Poetic Language
Choose the poem which you think best demonstrates “poetic” language. Justify your choice in
a paragraph which makes specific references to the poem and its exact use of poetic language.
a paragraph which makes specific references to the poem and its exact use of poetic language.
Daddy - Sylvia PlathYou do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe In which I have lived like a foot For thirty years, poor and white, Barely daring to breathe or Achoo. Daddy, I have had to kill you. You died before I had time– Marble-heavy, a bag full of God, Ghastly statue with one gray toe Big as a Frisco seal And a head in the freakish Atlantic Where it pours bean green over blue In the waters off beautiful Nauset. I used to pray to recover you. Ach, du. In the German tongue, in the Polish town Scraped flat by the roller Of wars, wars, wars. But the name of the town is common. My Polack friend Says there are a dozen or two. So I never could tell where you Put your foot, your root, I never could talk to you. The tongue stuck in my jaw. It stuck in a barb wire snare. Ich, ich, ich, ich, I could hardly speak. I thought every German was you. And the language obscene An engine, an engine Chuffing me off like a Jew. A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen. I began to talk like a Jew. I think I may well be a Jew. The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna Are not very pure or true. With my gipsy ancestress and my weird luck And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack I may be a bit of a Jew. I have always been scared of you, With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo. And your neat mustache And your Aryan eye, bright blue. Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You– Not God but a swastika So black no sky could squeak through. Every woman adores a Fascist, The boot in the face, the brute Brute heart of a brute like you. You stand at the blackboard, daddy, In the picture I have of you, A cleft in your chin instead of your foot But no less a devil for that, no not Any less the black man who Bit my pretty red heart in two. I was ten when they buried you. At twenty I tried to die And get back, back, back to you. I thought even the bones would do. But they pulled me out of the sack, And they stuck me together with glue. And then I knew what to do. I made a model of you, A man in black with a Meinkampf look And a love of the rack and the screw. And I said I do, I do. So daddy, I’m finally through. The black telephone’s off at the root, The voices just can’t worm through. If I’ve killed one man, I’ve killed two– The vampire who said he was you And drank my blood for a year, Seven years, if you want to know. Daddy, you can lie back now. There’s a stake in your fat black heart And the villagers never liked you. They are dancing and stamping on you. They always knew it was you. Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through. |
Sylvia Plath's "Daddy" has many great examples of poetic language. In the first stanza for instance she says "...black shoe In which I have lived like a foot For thirty years, poor and white, Barely daring to breathe or Achoo." she uses this metaphor to show how small to show us how trapped she feels by the memories of her father. Sylvia also makes another reference to size in the second stanza saying "Marble-heavy, a bag full of God, Ghastly statue with one gray toe Big as a Frisco seal And a head in the freakish Atlantic" using metaphors and similes to say that her fathers presence is so large he stretches across the country. Sylvia also uses poetic language to reference the Holocaust. In the seventh stanza Sylvia uses a train engine as a metaphor for the German language, which her father speaks by saying"Ich, ich, ich, ich, I could hardly speak. I thought every German was you. And the language obscene An engine, an engine Chuffing me off like a Jew. A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen." The train is taking the speaker to a concentration camp, like the Jews were during the Holocaust, which is a metaphor for how she feels that she is a victim of her father. Sylvia uses more Holocaust imagery to describe her father in the ninth stanza when she writes "Not God but a swastika So black no sky could squeak through. Every woman adores a Fascist, The boot in the face, the brute Brute heart of a brute like you." This stanza compares the reign of her father over her as the reign of the third reich over Germany.
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