October Poet

Sylvia Plath

Oct 15, 2007 Linda Sue Grimes

Sylvia Plath was born October 27, 1932, in Jamaica Plains, Massachusetts. Plath is Poetry's October poet. This article focuses on Plath's poem, "Lady Lazarus."

Sylvia Plath asserted, "I've tried to picture my world and the people in it as seen through the distorting lens of a bell jar." This claim explains Plath’s poems with an exceptional precision. Her poems do indeed distort. The neurosis that led to her suicide became her muse, and her goal of ending her own life seems to have distorted her perception of reality.

In “Lady Lazarus,” Plath demonstrates her distortion technique with amazing technical prowess. The poem consists of 28 unrimed verse paragraphs of three lines each. The title alludes to the Biblical character, Lazarus, who though dead was returned to life by Jesus Christ. The speaker is bemoaning, while at the same time boasting, that she has been rescued from three suicide attempts.

Verse Paragraphs 1 – 7

In the beginning of the poem, the speaker announces that she has “done it again,”—that is, attempted to commit suicide again, and she boasts that it has become a ritual with her: “One year in every ten / I manage it.” She resembles a “walking miracle,” and she claims her skin is like a “Nazi lampshade.” Again, Plath is employing the Holocaust metaphor to express her feelings of oppression, as she did in her poem, “Daddy.”

Next, the speaker likens her “right foot” to a paperweight, and her face resembles “featureless, fine / Jew linen.” Then she implies that after her rescuers unveil her face by “Peel[ing] off the napkin,” she will frighten them with her terrifying appearance.

Verse Paragraphs 8 – 14

The speaker then makes it clear that she is only thirty years old: “This is Number Three. / What a trash / To annihilate each decade.” Each decade she has attempted to commit suicide.

Next, she concocts a scene that is circus-like where “The peanut-crunching crowd / Shoves in to see.” But then what they have come to see is a mummy being unwrapped; she refers to the unwrapping as “The big strip tease.” But then the mummy begins to speak: “Gentlemen, ladies / These are my hands / My knees.”

Yet she makes it clear that she is the same little girl who tried to kill herself when she was only ten years old. She then relates that the first time was “an accident” making it unclear why she has made all three sound deliberate. The second time she “meant / To last it out and not come back at all.”

Verse Paragraphs 15 – 21

The speaker then further boasts, “Dying / Is an art, like everything else, / I do it exceptionally well.” However, the reader might wonder, if she does it so well, why has she failed three times?

In verse paragraphs 16 and 17, she describes how “exceptionally well” she does it. Then the bell jar distorted vision kicks in full throttle when she says, after coming back “'A miracle!’ / That knocks me out. / There is a charge.” The miracle is that she has been brought back from the dead, or more accurately, that she has been saved from completing the suicide.

But the statement, “That knocks me out,” is unclear. Does she mean this literally or is she using slang, which means she is very surprised? And the “charge”—is she referring to a price or an electrifying burst?

Verse Paragraphs 22 – 28

Verse paragraphs 22 through 27 are a jumbled mass of images that imply that people are, in fact, paying to see her “blood,” “a piece of [her] hair,” or her clothing. And again, she addresses a Nazi, calling him “Herr Doktor” and “Herr Enemy.”

In the final verse paragraph, an oft-quoted group of lines, she says, “Out of the ash / I rise with my red hair / And I eat men like air.” The lines seem to allude to the phoenix but also could allude to the burning Jews in the furnaces of the Nazis, with the exception that the Jews remained ashes.

Another article about Plath: Plath’s “Morning Song”: Child as Statue

The copyright of the article October Poet in Poetry is owned by Linda Sue Grimes. Permission to republish October Poet in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

Sylvia Plath

House Where Plath Commited Suicide