Silvia Plath - Edge - Jenna Pelosi

Silvia Plath Edge pg. 554
This poem caught my attention, because even though I have read this poem over and over I am still unable to fully grasp the intentions behind it. I can tell by the way the words flow in and out of my head as I read the poem again and again that the speaker is offering a strong sense of poignancy and wisdom behind it. The speaker talks of a dead women, a women who is said to be “perfected” and “her body is wearing the smile of accomplishment” (Plath, Pg. 554). So I begin to infer, with my motivations from the poem, that this women died of heroic causes. Then the poem’s emotion changes to a more somber tone, with stanzas like, “She has folded them back into her body as petals of a rose close when the garden stiffens and odors bleed” (Plath, pg. 554). With the use of new language, I imagine a strong woman that died with her culture. I picture a woman who has fought to keep the lyric life in her culture alive, and yet it was suffocated by a higher power, which led her to lose her ambition to live. Yet why the smile of accomplishment? A sense of wisdom is felt, even though I am not fully clear on the meaning it holds behind it.