https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poets/detail/sylvia-plath
“Metaphors” by Sylvia Plath
I’m a riddle in nine syllables, An elephant, a ponderous house, A melon strolling on two tendrils. O red fruit, ivory, fine timbers! This loaf’s big with its yeasty rising. Money’s new-minted in this fat purse. I’m a means, a stage, a cow in calf. I’ve eaten a bag of green apples. Boarded the train there’s no getting off. Sylvia Plath was a manic depressive. During her short lifetime, she suffered the death of her beloved father when she was only eight, attempted suicide following her junior year in college, and experienced a rocky, unhealthy marriage to fellow poet, Ted Hughes. Her poetry, as well as her only novel (a semi-autobiography), The Bell Jar, serve as a mirror for her many states of mind prior to her death in 1963. Often, her poetry tackles her fascination with death, and reflects the overwhelming strength of her emotions, as well as the effects of her depression. However, her poem, “Metaphors,” takes a different path from her previous works. In 1959, Plath became pregnant with her first child. “Metaphors” tackles her thoughts on this pregnancy. Though the imagery presented in the poem is slightly humorous -- “An elephant, a ponderous house …” (line 2) -- anxiety pulses in the veins of the poem. There is diffidence in Plath’s approach to her pregnancy. She compares herself to “A melon strolling on two tendrils,” effectively communicating her worries about her ability to mother. She is afraid the two tendrils, or her legs, will be unable to carry the weight of the pregnancy, and she understands she has “Boarded the train there’s no getting off.” She is travelling towards motherhood, and there is no escaping. She is worried and anxious. Her anxieties arise again when she questions her self-worth; “I’m a means, a stage …” (line 7) she writes. Here, she expresses she is afraid she is simply an incubator -- that, beyond her pregnancy, she has no use. What will her purpose be after she gives birth? Will she mean nothing? Her word choice begins to appear simple and negative. Descriptors like “big” and “fat” serve as a bitter tang to what is supposed to come across as playful. She also compares herself to a “cow in calf,” quickly dehumanizing herself. Plath is trying to diverge from her infamous obsession with despair, but she cannot fully escape it. Plath’s lifelong battle with mental illness did not disappear with the news of her pregnancy. Though she sought a change of tone in this poem, her anxieties still fought to be addressed. Even under the guise of a silly pregnancy poem, her true feelings show. Motherhood was a permanent change hurtling towards her at too fast a pace, and she was afraid. And so she wrote to express the dichotomy of her pregnancy.
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https://pen.org/three-poems-by-camille-rankine/
"E Pluribus Unum" by Camille Rankine
E Pluribus Unum. Out of many, one. This is the motto of the United States of America, a call for all citizens to understand we are all equal and that we are all one family. Or, at least, we should be. Ideally, our differences make no difference. All men are created equal. Throughout history, this equality has shifted in meaning and weight. To be included under the umbrella of “all men” one had to be a white male in ownership of property. And then persons of color earned rights. Women earned rights. We are all equal now, right? Rankine is suspicious. “By the glow of our equality,” she begins the poem, “I keep myself inside…” (line 1). She hides despite this light of equality she has acknowledged. She only comes out “when the sun descends.” It is only in the shadow of darkness where she can hide her “difference” from the world that she feels safe enough to bare herself to the world. Despite her awareness that the nation she lives in brags that there is equality, that there is supposed to be a national ideal that she is just as human as her neighbors, she does not feel equal. The opening line becomes sarcastic. There is no equality because she is not equal. Is she even her own person? She asks, “how much of a man am I what fraction / of me is mine and what belongs to a pattern” (lines 15-16), begging to be heard, begging to understand just where her differences make her any less than another person. There is desperation in this poem. Line after line is unpunctuated, caught in an enjambment that evokes a breathless rush for answers, for reconciliation and understanding. Rankine is searching for answers, and her journey is rapid fire. As she watches the “kingdom on the hilltop / shift to rearrange and all the same / parts click and lock into their place” (lines 10-12), her worries come to fever pitch before settling again into hope and a persuaded, false sense of security enforced by the “amity” cultivated by this omnipotent, all-seeing kingdom on the hilltop. Rankine mentions patterns and implies rhythms several times throughout the poem, and as the kingdom on the hilltop and the repetition of societal patterns grabs her by the shoulders, it can be understood that the repetition is affecting how we think. E Pluribus Unum is not a truth — it is a persuasive lie, a mantra repeated until our ears numb from the noise, to keep us in our place. Rankine tackles the reality of inequality in a nation that boasts equality in her poem “E Pluribus Unum.” The subject of injustice is not new to her, though the uninterrupted and confident way of writing she adapts here is much louder than in her other poems. The power and the passion she felt for the subject shines through her words. Her emotion gets her message across and sticks it to minds like glue.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/89054
“History”
By Camille Rankine I figured this month’s poem should be saved specifically for Black History Month, considering its roots. There are a lot of ghosts present in today’s society, including haunting prejudice and horrific violence against the black population. It’s weird to think that we, as a people, never stopped raising our children to fit into the molds we want to break. Some people deny what slavery and white imperialism (and colonialism) no longer affects how we think of each other. According to them, racism died in the 1960s when Nixon signed the Civil Rights Agreement. Camille Rankine argues against this in her poem, “History.” To her, slavery, prejudice, and hate, still affects everyone -- especially her. As a young black female poet in the 21st century, Rankine offers an insider’s perspective to the affects of her people’s history on her, and possibly many other blacks today. It’s obvious the treatment of her race has stuck to her since she was born: “...my bones / are paid for …” (lines 1-2). Everything around her reminds her of her history, “Our ghosts / walk the shoulders of the road at night,” she writes. She’s haunted by her ancestor’s plight, and she wants the world to understand that everything the slaves went through should not be cast away or forgotten. Part of Rankine feels as though her worth has been diminished by the treatment of her ancestors and the remaining prejudice. She fears the outside world sees her as lesser. She refers to herself negatively, going as far as to wonder, “How cheap a date I turned out to be” (line 10). Is this statement one of personal opinion, or how she believes she is viewed by others? This has been a theme that’s been reoccurred in many of her poems. She is often acutely aware of her image, and it wears on her. Camille Rankine once stated in an interview, “I tell the truth, but I try to be kind about it.” “History” does just that. It delves into the symptoms of constantly being the recipient of society’s hate and prejudice. Rankine tells the truth about how it feels to be black today, and does so without assigning blame. She rather approaches the subject front on, and passively asks why and how she is the way she is.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/89055
The Current Isolationism by Camille Rankine
After reading many of Camille Rankine’s poems, it is easy to spot her continued themes of loneliness and how one relates to the world around them. In “The Current Isolationism,” these themes are once against present. Rankine focuses on the feelings associated with isolating oneself, and the reason behind doing so. From early on in the poem, a sense of calm is present. Rankine is alone, thinking over and inspecting who she is and what she is. Being alone, with only the company of soft light and her shadow, is a seemingly positive experience for her: “in the half-light, I am most/ at home” (1-2). She appears to enjoy having time to sit in quiet and think, to mull over her humanity. However, her isolation reveals itself to be more of a survival technique as the poem continues. When she is troubled, she escapes into herself. When she is afraid, she hides. And it is fear that isolates her. She confesses her motivation herself when she says, “I am afraid” (13). There is a certain anxiousness at this point in the poem. Her jitteriness and her fear of allowing others to grow close to her becomes evident. She likens herself to “a flock of birds,” a flock that will “scatter” whenever someone approaches; she is seemingly always on the tips of her toes, constantly ready to run at any possible moment. Rankine clearly has been hurt in the past to be so afraid of connecting with others. She keeps the dogs outside her door chained to protect herself, she only trusts others when she approaches when “the back is turned.” Why does she feel the need to be the one in control? Who placed fear in her? Who made her forgo company for isolationism? Camille Rankine feels at once safe and stuck in her self-isolation. As I read through the poem over and over and over I tried to dissect just how she feels about the stain in her head and her need to hide in a hallway, away from the outside world. She is unsure about each and everything in her life. Most of all, she is unsure about her ability to maintain a relationship. That is why she distances herself. This is where I feel her fear may stem from. She is so stuck in her head, she is not quite sure just how to make a connection with others. The door is open, but there are ill-meaning dogs on chains and busy bees that roar, and her heels are glued to the floor.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/89053
“Symptoms of Prophecy”
By Camille Rankine I’ve been staring at this poem for awhile now, mulling it over and trying to synthesize the many, many thoughts I have racing through my head. The initial time I read “Symptoms of Prophecy” by Camille Rankine, I was struck by the magnitude of its simplicity. The poem is deceivingly simple at first glance. Each stanza is only two lines, lines that appear to shrink in length by the conclusion. However, I immediately felt there was an important meaning pulsing beneath the skin of this poem. In an ever-changing world, Rankine seems to feel we are losing touch with others. Communication, she expresses, has lost its authenticity: “For example, at the beep, I communicate/ using the wrong machine” (line 3-4). Here, she’s trying to convey that she doesn’t believe relaying her message via the “machine,” or the phone, is the correct method of communicating. She is isolated because of it. Her tone becomes desperate, rising to a pitch where she sings, “I have a message/ you must believe me” (lines 17-18) towards the end to signify her growing frustrations with such disconnection. “I’m certain that I’m not/ as I appear, that I’m a figment/ and you’re not really here” (lines 10-12), she says, her anxieties consuming her. She’s losing a part of herself; she’s losing touch. This side of herself she feels she’s losing is one of the “two lives” she says everyone has. There’s a theme of duality throughout this poem that follows her claim. Duality can be found in the couplets that string the poem together, in the usage of only two sets of rhymes (“light”/“night,” and “appear”/“here”), and in the way she speaks about the way people have a real life and a life that one creates, on that “when the phone rings: you could be anybody” (line 7). However, Rankine, in losing touch, has begun to question both sides of herself and how she is perceived by others. She also projects her anxieties to an unknown person she refers to as “you” by pointing out that even if one were to construct an alter-ego in the shadows of the anonymity granted by certain technology, they are still “homeless” (line 8) at the end of the day. Seemingly, she fears this homelessness, or, in better words, a life without identity -- real or fake. Camille Rankine is a poet that often reflects her identity and how others see her. In “The Free World” she contemplated how the views of others have affected her decisions, and in “Symptoms of Prophecy,” she fights to keep her identity, no matter how much it falters and splits. She experiences the symptoms of her prophecy; one that foresees her duality, her inner conflict, and rising sense of isolation ending in a total disconnect without even an identity to her name. Link: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/89056
Black swans are considered events that happen without warning and often walks hand-in-hand with severe consequences. Loss is one black swan that often comes seemingly out nowhere like a trembling, dark mass of a monster that comes from the shadows of an alleyway in horror movies. In Camille Rankine’s “The Increasing Frequency of Black Swans,” the narrator experiences the loss of three lives and suffers from the resulting grief. The discovery of a dead man and his dog is the first black swan mentioned in Rankine’s poem. Rankine is obviously unaware of the death that lays beyond a locked door, as she claims, “I was listening for the dog” (1). This departure of the man also comes across as sudden for his son, as well, as Rankine compares his grief to that of a powerful explosion that tears him apart: “The bomb breathes its fire/ down the hallway…” (9-10). The son’s grief is one that introduces the second case of an internal, destructive force (the first case being that of the dead man’s own troubled mind). Both men are described to have succumbed to “a disease left/ untreated...” (6-7). Rankine stresses here a theme of the effect of “untreated” diseases of the mind, ones that kills its victims. Rankine also points out the cyclical effect of grief and mental disparity through repetition of the line: “...the body,/ in confusion, gives in” (7-8). By repeating this line, the poet reveals an unresolved issue that continues to crop up. Grief leads to tragedy, she says, and tragedy leads to grief, which further leads to tragedy and so on. There is no end to the cycle of grief, and there is no move made to stop history from repeating. Grief repeats itself for the third time in the final stanza. Here, Rankine, herself, is overcome with her own form of grief: “The grief is a planet.../A small moon that’s been hidden/under my pillow…” (13-15). The intimacy she shares with this grief is expressed by how close she remains to it, and suggests the three who have died — the man, his dog, and his son — must have been close to her prior to death. She sleeps on the grief; it's under her pillow. It affects how she acts and feels: “... that’s been changing the way my body moves this whole time” (15-16). The grief is consuming her, killing her, just as it had with the son. And so the cyclical pattern persists. http://www.poetrysociety.org/psa/poetry/crossroads/Chapbook_Anniversary/camille_rankine/
We’ve all been there; we’ve all seen something, something new and shiny, that we can’t help but be drawn to like thieving magpies, even if we can’t have it. Some of us have felt we are deserving of whatever we want, and if we can’t have what we want, we are left confused and frustrated. Some of us have even felt this in loving another person. In “The Free World” by poet Camille Rankine, the narrator struggles with social pressures and internal frustrations as she pines for the romantic attention of a love interest she can’t seem to attain. I initially wondered if this poem was the anthem of a relationship that has persevered scrutiny. “The Free World” begins as a poem denouncing those who judge Rankine and who could be her romantic interest. She is aware others judge her, but she also knows “Nobody knows who we are. Wouldn’t you say,/ nobody agonizes like we do.” The line “I am invisible inside you,” at first came across as a testament to how Rankine’s significant other makes her feel safe from prying eyes, like she is out of sight from those who judge her. However, as I read on, I came to realize she feels invisible within this person because they have not noticed her. This person has “proscribed compassion of the wrong sort,” implying they are a friend or an acquaintance, despite Rankine yearning for more. Now the subject of unrequited love is ushered in. Rankine says she is lonely because her interest is not giving her the attention she is looking for (this sense of loneliness is punctuated by the breaks in each line). Rankine is in search of some sort of relationship, yet she finds herself surrounded only by strangers. As she window shops, she vaguely comments she is trying to make a decision and that she was told she “could have everything.” Here, Rankine is not only speaking about having everything she wants in the realm of materialistic objects, but her interest’s affections as well. She believes she is entitled to their love; she has been told she is. Yet again, outside opinion affects Rankine. Could the judgement she decries in the beginning of the poem be less of a judgement against her relationship with her interest, and more of an unsolicited jumble of opinions molding how she views the world around her? Have they made her feel as though she has to have what she wants? Rankine is confused by the internal and external thoughts affecting her. She “thought this was meant to be a romance.” She believes her purpose to love this person she admires. This lust for companionship appears sincere at first, until Rankine twists her own words: “I was delivered here in order to love you/ I was delivered here and ordered/ to love you.” “The Free World” becomes an ironic title. Rankine is not free at all. In fact, she is a slave to not only her own feelings and thoughts, but the opinions of others as well. Her unrequited love is a shackle around one ankle, external pressures a shackle around the other. The world is not a free one for Rankine; she cares too much about how others see her. Even her new dress is worn for others. |