Mirrors

I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions. What ever you see I swallow immediately Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike. I am not cruel, only truthful--- The eye of a little god, four-cornered. Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall. It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers. Faces and darkness separate us over and over. Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me, Searching my reaches for what she really is. Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon. I see her back, and reflect it faithfully. She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands. I am important to her. She comes and goes. Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: small;">In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: small;">Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.


 * Sylvia Plath**

Born: October 27th, 1932 Died: 1963

Plath was a gifted poet from a very young age. She was born in 1932 and won a scholarship to Smith College in 1950 because of her outstanding writing skills. She attempted suicide a few times throughout her life from college to adulthood, but failed every time. She became married to Ted Hughes, but had a very unsuccessful marriage that resulted in her killing herself by <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #212121; font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: small;">asphyxiation. After her death, her husband began to publish her work, and this is how she has become a famous poet today. In 1982, she won the Pulitzer Prize for Collected Poems. To this day, Plath is a widely admired and studied poet.

__<span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #212121; font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: small;">Theme: __ <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #212121; font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: small;">-//Appearance//: The first theme to be thought of when considering a mirror is appearance. Throughout the poem, the woman seems to be returning to the mirror in order to check her appearance, which is one that she is extremely displeased with. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #212121; font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: small;">-//Women/Femininity//: The poem could be a criticism about how women are expected to keep up a certain look or persona, and this is shown by the woman's constant returning to the mirror. The speaker even mentions that she "rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands", meaning that she is crying due to her reflection and the truthfulness of the mirror. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #212121; font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: small;">-//Time//: This poem explains a lot about time and aging. Throughout the poem, the mirror stays the same, and while it may even change into a lake, it's still reflecting the woman's journey into old age. The mirror stays the same, but <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #212121; font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: small;">-//Transformation//: The transformations throughout this poem take place in both the mirror and the woman. The mirror turns into a lake, while the woman grows old. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #212121; font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: small;">__Imagery__: The imagery throughout this poem does not seem to be very powerful, but without it, the poem would have a lesser meaning. In the first line, she describes the mirror as "silver and exact". Later on she describes the view across from the mirror as "pink, with speckles". The mirror then turns into a lake, which "reflects faithfully" the back of the woman. This is something that is easy to picture in your head. __Meter__: This poem is written in free-verse. There is no apparent rhyme or rhyming scheme, and it also lacks any specific structure, although Plath's work is quite easy to read and seems to be written with a certain grace. __Emotion__: The way this is written seems to imply that Plath is the woman in the poem, and she is writing from her observations of what she believes the experience would be like to be the mirror rather than the person looking in the mirror. There is a lot of powerful language used in this poem that leads many to believe this. The last few lines that talk about the woman crying because of her reflection while viewing herself age seems to be something that could only be written about through experience.
 * TIME**