This is an official start to a series I’ll be doing, where I analyse a poem a week from Sylvia Plath’s Ariel, from the last to the first. In each entry I’ll start by analysing what the poem is doing technically. I’ll lay out the features of the poem that seem to work great, and possible reasons for that. I’ll also explore the features that surprise or confuse me, either in on-the-nose meaning or by having unconventional choices, from my perspective. I’ll then broaden to look at how this poem fits within the other Ariel poems I’ve analysed, and then finally I’ll consider applications to my own poetry. I’ll probably finish each entry with some sort of study/exercise, or an example of a decision I made in an actual draft, really just way where this analysis has concretely affected my own work.

Today’s poem is Words.

Metaphor as perpetual motion

Plath begins bewilderingly. The word “Axes”—in isolation—presents itself as the introduction to this poem’s world of imagery. There is no word placed between “Words” and “Axes,” just a tenor and a vehicle (Richards, 1936, p. 36; Williams, 2019, p. 259). One powerful effect of this is that the range of the metaphor is unbounded. Had Plath said, “Words are axes, after whose stroke the wood rings,…” then after some exploration of the image, we might assume that the linking power of the metaphor has died, and that Plath intends to focus somewhere else. By omitting any direct link, copular or otherwise, the vehicle is effectively the entire poem.

This effect is exemplified by the later use of the titular tenor in the final stanza, seemingly mark the end of the vehicle’s primary domain. However, Plath immediately brings back the horse metaphor, incidentally re-activating the entire web of images that she has strung together up to this point. This allows the axes to serve as a deeply permeating extended metaphor, possibly also hinting at the persistence of the words.

Intentional Instability

The line lengths are very irregular, and the words that Plath breaks on are shocking too. For this first line, we can conclude that the primary effect is isolating the word “axes.” It seems to work quite well. Paying attention to sound, we can observe a triple repetition of the ‘a’ sound across the first three lines, as well as a fairly consistent use of the ‘w’ sound across all four stanzas. We also have repetition of the word “echoes” acting as a literal echo. Finally, note that there is little to know rhyme at the end of any lines. “Axes” and “horses” sort of slant rhyme, and “rings” and “travelling,” but nothing strong. Thus, the little order that exists in this stanza exists at the beginning of lines, and the beginning of the stanza. The result is that in this first stanza, we have a feeling of almost-order. Like the concentric rings on a tree’s cross-section, we see patterns that feel quite stable, but have some clear irregularities.

Every line in stanza two is enjambed, and quite defiantly, too. The noun phrase within “like the water striving” cannot be pried apart without dissonance. A more end-stopped version might look like this:

The sap wells like tears, like the water striving to re-establish its mirror over the rock that drops and turns,

but instead we have “…the / water…” and in stanza three, we have “Years later I / encounter them…” which creates a similar tension. This dissonance makes these stanzas read faster, and it makes the balance of the alliterative “w” sounds all the more easy to cling to.

By the second instance of the word, ‘words,’ Plath has taken the reader on a ride. The final stanza offers no resolution to the previous tension, instead continuing with a powerful line break with “/ While /” standing on its own, separating the final two lines from the seventeen chaotic lines above. The ending, however, is not a peaceful contrast. Rather, it continues irregularly, just from a slightly different angle. At the start of stanza four, The “f” and “t” sounds in indefatigable and hoof-taps, as well as the “d” and “r” sounds in “Words dry and riderless,” create a nice rhythm within this drama, a smoothness notably missing from the sounds of the final two lines.

The first and last stanzas respond to the turbulence of the middle with an uneasy peace. The bookends have hints of disorder, but manage to counteract it partially with sound and with generally unabrasive line breaks.

Words?

With all this in mind, we address the elephant(s) in the room: who is saying what words to whom?? Who is wielding the axes, and who or what is the tree?

The first stanza paints a picture of axes striking wood, and a sound echoing outward “like horses.” One interpretation of this is that the power and passion associated with horses is being applied to the echo of the axes’ stroke, which is then applied to the impact of words. From the comparison of the sap to tears, and the stump to a skull$^1$ we conclude that the effect of these words on their recipient is unpleasant. Similarly, the axes initially suggest the person uttering these words is doing so with intentional aggression, but the word “riderless” in stanza four seems to hint at a lack of control. The axe-wielder is not doing so with a clear aim, but is nonetheless succeeding at causing harm. I wish I could explain what the stars at the bottom of the pool are, but so far I have nothing. Maybe I will edit this in the future.

Application and Studies

Main Thoughts

• The idea of an extended metaphor branching out into a few other mini-metaphors is new to me. I think I’ve done this in some of my poems, but not to this extent. There is a lot of potential here.
• Plath’s use of line breaks, syntax, and sound, to mirror the sound, patterns, and motion of the images mentioned was particularly interesting. I especially liked the way stanza two rolled into stanza three, perfectly matching with the phrase “drops and turns.”
• I also love the idea of “hyper-direct” comparisons, omitting a simile or metaphor or copula and just placing two things beside each other for the reader to play with.

I thought of a simple prompt, for today’s consolidation study:

Write about the feeling of finishing a good meal.

Here’s what I’ve come up with:

I think it was fairly risky pairing two fairly difficult-to-pin concepts together like this, but the beauty of studies and quick exercises is that these sort of experiments cost nothing. In the future I might prefer to use a more concrete vehicle, and I think I could have used line breaks more intentionally in the second stanza, given how much care I saw in today’s poem.$^2$ Overall, while writing that, I felt more options available to me than I would typically consider, which I will treat as an indicator of success.

Notes

1. I’m not fully convinced by this interpretation of the “rock” and “white skull,” but at least by connotation, the point loosely stands anyway.
2. I think for these exercises to really work, I should revisit them after a while to write a second draft, since the revision process is quite crucial to the creation of a poem in general.

References

1. Plath, S. (2010). Ariel. Faber And Faber. (Original work published 1965)
2. Richards, I.A. (1936). The Philosophy of Rhetoric. Oxford University Press
3. Williams, R. (2019). The Poetry Toolkit: the Essential Guide to Studying Poetry. Bloomsbury Academic, Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.