Poem Reflection

As I was preparing to study for our final exam I came across the question that we developed in class. We are going to be asked what Sylvia Plath did and did not compare her father to in her poem, Daddy. I thought that I would read over this poem to remind myself of what exactly it was all about.

This poem is so sad and so full of emotion that it doesn't matter how you read it, something has to pop out at you when you read it. Sylvia was obviously so emotional when it came to talking about her father that her words seem to jump out of the page at you. The more I thought about this the more I realize that all poetry is written out of some form of emotion. This emotion can be anger, and it can also be an overwhelming feeling of joy, there is really no telling what is going to happen in each and every poem. People tend to let their emotions control them at times, but when it comes to poetry I think that this is a very good thing. When I think to times that I am so overwhelmed with emotion I realize that it is at those times when my words are more than just words, they are my form of expressing everything that I am holding inside of me.

This poem, Daddy, is very powerful, but so is Shall I compare thee to a summers day by Shakespeare. But they are powerful in different ways. In Shakespeare's poem he is so taken back by this beauty that stands before him, not even his beautiful words can do it any justice. If someone were to simply sit down on a typical day and use average words put together to make a poem the reader would not feel the same connection to their work. The words in the poem would be lacking the urgency that these authors are trying to get across in their work. The part of Daddy that makes me feel how angry she really was at her father was:

I have always been scared of you
With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.
And your neat moustache
And your Aryan eye, bright blue.
Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You.

In this part of the poem Sylvia shows how much she has really thought about her words. She doesn't simply say that she hates her father, she goes into how much she despises every bit of him. She has taken the time to think of the things that would really give the reader the ability to imagine this "monster" that she hates to much. The fact that something so horrible (meaning her memories of her father) could end up creating emotions that speak to so many readers is really something amazing. These poems all have a story to tell beyond what the poem is directed towards, and by reading these poems carefully and feeling each word that is written down, one can see deep into what the author is really feeling.