Sylvia Plath

I remember doing Sylvia Plath's poem "Mirror" as an assessment for English at school. I was reading poems and came across some of hers tonight which made me think back to school. I was intrigued by her poem "Mirror" and her others I have read. Which in turn made me wonder about her as a person and what her life was like, what kind of influences she had and what inspired her writing. I know her life was difficult and that she suffered from clinical depression. She wrote a book called The Bell Jar, which is apparently a very dark novel, but worth it. I am interested in reading it and might have a look for it next time I am at the library. Her poems are so amazing though, she wrote so well. I have been trying to get back into poetry lately. Because I actually do find it very enjoyable, especially once I have written one I am fully happy with.

Sylvia Plath

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 a 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.