Mirrors of sylvia plath and claribel alegria

The impact of dark poetry on the reader is made predominantly by gist of correspondingly dark actors line- this is a rough-cut view on the source of much(prenominal) kind of poetrys effect. In this essay I wouldnt deal to argue this point of view entirely I would kindred to broaden the instinct of dark poetrys linguisic and semantic tools . Im spill to utilise deuce verses sharing a familiar symbol I am reflect by Claribel Alegria and Mirror by Sylvia Plath- to substantiate that they appeal to the reader not so much by with(predicate) explicit means standardised the choice of words nevertheless also implicitly.I will expose the innovation of cardinal poles in each poesy and deform an essential role, which semantic opposite words equivalent alive-dead, ingrained- impertinent, body-soul, action-passivity, depth- place, reflect- hurt, human-monster and human- reverberate play. Besides, I will ob dispense how the traditionalistic motif of a reflect as a person s of alter-ego is change in some(prenominal) poems into an effective poetic tool, which ,on the ace hand, forms a number of ohmic resistances, and on the other(a) hand, implies the idea of wo(e) reflectivity as disturb replication and multiplication.First, let us consider the poem I am Mirror by Claribel Alegria.. The reflect is a second self of the cleaning womanhood, the self that was born in the course of some immense suffering. It is a double-sided reflect. Her pain is reflected in the external world, and vice versa, the worlds pain is reflected in her soul. only if the pain is so enormous that the reflect switches on as a protection mechanism. The reverberate sports into a brilliant hem in, which defends her from pain. Now she crumb guess everything perfectly scarce she give the bouncenot compass. To stress the state of hers the phrase I wear upont relish it is repeated a number of times.Like a silver screen, she scans what is going on around very accu rately and impartially, tanks that approach, raised bayonets, bodies that fallchildren who run. The pictorial external action is contrasted to the internal catalepsy). She wants to turn hazard life because as she says I hurt therefore I equal. Her ability to incline hurt is cut down to its forcible aspect. That is wherefore she move upes and pricks herself. Only through physical pain, she can bring rearward her ability to perceive worlds pain scarce only for a while. In a few moments, she turns sanction into the blank mirror that nothing penetrates. She is once once again a fleshless shadow protected from the pain by a brilliant wall. What is go away is just a vague storage of pain. What is specific of the poem is that it does not reveal the pain itself but the pained mirrored, reflected, remembered. Pain sliding on the gleam hard out.let us make these ii mirrors reflect in each other by comparing the two poems. As I have already said, Alegria has a kind of wall mirror, a lambent barrier to protect her from pain. It only reflects external world but nothing can penetrate the surface. It is devoid of depth, it is flat, two-sided but not two-attributeed. On the contrary, Plaths mirrors feature is to swallow without delay whatever appears in it. It has another dimension behind it. Depth, not surface is its master(prenominal) attribute. This depth is meant to search there and to be afraid of. It is a lake where a austere tip lives.This fish is the womans frightening future. It is someone into whom she is going to turn in the course of time. In twain poems mirror is impartial, it implies female passivity, subjugation (Freedman 1993). However, Plaths mirrors truthfulness is seen a kind of rebellion against what woman is seek in it. In both cases, internal passivity is contrasted with external action. In Plaths poem the concept of time is of gigantic importance. It is another dimension but the surface and depth of the mirror. The stillness of a mirror lake is contrasted with the running river of time.This river flowing through the woman transforms a young beautiful little girl into a horrible fish. Hence, be a urine creature, an old woman is claimed to go to the river of time and eternity more than a young girl, still alien to it. Gradually, recently waters of time absorb a woman. A terrible fish is in fact a dead girl, who drowned in the lake of mirror. This is a kind of terrifying renascence a woman would prefer to ignore. That is why she turns to such liars as the moon and candles. Meanwhile, the mirror reflects her back faithfully. She cannot see her back mirrored, and that is an classic idea. We cannot see our back, i.e. the opposite, dark side. What does it look homogeneous? Maybe it IS a monster fish? We are scared to death by our own monsters.I would like to dwell on the language used in both poems and how it works toward a certain effect. What correlates with the grasp of a mirror in Plaths poem is the use of ocular language without any occurrence of audible one. wrangling like darkness, pink with speckles, faces, glow etc. create a ocular picture. The opposition between the pink wall and the darkness is crucial to the poem. Black water has been always associated with hidden, subconscious, uncontrollable forces at heart a personality. Hence, I can say that Plaths mirror is not a middling between internal and external world, like Alegrias one. It seems to be located at bottom the human soul itself.While in Plaths poem the attention is drawn to the visual aspect, in Alegrias one the emphasis, withal strange it may seem, is on the physical aspect, on taction. Or rather it is on the ability or inability to perceive the world through touching it. That is why visual pictures, which take enough musculus quadriceps femoris of the poem, are deliberately detached and serve to stress the absence of the woman/mirrors feeling behind them. The opposition is reflect vs. hurt That is why the bossy mood is the feeling of stifled pain. This consideration is suggested by the choice of words prick, pinch rack, frightened, weeping, bleeding, stumbling, panic etc. On the otherpole of the opposition are words like phantom, fleshless, vague.The poems upcountry plot is a transition from being a woman looking at her reflection into the mirror itself. Lets read this overtaking at the set outI pinch myself in the strengthenI dont feelfrightened I look at myself in the mirrorshe also pricks herselfI begin to get dressedstumblingfrom the cornersshouts like lightning boltstortured eyesscurrying ratsand dentition shoot forthalthough I feel nothingHere is the starting point of this transition. Frightened by her lost ability to feel, she looks at herself in the mirror and sees a woman with tortured eyes and teeth shoot forth but she feels nothing because she turned into a mirror. This mirror woman leaves home and wanders through the streets reflecting horrible pictures o f war. She hurts herself physically to turn back into a living person again but another terrifying facet prevents her from doing so and she is a fleshless phantom again.The aforementioned(prenominal) transition can be sight in Sylvia Plaths poem, although it is proceeds harmonize to a slightly different pattern. The woman is not replaced by a mirror but she is swallowed by it. Being swallowed, she acquires the attributes of the object, which swallowed her. But two mirrors go on living simultaneously- a still and eternal one and a moving mortal one. As I said before, it is running river reflected in a lake.She comes and goes.Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old womanRises toward her day afterward day, like a terrible fish.This passage suggests how a recurrent action of nonchalant life is correlated with transcendental eternity.The two poems share the ambivalence of the symbol of mirror. Let us turn to what William Freedman writes nigh the concept of the poem. In this poem, the mirror is in effect looking into itself, for the image in the mirror is woman, the object that is itself more mirror than person. A woman will see herself both in and as a mirror. To look into the glass is to look for oneself inside or as reflected on the surface of the mirror and to seek or widen oneself in the person (or non-person) of the mirror the poem becomes a mirror not of the world, but of other mirrors and of the process of mirroring. When living mirrors respect into mirrors, as when language stares only at itself,only mirrors and mirroring will be visible The talker sees herself in the mirror in two senses She is the fearful image in the depths beyond the glass and she is the mirror itself ( Freedman1993).BibliographyLye, John. 1996. Critical breeding a Guide https//brocku.ca/english/jlye/criticalreading.phpMcManus,Barbara.1998. Readings and Assignments. http//www.cnr.edu/bmcmanus