Sylvia Plath

Daddy

You do not do, you do not do

Any more, black shoe

In which I have lived like a foot

For thirty years, poor and white,

Barely daring to breathe or Achoo. 5

Daddy, I have had to kill you.

You died before I had time--

Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,

Ghastly statue with one gray toe

Big as a Frisco seal               10

And a head in the freakish Atlantic

Where it pours bean green over blue

In the waters off beautiful Nauset.

I used to pray to recover you.

Ach, du.                           15

In the German tongue, in the Polish town

Scraped flat by the roller

Of wars, wars, wars.

But the name of the town is common.

My Polack friend                   20

Says there are a dozen or two.

So I never could tell where you

Put your foot, your root,

I never could talk to you.

The tongue stuck in my jaw.        25

It stuck in a barb wire snare.

Ich, ich, ich, ich,

I could hardly speak.

I thought every German was you.

And the language obscene           30

An engine, an engine

Chuffing me off like a Jew.

A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.

I began to talk like a Jew.

I think I may well be a Jew.       35

The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna

Are not very pure or true.

With my gipsy ancestress and my weird luck

And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack

I may be a bit of a Jew.            40

I have always been scared of you,

With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.

And your neat mustache

And your Aryan eye, bright blue.

Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You--     45

Not God but a swastika

So black no sky could squeak through.

Every woman adores a Fascist,

The boot in the face, the brute

Brute heart of a brute like you.     50

You stand at the blackboard, daddy,

In the picture I have of you,

A cleft in your chin instead of your foot

But no less a devil for that, no not

Any less the black man who            55

Bit my pretty red heart in two.

I was ten when they buried you.

At twenty I tried to die

And get back, back, back to you.

I thought even the bones would do.     60

But they pulled me out of the sack,

And they stuck me together with glue.

And then I knew what to do.

I made a model of you,

A man in black with a Meinkampf look    65

And a love of the rack and the screw.

And I said I do, I do.

So daddy, I'm finally through.

The black telephone's off at the root,

The voices just can't worm through.      70

If I've killed one man, I've killed two--

The vampire who said he was you

And drank my blood for a year,

Seven years, if you want to know.

Daddy, you can lie back now.             75

There's a stake in your fat black heart

And the villagers never liked you.

They are dancing and stamping on you.

They always knew it was you.

Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through.  80

5 paragraph essay

Bun
- Hook
- Introduction
Special Sauce
Toppings
Meat
Bun

Organization of ideas

2nd Biggest Idea
- smaller ideas in service of

leads to

Big Idea
- smaller ideas in service of

leads to

Big Idea
- smaller ideas in service of

leads to

Biggest Big Idea
- smaller ideas in service of

leads back to 2nd Biggest Idea

Seamus Heaney Poems

Death of a Naturalist

All the year the flax-dam festered in the heart
Of the townland; green and heavy headed Flax had rotted there, weighted down by huge sods. (pieces of earth)
Daily it sweltered in the punishing sun.
Bubbles gargled delicately, bluebottles
Wove a strong gauze of sound around the smell.
There were dragon-flies, spotted butterflies,
But best of all was the warm thick slobber
Of frogspawn that grew like clotted waterIn the shade of the banks. Here, every spring
I would fill jampots full of the jellied
Specks to range on the window-sills at home,
On shelves at school, and wait and watch until
The fattening dots burst into nimble-
Swimming tadpoles. Miss Walls would tell us how
The daddy frog was called a bullfrog
And how he croaked and how the mammy frog
Laid hundreds of little eggs and this was
Frogspawn. You could tell the weather by frogs too
For they were yellow in the sun and brown
In rain.

Then one hot day when fields were rankWith cowdung in the grass the angry frogs
Invaded the flax-dam; I ducked through hedges
To a coarse croaking that I had not heard
Before. The air was thick with a bass chorus.
Right down the dam gross-bellied frogs were cocked
On sods; their loose necks pulsed like snails. Some hopped:
The slap and plop were obscene threats. Some sat
Poised like mud grenades, their blunt heads farting.
I sickened, turned, and ran. The great slime kings
Were gathered there for vengeance and I knew
That if I dipped my hand the spawn would clutch it.

metaphor-

onomatopoeia-

simile-

alliteration-

negative-

anaphora-

caesera-

imagery-

oxymoron-


Churning Day

A thick crust, coarse-grained as limestone rough-cast,
hardened gradually on top of the four crocks
that stood, large pottery bombs, in the small pantry.
After the hot brewery of gland, cud and udder,
cool porous earthenware fermented the butter milk
for churning day, when the hooped churn was scoured
with plumping kettles and the busy scrubber
echoed daintily on the seasoned wood.
It stood then, purified, on the flagged kitchen floor.

Out came the four crocks, spilled their heavy lip
of cream, their white insides, into the sterile churn.
The staff, like a great whiskey muddler fashioned
in deal wood, was plunged in, the lid fitted.
My mother took first turn, set up rhythms
that, slugged and thumped for hours. Arms ached.
Hands blistered. Cheeks and clothes were spattered
with flabby milk.

Where finally gold flecks
began to dance. They poured hot water then,
sterilized a birchwood bowl
and little corrugated butter-spades.
Their short stroke quickened, suddenly
a yellow curd was weighting the churned-up white,
heavy and rich, coagulated sunlight
that they fished, dripping, in a wide tin strainer,
heaped up like gilded gravel in the bowl.

The house would stink long after churning day,
acrid as a sulphur mine. The empty crocks
were ranged along the wall again, the butter
in soft printed slabs was piled on pantry shelves.
And in the house we moved with gravid ease,
our brains turned crystals full of clean deal churns,
the plash and gurgle of the sour-breathed milk,
the pat and slap of small spades on wet lumps.

Heaney uses sensory imagery to convey the senses and feelings associated with the memory.
He uses similes and metaphors, adjectives and adverbs to make his descriptions more vivid and immediate in our minds.
1st stanza:
The poem begins with a detailed description of the four crocks in which the buttermilk is standing.
Likens the thick crust  that has formed on the milk to "limestone rough-cast".
Uses a metaphor to describe the crocks as "large pottery bombs", which gives evidence for the shape of these vessels.
The use of the adjective "plumbing" is unusual and has an onomatopoeic effect, imitating the sound of the kettle boiling.
The word "purified" gives a religious sense to the rituals that have been carried out to prepare for the transforming of the milk into butter.
2nd stanza:
Personifies the crocks- the milk coming from their "white insides" as if it is part of them
Hard, physical nature of the work is expressed in the phrase "slugged and thumped for hours. Arms ached. Hands blistered."
As others take turns they are soon "spattered" with "flabby" milk as it begins to coagulate (change to a solid or semisolid state).
3rd stanza:
The verb "dance" is used to describe the gold flecks of butter as they begin to form, this suggests a kind of celebration for the feat.
The metaphor "coagulated sunlight" describes the coagulation of the milk into butter and suggests the colour and warmth and glow.
The final simile in the stanza repeats this image of a golden colour, with the use of the word "gilded" emphasizing its richness.
4th (last) stanza:
The use of the word "stink" at the beginning of the final stanza is unexpected, but describes the ever lasting smell of the curd. This is emphasized further by the simile "acrid as a sulphur mine", graphically giving a sense of the pervading/ permeating nature of the smell in the house.
The ending of the poem creates a sense of a job well done and of satisfaction. Their minds are like "crystals", the churns are clean and the onomatopoeic effect of "plash" and "gurgle", "pat" and "slap" gives a satisfying sense of the butter being slapped by the butter spades and turned into slabs.

Death be not Proud:

DEATH, be not proud, though some have callèd thee          

Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so:      

For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow  

Die not, poor Death; nor yet canst thou kill me.        

From Rest and Sleep, which but thy picture be,                  5

Much pleasure, then from thee much more must flow;         

And soonest our best men with thee do go—           

Rest of their bones and souls' delivery!         

Thou'rt slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,       

And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell;          10

And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well       

And better than thy stroke. Why swell'st thou then?

  One short sleep past, we wake eternally,     

  And Death shall be no more: Death, thou shalt die!       

Holy Sonnet 14

Batter my heart, three-personed God, for you 
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend; 
That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me and bend 
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new. 
 I, like an usurped town to another due, 
 Labor to admit you, but oh, to no end; 
 Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend, 
 But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.

 Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov-ED fain, 
 But am betrothed unto your enemy 
 Divorce me, untie or break that knot again; 
 Take me to you, imprison me, for I 
 Except you enthrall me, never shall be free, 
 Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

Paradox    

Self-conscious/Self-questioning

Metaphors/Similies

Abrupt Opening

Witty

Conceit
Biblical Allusions
Contradictions

paintings

Glossary

Glossary:

• Metaphor- the transference of a quality from one thing to another.

• Simile- comparison between two things using like/ as

• Analogy- a relationship of resemblance or equivalence between two situations  

• Conceits- comparison and contrast between a metaphysical quality and a tangible object

• Alliteration- refers to the repetition of a particular sound in the first syllables of a series of words and/or phrases.

• Assonance- is the refrain of vowel sounds to create internal rhyming within phrases or sentences

• Consonance- repetition of the same consonant two or more times in short succession.

• Onomatopoeia- the formation of a word, as cuckoo  or boom,  by imitation of a sound made by or associated with its referent.
• Anaphora- repetition of a word or words at the beginning of two or more successive verses, clauses, or sentences.
• Caesera- a break, especially a sense pause, usually near the middle of a verse.
• Oxymoron- a figure of speech by which a locution produces an incongruous, seemingly self-contradictory effect.