An Appearance
An Appearance - meaning Summary
Love's Cold Complexity
The poem presents a speaker trying to read a loved one whose appearance mixes mechanical coldness and erotic vitality. Plath uses imagery of machines, symbols and clothing to show contradictions between physical desire and emotional distance. The speaker alternates admiration and bewilderment—wondering whether the bodily signs amount to love—as domestic, numerical and textile metaphors compress feeling into objects and symbols, leaving the heart “disorganized.”
Read Complete AnalysesThe smile of iceboxes annihilates me. Such blue currents in the veins of my loved one! I hear her great heart purr. From her lips ampersands and percent signs Exit like kisses. It is Monday in her mind: morals Launder and present themselves. What am I to make of these contradictions? I wear white cuffs, I bow. Is this love then, this red material Issuing from the steele needle that flies so blindingly? It will make little dresses and coats, It will cover a dynasty. How her body opens and shuts -- A Swiss watch, jeweled in the hinges! O heart, such disorganization! The stars are flashing like terrible numerals. ABC, her eyelids say.
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