Unit 1.pdf - Southwest High School

P o e t r y
Activity 1.7
continued
by Sylvia Plath
A b o u t t h e A u t h o r
© 2011 College Board. All rights reserved.
Overnight, very
Whitely, discreetly,
Very quietly
Our toes, our noses
Take hold on the loam,
Acquire the air.
Nobody sees us,
Stops us, betrays us;
The small grains make room.
Soft fists insist on
Heaving the needles,
The leafy bedding,
Even the paving.
Our hammers, our rams,
Earless and eyeless,
Perfectly voiceless,
Widen the crannies,
Shoulder through holes. We
Diet on water,
On crumbs of shadow,
Bland-mannered, asking
Little or nothing.
So many of us!
So many of us!
We are shelves, we are
Tables, we are meek,
We are edible.
5
10
15
20
25
Sylvia Plath (1932–1963)
captured the intensity of
her turbulent life in an
autobiographical novel
and personal, revealing
poetry. An accomplished
scholar and writer,
Plath won many awards
as a young woman,
including a scholarship
to Smith College and
a Fulbright fellowship
to Newnham College in
Cambridge University.
In 1956, she married
poet Ted Hughes. As
their marriage dissolved,
Plath produced poems
of striking pain and
power. These poems
were published in the
collection Ariel (1965),
which appeared after her
suicide in 1963.
Nudgers and shovers
In spite of ourselves.
Our kind multiplies:
30
We shall by morning
Inherit the earth.
Our foot’s in the door.
Unit 1 • Perception Is Everything 17