The first stanza introduces us to the central tool of the poem: the personification of Kindness. Kindness is described with wealthy and rosy characteristics: she “glides” and is “nice”; she has “jewels” and “rings.” We are also introduced to the image of “mirrors,” a common theme in Plath’s work, including the Bell Jar. In the Bell Jar, reflections are disorienting and unrecognisable. However, in this poem, “the mirrors / are filling with smiles,” suggesting that the speaker is joyful to be a recipient of kind actions.

Spoonful of sugar

What is so real as the cry of a child?"

When in the second stanza, Plath asks the reader this question,

The reader quickly finds a home for this question, opening stanza two with a link to one of her central themes: womanhood through the lens of motherhood. She describes a child’s cry as a soulful-yet-tame version of a rabbit’s. This image is directly connected to no other lines in the poem, as plath immediately pivots to the central image: Kindness as a form of sweetness. Through the remainder of this poem, sugar (and, by association, kindness) is connected to health and comfort.

By placing the “rabbit’s cry” in between these two positive descriptions of the effects of kindness, Plath suggests that the relief for the pain that children experience is the kindness of their parents.

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Plath pivots again to a seemingly unrelated image, describing the early stages of a sewing project. Plath links powerfully here to the poem Tulips, namely through the motifs of flowers, smiling, and anaesthetics. In Tulips, the flowers (and their vibrancy) are intrusive, disturbing Plath of the peace brought by the white walls and the anaesthetics, a stripping away of identity, connections, and history which she perceives as incredibly freeing. Additionally, the smiling faces of Hughes and their child brings her pain (“their smiles catch onto my skin, little smiling hooks”). Contrast all of this with the portrayal given in Kindness. Here, the silks are playing the role she did, but rather than describing this as a peaceful emptiness, the clothes are “desperate” to be free, not by falling asleep, but by escaping their captivity. The act of assuming a stereotypically womanly function is a sort of evil. As seen in Bell Jar, Plath is not rejecting all aspects of the ‘housewife’ and ‘scandalous’ boxes, but rather wishes to fulfil a whole function in society, with all the nuance women deserve to be treated with.

Kindness: the final act

The final stanza begins with what we can safely conjecture is a direct reference to Ted Hughes, the passive actions of whom contrast those of Plath earlier. The steam of the tea also links to the “smoke” referenced in the poem’s third line$^1$.

The blood jet is poetry, there is no stopping it.

We can (fairly) safely conjecture that the “you” referred to in this closing stanza is Ted Hughes, who I believe was still her husband at the time of writing this. The first line is a shift in several ways. The metaphorical, tense language of lines 6 to 15 are swapped for a straight, conversational approach, with the line “And here you come, with a cup of tea.” The contrast is visceral and telling, the implications clear.

The following lines, however, are not so kind. The “blood jet” seems to refer to a spurt of blood that can’t be prevented, and this, we are told, is an accurate portrayal of what poetry is. We must ask who would attempt to prevent it: the attacker, the attacked, or perhaps both? A potential interpretation of this is that the speaker has murdered her husband, who in his dying act, gives their children over. Maybe. With this interpretation, the roses are a good thing: the one act of kindness this addressee is capable of. This seems to satisfy the theme given by the poem’s title, which, unlike Words (which used it’s key term only once excluding the title) repeats it’s title five times across it’s twenty lines. If we are to find a satisfying interpretation of this final stanza, it is imperative that that interpretation is completely intertwined with the idea of kindness, which this one seems to do.

I think it’s also very possible that it is the ‘kindness’ which is doing these acts, making tea for her husband and putting together clothes.

Regardless, one thing is clear: the first three exploratory stanzas serve the fourth, not the other way round. Thus, the poem is like a snowball, picking up ideas, themes and connections, finally reaching a climactic statement, one which is only clear because of the work before it.

Applications

I love the idea of ending on a sentence that connects associatively, but not with immediate narrative clarity. My default is to handhold my readers until there is no doubt they miss the idea I am trying to convey, often at great loss of associative power and depth. My favourite poems to read are ones that have treasure at every layer, but if I had to pick between only finding treasure at the surface, and only finding it deeper, I would pick the latter in a heartbeat.

In today’s post, I don’t have a concrete example from my work to give, because I am taking a break from writing/editing poems, focusing instead on more general analysis, expanding my reading scope, and working a few prose projects.

Notes

1. I must confess, I have not been able to find a satisfying explanation for this image, other than the direct connotations from “rings” and red and blue.

References

1. Plath, S. (2010). Ariel. Faber And Faber. (Original work published 1965)