"Barren Woman," by Sylvia Plath

I'm excited to be apprenticing myself to writers I admire along with my AP Lit class who are doing the same. I know I've already learned so much just from working diligently on a new poem, talking to wonderful poet Sandra Beasley, and studying Plath's poem "Barren Woman" from Ariel.

Yesterday, Sandra was talking about titles and times when a title might do too much or not enough. She also discussed using a title to frame a piece and let the reader know how to understand it. I was not sure if there is a good way to know if then there is the potential for the title to be working too hard in the piece until I read "Barren Woman."

The text of the poem is an extended metaphor in which the speaker describes herself as an empty museum, courtyard. In the second stanza, she alludes to the births of Nike and Apollo, and to the goddess Diana, the moon. The poem, without the title, works. (obviously, this is Sylvia Plath after all) She has several elements unifying the poem--the whiteness of the lilies and of the moon, the capacity to be full--the crowded museum and the "great public."

Instead, none of those things happen. The museum is empty, the courtyard still. The only activity is from the inanimate water in the inanimate fountain; the lilies, which should live, are "marble" and defined by pallor and heavy smell, reminiscent of death of a funeral.

The line I really don't understand is mid-way through the second stanza:

"Instead, the dead injure me with attentions, and nothing can happen."

It's clearly a turning point, but the bit about the dead is unclear to me and "nothing can happen" seems to be a throw-away line. (forgive me Sylvia) Clearly, though, it can't be; I need to solve the mystery.

Back to the point about the title. The poem is a beautiful, complete experience. I think even without the title, the reader would get some hints of incompletion or barrenness with the imagery of the empty spaces and the moon, which is both virginal and barren. However the metaphor becomes much more powerful when the reader knows that Plath is applying it to an ordinary woman. There is too much ambiguity in the poem without the title for her full meaning to be clear, but it all becomes sharply focused when the reader views it through the lens of her title.

I think I'd like to try this idea out. Write an extended metaphor as a poem and then give it a title that is the other half of the metaphor. I'll report back on how this works!