An Analysis Of Elizabeth Bishop And Sylvia Plath's 'Daddy'

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Recommended: Themes and poetic style of Sylvia Plath

Kathy Szelag
English 244
Due Date: 12/15/15
Take Home Final Exam
Two writers that deeply conveyed their personal experience as a departure point for poetry were Elizabeth Bishop and Sylvia Plath. Elizabeth Bishop wrote the poem "Sestina" and Sylvia Plath wrote "Daddy" and through these poems these women showed evidence of autobiographical sources in their works. In "Daddy" there was a link between Plath 's writing and personal experience which was direct, explicit, and showed Plath 's motivation for writing the poem. On the other hand, there wasn 't a clear and direct relationship between Bishop 's personal experience and her poem. Bishop 's poem had oblique formality in terms of personal experience which made the reader dig a little deeper.
In "Sestina" by Elizabeth Bishop the story was set in a kitchen on a rainy late afternoon in September. It featured two characters: a grandmother and her grandchild who are making tea and drawing. Although the woman tries to remain cheerful and thus protect the child, her tears give away her sadness. The child, meanwhile, not only observes these troubling signs but also draws a house that makes her proud. By the final nine lines of the poem, the buttons in the child 's drawing became “little moons” and fell down "like tears/into the flower bed the child/ has carefully placed” in the drawing.
The speaker seemed to be an outside observer. Using third person allowed the reader to really get a closer perspective of the poem and see the big picture. If the poem would have been told from the grandmother 's perspective the reader would have limited knowledge on what 's going on. Also, if it were told from the child 's point of view, it would probably be even more limited especially in terms of vocabulary. Bishop left it up to the reader to reveal the strange and eerie atmosphere of the poem than to let the reader know exactly what is happening. The poem took place in September where it was rainy, cold and getting dark outside fairly early. It was
Sylvia Plath uses a confessional type of writing where there was clear and direct evidence of a link between her personal experiences and her writing. Whereas Elizabeth Bishop uses an oblique format intended for the reader to find the underlying meaning. Although both of these poems had something to do with childhood each writer used different forms of poetry to convey the meaning of the poem. Sylvia Plath 's poem was sinister, dark, and her imagery was harsh as she focused on her evil father. Elizabeth Bishop 's poem was sad and had an eerie atmosphere and in the end there was no real answer as to what really happened in the poem. It was left up to the reader to find out what happened, the underlying meaning was not implicit or direct. The forms of the poems were also very different from one another, Bishop used strict and complex forms; however, Plath used free

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