Words Heard, by Accident, Over the Phone
Words Heard, by Accident, Over the Phone - meaning Summary
Language as Dirty Infiltration
Plath’s poem imagines a grotesque, intrusive voice arriving through a telephone as mud and bodily waste. The speaker reacts with disgust and alarm as words become physical, oozing from the earpiece and seeking a listener. Imagery of fertility and contamination clashes: the speech is both generative and polluting, overwhelming the room before the speaker insists it be withdrawn and returned. The poem explores language as invasive, embodied, and disturbing.
Read Complete AnalysesO mud, mud, how fluid! --- Thick as foreign coffee, and with a sluggy pulse. Speak, speak! Who is it? It is the bowel-pulse, lover of digestibles. It is he who has achieved these syllables. What are these words, these words? They are plopping like mud. O god, how shall I ever clean the phone table? They are pressing out of the many-holed earpiece, they are looking for a listener. Is he here? Now the room is ahiss. The instrument Withdraws its tentacle. But the spawn percolate in my heart. They are fertile. Muck funnel, muck funnel -- You are too big. They must take you back!
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