Initiate As Smooth As Masts Wrapped Like Panetone By Sylvia Plath

Stage 2 English Studies
Mr. Kuleza
Poetry Major
Elliot Hunt

The poetry studied this year from the anthology ‘The World's Contracted Thus' has presented the thoughts and views of several poets, with many of these poets holding a ‘gloomy' outlook on life. This point is further exemplified through the poetry of Wilfred Owen, Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath. Wilfred Owen places extensive emphasis on the meaning of life and the meaning of war while Robert Lowell seems to be more concerned with more personal issues such as his mother's death and then there is Sylvia Plath who is even more introverted through her poetry and focuses heavily on analysing her own thought processes and suicidal tendencies. On studying ach of these poets and their
Lowell's poems are very reflective and confessional, often expressing his mental illness and his living arrangements in a mental institute for some time, especially in his poem, Sailing Home from Rapollo. This poem contains a great use of similes throughout that add strength to Lowell's feelings of the subject, "fir trunks as smooth as masts… wrapped like panetone", as does Plath in her poem, Balloons. Orwell discusses the death of his mother and the events post her death, in the first stanzas expressing his concern on the meaning of life, just as Owen does in Dulce Et Decorum Est. Orwell uses a vivid use of colour to add contrasts to the poem, "crazy yellow and azure sea-sleds…black and gold casket was like Napoleon's… Dour and dark", unlike Owen who does not often use colour in his poems. Sailing Home from Rapollo is a very clear to read poem that is written to his dead mother, as though she could read it, adding a sense of gloom due to the unfortunate events of Lowell's mother's death, "after twenty minutes I could imagine your final week", unlike Plath's poem, Aftermath, which is not directed toward anyone in particular. In Sailing Home from Rapollo, Lowell expresses his opinion to those who have no values, as his mother's death has made him realise the importance of life, quite the opposite to Owen in his poem, Dulce Et Decorum Est, where he questions the meaning of life.
Aftermath is one of Plath's poems that contains a gloomy outlook on life with a powerful use of imagery, "the house Burnt out…smoke-choked closet…charred shoes, the sodden upholstery", a technique that both Owen and Lowell use in their poems, Dulce Et Decorum Est and Home after Three Months Away, respectively. The poem, Aftermath, is a poem that is a metaphor for Plath's life, expressed through the portrayal of the life of Mother Medea, a woman whose house burnt down and no one would help her rebuild the ruin. The poem, Aftermath, is structured in the form of a Sonnet, a form that neither Owen nor Lowell use in their poems, and contains the use of elongated consonants and vowel sounds, "Of charred shoes, and sodden upholstery". Through the broad use of metaphors, "Mother Medea… Hunters", Plath portrays her times of needs when they were not met when she made a cry for help, through a suicide attempt, which no one rescued her from, just like no one rescued Mother Medea from her burnt out house. The tone of both stanzas of this sonnet is very serious and full of negative energy as portrayed through Plath's use of half-rhymes, and the symbolism of Mother Medea's life to her own, where she is hurt by the way that people act in a crisis and just watch and stare for pure entertainment, a tone that is evident in both Owen and Lowell's poems Aftermath is a negative poem, quite contrasting to