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Sylvia PlathA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Written in unrhymed verse, the lyrical poem comprises of five nine-line stanzas with varying line lengths. The lines are often enjambed, clauses running on, as in the case of
Touched by a match, they might warm me,
And their fine lines singe
The air to orange
Before the distances they pin evaporate (Lines 3-6).
The regular stanzaic structure can be seen as a deliberate poetic device; a way for its speaker to attempt order in an unstable world. The structural soundness of the poem is a foil for its themes of instability and impermanence.
The enjambment amplifies the poem’s mood of uncertainty and bleakness, the lines breaking right after verbs and nouns, leaving the reader in suspense about the subject’s fate. Such instances of enjambment can be seen here:
There is no life higher than the grasstops
Or the hearts of sheep, and the wind
Pours by like destiny, bending
Everything in one direction (Lines 10-13).
The run-on sentences undercut the regular stanza structure, lending the poem an edge. Plath uses little alliteration in the poem but achieves a musical, haunting quality akin to echoes through repetition, such as in “they only dissolve and dissolve” (Line 8).
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