems to be almost self-destructive and is dangerous and is suffering. Throughout the poem, the narrator mocks herself as well as the people around her.

Technique: The poem is quite long and the stanzas contain 3 lines each. There is no rhyming at all in the poem, but there is repetition within the stanzas. 

Biography:
      Sylvia Plath was born on October 27, 1932 in Boston, Massachusetts. Her father died in 1940 and he had been a strict father. His death and personality affected Plath greatly, which was shown in her poem "Daddy" .  She went through a deep depression and attempted suicide in 1953.
She graduated from Smith College in 1955 and she was an exceptional student. Plath married another poet, Ted Hughes in 1956 who she had two kids with. Her first book "Colossus" was published in 1960.  Her divorce with Hughes in 1962 inspired one of her most famous books "Ariel". In 1963, she published "The Bell Jar", a semi-autobiographical novel under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas. On February 11, 1963, Plath committed suicide using her gas oven. 

The Cord by Leanne O'Sullivan

I used to lie on the floor for hours after
school with the phone cradled between
my shoulder and my ear, a plate of cold
rice to my left, my school books to my right.
Twirling the cord between my fingers
I spoke to friends who recognized the
language of our realm. Throats and lungs
swollen, we talked into the heart of the night,
toying with the idea of hair dye and suicide,
about the boys who didn’t love us,
who we loved too much, the pang
of the nights. Each sentence was
new territory, like a door someone was
rushing into, the glass shattering
with delirium, with knowledge and fear.
My Mother never complained about the phone bill,
what it cost for her daughter to disappear
behind a door, watching the cord
stretching its muscle away from her.
Perhaps she thought it was the only way
she could reach me, sending me away
to speak in the underworld.
As long as I was speaking
she could put my ear to the tenuous earth
and allow me to listen, to decipher.
And these were the elements of my Mother,
the earthed wire, the burning cable,
as if she flowed into the room with
me to somehow say, Stay where I can reach you,
the dim room, the dark earth. Speak of this
and when you feel removed from it
I will pull the cord and take you
back towards me.

       This poem stuck out to me more than the others. I immediately found it very interesting.  It sounds like something an adolescent can relate to. It portrays the time when friends become closer and bonds with family get left behind and how the family tries desperately to reach out back to their beloved child. I think it is trying to convey a sense of growing up and how it's like to be a teenager. The poet uses descriptive language and it also seems that she makes lists within her sentences often.