Mirrors of sylvia plath and claribel alegria

The impact of regretful poetry on the reviewer is made predominantly through correspondingly dark language- this is a parking lot view on the source of such kind of poetrys effect. In this essay I wouldnt alike(p) to argue this betoken of view unless I would like to broaden the understanding of dark poetrys linguisic and semantic tools . Im going to do two metrical compositions sharing a common symbol I am reverberate by Claribel Alegria and Mirror by Sylvia Plath- to prove that they appeal to the contri justor non so much through explicit means like the choice of words but also implicitly.I entrust expose the beingnessly concern of two poles in each poem and stress an essential role, which semantic opposites like alive-dead, internal-external, body-soul, put through-passivity, depth-surface, reflect- spite, human-monster and human- reverberate play. Besides, I will observe how the traditional motif of a mirror as a persons of alter-ego is transformed in two poems into an effective poetic tool, which ,on the ace hand, forms a number of oppositions, and on the other hand, implies the idea of pain reflection as pain paying acantha and multiplication.First, let us consider the poem I am Mirror by Claribel Alegria.. The mirror is a second self of the adult female, the self that was natural in the course of some immense suffering. It is a double-sided mirror. Her pain is reflected in the external piece, and vice versa, the worlds pain is reflected in her soul. just the pain is so enormous that the mirror switches on as a protection mechanism. The mirror turns into a lifelike contend, which defends her from pain. Now she can follow everything perfectly but she can non comprehend. To stress the state of hers the phrase I foundert feel it is repeated a number of times.Like a fluent screen, she scans what is going on around very accurately and impartially, tanks that approach, raised bayonets, bodies that amountchildren who run. The inte nse external action is contrasted to the internal catalepsy). She wants to demoralise backwards life because as she says I hurt therefore I constitute. Her ability to feel hurt is reduced to its physical aspect. That is wherefore she pinches and pricks herself. just now through physical pain, she can bring back her ability to perceive worlds pain but only for a while. In a few moments, she turns back into the blank mirror that naught penetrates. She is once more a fleshless apparition protected from the pain by a brilliant wall. What is left is just a vague memory of pain. What is particular of the poem is that it does not reveal the pain itself but the pained mirrored, reflected, remembered. painful sensation sliding on the smooth hard surface.Let us make these two mirrors reflect in each other by comparing the two poems. As I have al gety give tongue to, Alegria has a kind of wall mirror, a luminous barrier to protect her from pain. It only reflects external world but n othing can penetrate the surface. It is devoid of depth, it is flat, two-sided but not two-dimensioned. On the contrary, Plaths mirrors feature is to lower immediately whatever appears in it. It has another dimension behind it. Depth, not surface is its main attribute. This depth is meant to search there and to be horror-struck of. It is a lake where a rattling(a) fish lives.This fish is the fair sexs frightening future. It is someone into whom she is going to turn in the course of time. In both poems mirror is impartial, it implies female passivity, subjugation (Freedman 1993). However, Plaths mirrors truthfulness is seen a kind of rebellion once against what charwoman is seeking in it. In both cases, internal passivity is contrasted with external action. In Plaths poem the thought of time is of great 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 slick throu gh the woman transforms a young beautiful girl into a awful fish. Hence, being a water creature, an old woman is claimed to function to the river of time and eternity more than a young girl, still outlander to it. Gradually, deep waters of time absorb a woman. A terrible fish is in fact a dead girl, who dr possessed in the lake of mirror. This is a kind of terrifying reincarnation 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 important idea. We cannot see our back, i.e. the opposite, dark side. What does it construction like? 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 image of a mirror in Plaths poem is the use of visual language without any situation of audible one. Words like darkne ss, pink with speckles, faces, flicker and so on create a visual 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 inwardly a personality. Hence, I can say that Plaths mirror is not a medium between internal and external world, like Alegrias one. It seems to be located within the human soul itself.While in Plaths poem the attention is drawn to the visual aspect, in Alegrias one the emphasis, however 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 office 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 dominating mood is the feeling of stifled pain. This context is suggested by the choice of words pric k, pinch tortured, frightened, weeping, bleeding, stumbling, panic etc. On the otherpole of the opposition are words like phantom, fleshless, vague.The poems inner plot is a transition from being a woman looking at her reflection into the mirror itself. Lets read this passage at the beginningI pinch myself in the offsetI dont feelfrightened I look at myself in the mirrorshe also pricks herselfI begin to get dressedstumblingfrom the cornersshouts like lightning boltstortured eyesscurrying ratsand teeth vote out 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 of war. She hurts herself physically to turn back into a reenforcement person again but another terrifying scene prevents h er from doing so and she is a fleshless phantom again.The same transition can be observed in Sylvia Plaths poem, although it is proceeds according 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. unless two mirrors go on existing simultaneously- a still and stark(a) 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 later day, like a terrible fish.This passage suggests how a recurrent action of everyday 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 about the concept of the poem. In this poem, the mirror is in effect looking into itself, for the image in the mi rror 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 frosting is to look for oneself inside or as reflected on the surface of the mirror and to seek or discover 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 gaze into mirrors, as when language stares only at itself,only mirrors and mirroring will be visible The speaker sees herself in the mirror in two senses She is the portentous image in the depths beyond the glass and she is the mirror itself ( Freedman1993).BibliographyLye, John. 1996. Critical study a Guide https//brocku.ca/english/jlye/criticalreading.phpMcManus,Barbara.1998. Readings and Assignments. http//www.cnr.edu/bmcmanus