Poems, Potatoes
Poems, Potatoes - meaning Summary
Language Versus the Real
Plath’s poem argues that language and formal lines both define and constrain experience. Concrete objects — potatoes and stones — are presented as sturdier and more fully themselves than words can make them. The speaker feels repeatedly shortchanged by poetic representation, imagining the unpoemed potato as superior to any description. The poem is a terse meditation on the limits of diction and the stubborn reality of the world it tries to name.
Read Complete AnalysesThe word, defining, muzzles; the drawn line Ousts mistier peers and thrives, murderous, In establishments which imagined lines Can only haunt. Sturdy as potatoes, Stones, without conscience, word and line endure, Given an inch. Not that they're gross (although Afterthought often would have them alter To delicacy, to poise) but that they Shortchange me continuously: whether More or other, they still dissatisfy. Unpoemed, unpictured, the potato Bunches its knobby browns on a vastly Superior page; the blunt stone also.
Feel free to be first to leave comment.