Poems
are an integral part of literature. Poems are quite different from stories. In
stories or novellas, they tend to give you a particular message but poems give
you freedom, freedom to make out meaning you feel it conveys. Every
paragraph, line, and word in a poem conveys different meanings hence different
stories, it allows each person to convey their own version. personally, I don’t
have much interest in poems but there are times when some poems stick to my
mind. One such poem is Lady Lazarus by Sylvia Plath.
Sylvia
Plath was an American poet, novelist, and short-story writer. She is best known for two of her published collections The
Colossus and Other Poems and Ariel. She won a Pulitzer Prize for
The Collected Poems in poetry making her the fourth to receive this
honor.
Lady
Lazarus is a very dark, brutal poem published in the
collection Ariel. It is considered one of Plath’s best poems and being
one of the best it also attracted a lot of criticism from literary critics.
Most people say that the poem conveys her suicidal attempts. It also gives the
reader a very eerie and holocaust-like miasma. The poem starts with the line “I
have done it again” which conveys the message that she tried to take her life
again it was the third attempt this shows her suicidal thinking during that
period of her life. To understand this deep and complex poem even starting
you would have to read the entire poem first. I have read it, again and again, every time the feeling is the same as I felt when I first read it. The lines that
always stick to my mind are
“ash, ash-
You poke and stir.
Flesh, bone, there is nothing there-
A wedding ring,
A gold filling.
Herr God, Herr Lucifer
Beware
Beware
Out of ash
I rise with my red hair
And eat men like air”
This line gives you a very daunting feel, it makes you uneasy, afraid even but it is
a very strong line, it suggests how the Nazis were known to use burnt Jewish
bodies to make soap, they even rummaged through bodies to search for jewelry
and gold fillings. She then refers to god and Lucifer or the devil who have always
influenced her thoughts and actions. The last lines are somewhat hard to
decipher it is not clear what she wants to say but to me, it feels like she is
trying to convey that even though she tries to kill herself she doesn’t and
with every failed attempt she is reborn a better person and will not bow down
to any man who has tormented her, she will exact revenge and never be a
victim to their scrutiny.
This poem gives you a sense of empowerment and inspiration. it is a poem that asks
you to be more humane to those beside you, working alongside you. It is a
poem everyone should read once in a while and I know all the feminists and the
humanists will love it and its deep complex meaning.
By: Tunnisha Das Gupta (FullFry)
