Discuss the Metaphors Used in ‘’Words’ by Sylvia Plath to Show the Difficulties in Writing Poetry.

Metaphors Used in ‘’Words’ by Sylvia Plath to Show the Difficulties in Writing Poetry

Metaphor is an effective device of ‘words’. As the poem has no narrative framework, even a superficial reading requires some interpretation of its metaphor. Sylvia Plath does not make the reader’s task easy, but she does supply the clues. The interlocking nature of the metaphors unifies the poem and leads the reader to the understanding of the poem.

 

 

In the first stanza, Plath links two seemingly disparate images, axes and horses. By emphasizing the common ground of echoing sound, movement out from the center, and energy, these images restate the central image. When in the third stanza, words are spoken of specifically as horses one understands ‘words’ also to be the referent of the earlier metaphors. Because Plath is a poet and this is a poem, words imply poetry. In stanza, second the welling sap and tears suggest a reaction to the preceding violent energy, a wounded state. In the last two lines of the third stanza and the first two of the last, the poet rises briefly from the depths and sees her past work. Now ‘years later’ her words seem meaningless. ‘Dry and riderless’, they have lost the urgency of their creation. Finally, the effort of creativity seems too much. The exhilaration has given way to the relentless demands of the ‘indefatigable hoof taps’, and the mood is of surrender to inevitability-to the ‘fixed stars’ of death that has pervaded the poet’s life and her work. Thus the difficulties in writing poetry have been wonderfully displayed through the device of metaphors.