Mirror by Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath is so famous I doubt she needs an introduction. Here's a poem of hers that I am simultaneously afraid of and in love with:

Mirror

I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
Whatever I see I swallow immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
I am not cruel, only truthful-
The eye of the little god, four cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.
Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.

We've all had that moment when we look in the mirror and realize we do not like what we see. I don't believe self-image is any more or less of an issue than it was in 1961 when this was written; the mother of the fashionably anorexic herself, 60s supermodel Twiggy, came into vogue just five years after this poem was written. Still, body image is a very hot topic now. Everyone wants to enter into the "fat or thin" debate, people love to gossip about how thin Keira Knightley is, Barbie's changed her proportions--some celebrity is probably getting a nose job right now.

A few years ago when I was in Japan, I was flipping through a magazine aimed at teen girls when I saw an unusual ad featuring close-up pictures of young Japanese girls' eyes and before and after pictures. I went and asked my host sister what the ad said, and she explained to me that I was looking at an ad for double eyelid surgery.

I mention all of this to show just how much Sylvia Plath's poem has to do with every day of our lives. People go to great lengths to fix what the mirror shows them, but the poem suggests that we can never really fix it. There have been debates about whether the poem refers to literal aging in the last few lines or emotional aging or worsening depression (Sylvia Plath committed suicide two years after writing this poem), and I think both readings are important.

But is it possible learn from a poet who obviously didn't have all the answers? I think so. Plath's poem expresses the insecurity, fear, and even self-loathing that often dwells within our mirrors. As a poet, her job is only to illuminate--not to answer.

Not Waving but Drowning

This time I'm featuring a poem that's a little more recent; this one was published in 1957, and I love it.

Not Waving but Drowning

Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he's dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.

First I think it's important to note that "larking" in this context means "playing pranks." I didn't know the word the first time I read this, but I could kind of tell by context.

We read this poem a few weeks ago in my Reading and Writing Poetry class, and everyone had a slightly different interpretation. They were all insightful and lovely, but here's my personal take: this poem seems to me to be about the trouble so many of us have all our lives connecting to other people. We struggle, each in our own way, to be understood and to understand. I think a lack of understanding is at the root of most wars, whether they're the door-slamming, name-calling variety we wrestle out in the living room or the bloody, bomb-dropping kind we read about in newspapers. The misunderstanding here is literal--he's not waving, he's drowning--but in the last stanza it becomes startingly metaphorical and tragic far beyond an accidental death.

I read the last stanza as the man talking. Whether he's actually saying this or if he would say it were he still alive is a mystery, but it doesn't really matter. He's doing what all of us fear so much: looking back on his life and his struggle to connect with others and realizing, in his final moments, that he never really did.

How I wish this poem were just fiction.

On a slightly happier note, here's another blogger's take on how to make the most of life, in spite of all the big and little things that might get in the way. Check out her introspection and other musings.

Anne Bradstreet's The Author to her Book

A few weeks ago in my American Literature class I read a poem by Anne Bradstreet, a very early American female poet, that hit home for me. Any writer or wannabe writer--or anyone who's ever handed in an essay to a scrutinizing first grade teacher--can probably identify with Bradstreet's feelings. Here's what she has to say in her poem "The Author to her Book":

Thou ill-form'd offspring of my feeble brain,
Who after birth did'st by my side remain,
Till snatcht from thence by friends, less wise than true,
Who thee abroad expos'd to public view,
Made thee in rags, halting to th' press to trudge,
Where errors were not lessened (all may judge).
At thy return my blushing was not small,
My rambling brat (in print) should mother call.
I cast thee by as one unfit for light,
Thy Visage was so irksome in my sight,
Yet being mine own, at length affection would
Thy blemishes amend, if so I could.
I wash'd thy face, but more defects I saw,
And rubbing off a spot, still made a flaw.
I stretcht thy joints to make thee even feet,
Yet still thou run'st more hobbling than is meet.
In better dress to trim thee was my mind,
But nought save home-spun Cloth, i' th' house I find.
In this array, 'mongst Vulgars mayst thou roam.
In Critics' hands, beware thou dost not come,
And take thy way where yet thou art not known.
If for thy Father askt, say, thou hadst none;
And for thy Mother, she alas is poor,
Which caus'd her thus to send thee out of door.

Sure, the language and the rhyme scheme is archaic, maybe a little dated, but it still seemed familiar to this twenty-first century college student. The image of a poem as a wayward child, wandering far from its mother (the poet), for better or worse, is exactly how I feel about the terrifying task of sharing my writing. You have that motherly affection for what you wrote, which is really pretty narcissistic, since you love it mostly because it came from you. Still, to expose what you've made and an expression of your own mind with the public is vulnerable. It's a tentative step towards reaching out and showing the wounded side of yourself to the world, isn't it?

I was always pretty bad about taking criticism. Any suggestion that something I do is less than perfect seems a personal affront to me--I'm working on it, but I think I'm still the same touchy, defensive little snot I've always been. That's why, if I could, I'd warn my work to avoid critics. There you go--poetry just helped me reveal something about myself. That's what makes it beautiful.

If you liked this poem, you might also enjoy a more contemporary piece on the same theme: go read Ink Scars and Memories and decide for yourself.