Sign inventory, Week 6

Morning Song
-Sylvia Plath


*The poem features a mixture of numerous elements of physical and enironvmental structure: statue, walls, the cloud, mirror, sea, window, etc.

*The poem is written in complete sentences except for "New statue," found in the second stanza.

*Actions and descriptions are often paired with animal characteristics: moth-breath, cow-heavy, your mouth opens clean as a cat's.

*The speaker claims no particular ownership of the child: I'm no more your mother / Than the cloud that distills a mirror to reflect it own slow / Effacement at the wind's hand.

*There is an occupation apparent in the poem with the celestial: took its place among the elements, the cloud that distills, swallows its dull stars, the clear vowels rise like balloons.

*There is a lack of emotion at the birth of the child: We stand round blankey as walls.

*The poem owns a preoccupation about sound-the sound of the mother and the child: your bald cry, our voices magnifying your arrival, I wake to listen: a far sea moves in my ear, one cry, now you try your handful of notes.

*Love is equated with time ticking: Love set you going like a fat gold watch.

*The poem lack minute specifics, except for Victorian nightgown, the reminder of the poem center on more abstractions: the elements, shadows our safety, the cloud that distills the mirror.

*The midwife and not the speaker/mother is the only one to touch the child in the poem: the midwife slapped your footsoles.