American Romanticism
Student Poetry Presentation 2008

Thursday 9 October: Sylvia Plath, "Blackberrying," N 2658

poetry reader / discussion leader: Bundy Fowler

Sylvia Plath, 1932-1963

Short Biography (from Plath Website)

·       Sylvia Plath published her first poem at age 8, the same year that her father died. An impressive literary career followed.

·       Her first attempt at suicide occurred during the 1950s while studying at Smith College (pill overdose).

·       She continued her literary and academic pursuits at Cambridge, England (on a Fulbright scholarship) and published The Colossus at age 28.

·       In 1956, she married English poet Ted Hughes.

·       After their first child, they began having marital problems.

·       By the winter of 1962-1963, she was living alone with her two children in London; poor and ill, so writing became a necessity for their financial stability.

·       On February 11, 1963, Platt killed herself with cooking gas at the age of 30.

·       Because of the resemblance of her poetry to her life, it is difficult to ignore the characteristics and themes of her poetry from her persona.

Blackberrying

Nobody in the lane, and nothing, nothing but blackberries,
Blackberries on either side, though on the right mainly,
A blackberry alley, going down in hooks, and a sea
Somewhere at the end of it, heaving. Blackberries
Big as the ball of my thumb, and dumb as eyes
Ebon in the hedges, fat
With blue-red juices. These they squander on my fingers.
I had not asked for such a blood sisterhood; they must love me.
They accommodate themselves to my milkbottle, flattening their sides.

Overhead go the choughs in black, cacophonous flocks ---
Bits of burnt paper wheeling in a blown sky.
Theirs is the only voice, protesting, protesting.
I do not think the sea will appear at all.
The high, green meadows are glowing, as if lit from within.
I come to one bush of berries so ripe it is a bush of flies,
Hanging their bluegreen bellies and their wing panes in a Chinese screen.
The honey-feast of the berries has stunned them; they believe in heaven.
One more hook, and the berries and bushes end.

The only thing to come now is the sea.
From between two hills a sudden wind funnels at me,
Slapping its phantom laundry in my face.
These hills are too green and sweet to have tasted salt.
I follow the sheep path between them. A last hook brings me
To the hills' northern face, and the face is orange rock
That looks out on nothing, nothing but a great space
Of white and pewter lights, and a din like silversmiths
Beating and beating at an intractable metal.

Course objectives: 

Objective 1a. Romantic Spirit or Ideology

·       To identify and criticize ideas or attitudes associated with Romanticism, such as desire and loss, rebellion, nostalgia, idealism, the gothic, the sublime, the individual in nature or separate from the masses.

Objective 1c: Romantic Genres

·       the romance narrative (journey from repression to transcendence)

·       the gothic style (haunted physical and mental spaces, the shadow of death or decay; dark and light in physical and moral terms; film noir)

Thomas Parker (2003) discussed Plath’s method of confessional poetry.  “a contemporary poetic mode in which poets discuss matters relating to their private lives.  Confessional poets go beyond romanticism's emphasis on the individual experience in intimate detail and often-psychoanalytical terms with which they describe even their most painful experiences.” (TP)

The poem is a journey possibly through life and towards death, her ultimate goal. In the first stanzas, the blackberries are large, ripe and perhaps fertile (representing love and children). As the poem progresses the blackberries become overripe and covered with flies, “one bush of berries so ripe it is a bush of flies” suggesting decay, then eventually death. {GOTHIC}

The sublime is demonstrated in her references to the sea. Vast and endless, the speaker’s life faces many “hooks” or turns in the blackberries path to finally reach the sea. Described as something that “looks out on nothing, nothing but a great space,” a deep sense of awe correlates to the sea.

In the poem the speaker is both an individual in nature and separate from the masses. The only voices she hears are the “choughs” (or birds that resemble crows...later in the final stanza the ‘silversmiths make noise “beating and beating against a retractable metal.”)

She is alone in the blackberry lane (most likely the author’s description of life’s journey) through all of its turns (both good and bad, demonstrated by the description of the blackberries as she passes them). Further, the isolated feeling conveyed by the speaker reveals a woman separate from the masses (surrounded by “nobody” and “nothing”.) Isolation plays a strong thematic role from beginning to end.

Each stanza could represent various phases of her life.

Questions:

1.  If the narrator finds the sea at the end of this poem, is it a form of transcendence or simply death and nothingness?

(Objective 1c)

2. The poem uses strong references to nature throughout in a variety of ways. Why in the end, does the speaker shift gears to mechanical descriptions?

 “Of white and pewter lights, and a din like silversmiths
Beating and beating at an intractable metal.”

3. If we chose to accept this poem as a confessional style, could the three stanzas represent the three decades of her life? Her suicide attempts could demonstrate her infatuation with death; hence, can her journey be romantic if it describes her journey toward death (the gothic)? (Objective 1a)