The Disquieting Muses by Sylvia Plath

A dark and sad poem about the passing away of the poet’s mother, and the subsequent intensifying of the darkness that has always surrounded the poet since her birth. In order to understand the poem, you have to understand the fact that sometimes depression is described as a haunting presence that follows someone around.

The poem, each stanza followed by a prose ‘translation’.

Mother, mother, what illbred aunt

Or what disfigured and unsightly

Cousin did you so unwisely keep

Unasked to my christening, that she

Sent these ladies in her stead

With heads like darning-eggs to nod

And nod and nod at foot and head

And at the left of my crib?

(Mother, mother, which ill-mannered Aunt or which ugly Cousin did you not invite to my christening? So that, like the spurned witch from Sleeping Beauty who cast a curse on the princess, the Aunt sent these ladies with heads like darning-eggs to stand around my crib and creepily nod their heads all the time?)

Mother, who made to order stories

Of Mixie Blackshort the heroic bear,

Mother, whose witches always, always

Got baked into gingerbread, I wonder

Whether you saw them, whether you said

Words to rid me of those three ladies

Nodding by night around my bed,

Mouthless, eyeless, with stitched bald head.

(Mother, you are the person who makes up heartening stories to tell me, like that of Mixie Blackshort the heroic bear. All the black magic that has ever touched your life were the witches-shaped gingerbread that you baked. So I wonder if you ever said anything to get rid of those ladies around my crib. I wonder if you even saw those ladies with the darning-egg heads around my crib, nodding their heads around me at night, standing there mouthless, eyeless with stitched bald heads.)

In the hurricane, when father’s twelve

Study windows bellied in

Like bubbles about to break, you fed

My brother and me cookies and Ovaltine

And helped the two of us to choir:

‘Thor is angry: boom boom boom!

Thor is angry: we don’t care!’

But those ladies broke the panes.

(Once, during a hurricane, when the twelve windows in father’s study were bending inwards from the wind like bubbles about to burst, you fed my brother and I cookies and Ovaltine. You helped us to sing loudly together a song to wash away our fears: ‘Thor is angry: boom boom boom! Thor is angry: we don’t care!’ But all this was in vain. The windows in the study shattered anyway, because the ladies with the darning-egg heads broke them.)

When on tiptoe the schoolgirls danced,

Blinking flashlights like fireflies

And singing the glowworm song, I could

Not lift a foot in the twinkle-dress

But, heavy-footed, stood aside

In the shadow cast by my dismal-headed

Godmothers, and you cried and cried:

And the shadow stretched, the lights went out.

(The other girls at my school danced gracefully on tiptoes for a performance, shining onstage like flashing fireflies in the nighttime, and singing a bright, uplifting song. But I couldn’t even lift a foot in my twinkle-dress. Instead, heavy-footed, I stood aside the stage, standing in the shadow cast by my Godmothers (the darning-egg ladies). Mother, you cried and cried. But the shadows just lengthened and then the lights of the performance went out.)

Mother, you sent me to piano lessons

And praised my arabesques and trills

Although each teacher found my touch

Oddly wooden in spite of scales

And the hours of practicing, my ear

Tone-deaf and yes, unteachable.

I learned, I learned, I learned elsewhere,

From muses unhired by you, dear mother.

(Mother, you sent me to piano lessons and praised my arabesques and trills, even though all of my teachers thought my playing was oddly wooden in spite of hours of playing scales and practicing. They thought that I was tone-deaf and unteachable. But I learnt a different kind of music anyway, from muses that you didn’t hire for me, dear mother.)

I woke one day to see you, mother,

Floating above me in bluest air

On a green balloon bright with a million

Flowers and bluebirds that never were

Never, never, found anywhere.

But the little planet bobbed away

Like a soap-bubble as you called: Come here!

And I faced my travelling companions.

(I woke one day to see you, Mother, floating above me in the bluest air on a green balloon that was bright with million flowers and bluebirds that have never been found anywhere on earth. But this little planet with you in it bobbed away like a soap bubble, even as you called to me: Come here! After you left, I faced my travelling companions (the ladies with darning-egg heads)

Day now, night now, at head, side, feet,

They stand their vigil in gowns of stone,

Faces blank as the day I was born,

Their shadows long in the setting sun

That never brightens or goes down.

And this is the kingdom you bore me to,

Mother, mother. But no frown of mine

Will betray the company I keep.

(Through day and night, beside me at my head, at my side, by my feet, my travelling companions stand vigil, still and unmoving as stone. Their faces are as blank as they were on the day that they first appeared beside me at my birth. Their shadows are long in the eternal sunset of my life, in which the sun never brightens up but never sets completely. This is the kingdom that you bore me into, Mother. But you will not see any frown or expression on me that betrays the dark company that I keep.)

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why – by Edna St. Vincent Millay

A sonnet by Edna St. Vincent Millay, pretty self-explanatory, just a little bit on its structure and form, but here is the poem first:

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,

I have forgotten, and what arms have lain

Under my head till morning; but the rain

Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh

Upon the glass and listen for reply,

And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain

For unremembered lads that not again

Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.

Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree,

Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,

Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:

I cannot say what loves have come and gone,

I only know that summer sang in me

A little while, that in me sings no more.

A little bit of commentary 

A little on the sonnet form: (partially paraphrased from the Chapter on Sonnets in Strand and Boland): The sonnet has its roots from Italian court poetry, with a sense of formality and decorum attached as a sense of inherent baggage to the form. But we have all seen modern poets transform sonnets into a form solidly resonating of contemporary sentiments. One of the characteristics of the sonnet is ‘a tension between lyric and narrative’. The sonnet ‘is able to take its place in the debate: to suggest narrative progress through its sequence structure, while, in single units, it is capable of the essential lyric qualities of being musical, brief, and memorable.’

This poem is, for me, overwhelmingly about the sadness and loneliness the speaker is feeling from desertions by his/her lovers. The speaker feels the abandonment so keenly that she is still in shock over it. She doesn’t remember, or doesn’t want to confront the truth of her lovers deserting her – it is as if she is waking from a bad dream, and the feelings of horror linger, but the subconscious trauma of her mind prevents her from remembering the details of the dream.

Thus the diction of the poem reflects this inability to remember through childish question words challenging the very basic facts of her relationships, ‘what’, ‘where’, ‘why’, and other times, the sophisticated adjective ‘unremembered’ points to the artificiality of this lack of memory. It is not natural forgetfulness. The memory is there, like the way ‘remembered’ is still in the word ‘unremembered’, but the self-protection mechanism of the human mind blocks her from accessing the memories.

In this poem, the sonnet form with its structure of two quatrains and a couplet, rhyming abba, abba, cdcd, captures the emotional upheaval of the speaker, almost as if ‘abba’ is a wave form with a rise and a fall, and then the waves break into an increasingly unstable form of ‘cdcd’. It is not just numb loneliness that the speaker experiences, but there are ‘stirrings’ of pain, and the despondency wants to be articulated, as the two pairs of rhyming words framing the two quatrains indicate. The two pairs of rhyming words are words of speech, ‘why’ and ‘sigh’, ‘reply’ and ‘cry’, pointing to the desperation with which the speaker’s grief is waiting to be exorcised with speech and self-expression.

Finally, the final two lines have a piercing quality to them, with its simple syntax and determined use of present tense, both the reader and the speaker is forced to confront the void that the speaker is now feeling, however fulfilling and fun her past relationships were.