Sylvia Plath

Black Rook in Rainy Weather

Total Neutrality:
For Plath writing and artistic creativity was everything. She was someone who simply couldnt function unless she had the time and space to work on her poetry and many of her Diary entries and letters give the impression that literature mattered as much to her as friendship or family life.

 Plaths worst nightmare, then, was to be denied inspiration. For without inspiration the writing that made her life worth living would be impossible. She describes a life without writing and inspiration as one of total neutrality, a grey , blank and passionless existence that seems to resemble a life under the cloud of cynical depression. Indeed it seems that for Plath inspiration was bound up with mental health and a failure to be inspired would plunge her into the depths of despair, emptiness and total neutrality.

Inspiration
Black Rook in Rainy Weather presents a romantic view of art and creativity. The poem, therefore, ends with the speaker simply waiting around for inspiration to strike her like a bolt of lightning from the sky. The poem, then, suggests that artistic creativity is not freely available to all but only those few who are lucky enough to experience the miracle of inspiration. Only these chosen few, it seems, will be capable of writing true poetry.

A Spiritual View of Inspiration:

Artistic and poetic inspiration, the poem suggests, is a holy or spiritual phenomenon. It is associated with miracles and angels, suggesting that it has little to do with our everyday life but is a celestial phenomenon, something that is sent down to us from the heavenly realm. The words of the poem come to a poet as if they were spoken to him or her out of the sky. The poets role, then, is to stay in the alert for this backtalk.

 Inspiration, throughout the poem, is associated with fire and light. Any object that causes a poet to be inspired will seem to glow (the sight will be set on fire in the poets eyes). The rooks feathers, were told, would shine if it were to inspire the speaker. It would heighten her senses, especially her sense of vision: it would seize my senses, haul/ My eyelids up. If she were to get inspiration from a kitchen table of chair it too would seem to glow with an incandescent burning. Inspiration, then, is intimately bound up with strange bursts of light, with what the speaker describes as spasmodic tricks of radiance. The angel of inspiration, if and when it appears, will flare into her life like an explosion.

Fire and Light:

Chaos:
In Black Rook in Rainy Weather the speaker presents a view of the world as a random and chaotic place. The poem suggests that there is no pattern or meaning to the way that things happen, no design or hidden order that lies behind the world. Everything, the poem suggests, happens randomly. The speaker, therefore, does not seek any design in the weather or the natural world. For this life is disordered and chaotic. Studying them reveals no portent or sign of deeper meaning: let spotted leaves fall as they fall/ Without ceremony, or portent.

 The poem, it is important to note, has a hidden rhyme scheme in which the first likes of each stanza rhyme or almost rhyme (there... fire... desire... chair) as do the second lines (rook... seek... backtalk... took... walk) and so on. It has been claimed that the poems unusual structure contradicts its argument that the world is a random and chaotic place. It is possible, after all, that a hidden order lies behind the chaotic and random events we see around us just as there is a hidden pattern behind the seemingly random arrangements of the poems lines.

A Hidden Order

Rhyme
In Black Rookthere is a regular recurring line rhyme. In each of the eight stanzas, the pattern is as follows:r, k, n, l, nt. Thus, while there isnt line rhyme within the stanzas, the apparently random pattern of the first stanza is replicated exactly in the other seven stanzas. This may connect to one theme of the poem by suggesting that the present is chaotic, but that there may be some design' overall that will eventually become obvious.

Tone
Droll and dreamy:I desiresome backtalk from the mute sky [Black Rook] Unassuming and modest:I do not expect a miracle [Black Rook] Resigned and tolerant: But let spotted leaves fall as they fall [Black Rook] Flippant, ironic and cavalier:those spasmodic tricks of radiance [Black Rook]

Imagery
twigs and spotted leaves [Black Rook] She uses recurring images of trees in many of her poems.

Symbol:
Rook [Black Rook] a wet black rook arranging and rearranging its feathers in the rain is a symbol of how the minor light of life can shine suddenly from banal objects. For Plath the rook can so shine as to seize my senses. The rook is an ordinary bird which serves to focus Plaths vision. The rook is a ruse she chooses in order to instil patience in herself. She settles for its minor light while she awaits a more transcendent vision: The long wait for the angel for that rare, random descent [Black Rook]

Analogy:
[An analogy is a simile or metaphor that functions as a parallel image. An analogy may involve an extended comparison] Plath uses both religious and fire analogies in the poem Black Rook. Note the Christian register or diction Plath uses in this quote: As if a celestial burning took possession of the most obtuse objects now and thenThus hallowing an interval otherwise inconsequent [Black Rook] Note how the expression as if signals an analogy and renders the religious language that follows metaphorical. Celestial and hallowing are religious terms that Plath applies to her humanist desire for clarity and illumination.

 The words miracle, and angel maintain the religious imagery, which becomes an extended metaphor for inspiration or artistic epiphany. Plaths imagery, in the final two lines, suggests she is awaiting an Annunciation from an angel of the imagination. The phrase, those spasmodic tricks of radiance, is also an image for how elusive and random inspiration is. This phrase shows that the religious terms are not used in a reverent manner, but rather in a flippant manner. The word tricks is, if anything, disrespectful and mocking. Plath is prepared to settle for a trick of light in order to achieve a moment of transcendent beauty. She doesnt have any faith that she will find a permanent beauty in her life.

 The metaphor burning, often used in religious imagery, refers to the impact of such a moment of insight, as Plath desires. The expressions To set the sight on fire, incandescent, and flare, extend this metaphor throughout the poem. In this way, the image of burning is used as an analogy for the aesthetic pleasure felt at the moment of poetic inspiration or vision of beauty. Plaths imagery depicts those less than transcendent moments when something ordinary can so shine as to seize my senses.

Form:
For example, in Black Rookthere are eight regular five-line stanzas.