I decided to look at Sylvia Plath's poem "Morning Song" because it seemed the most cold. In comparision to Ariel which went a bit over my head, Morning Song seems very detached and cold. The woman is talking about having a child, yet feels no connection to her offspring, "I am no more your mother/Than the cloud that distills a mirror to reflect its own slow/Effacement at the wind's hand." She seems to be saying the child is merely a reflection of the mother, much like a mirror, but has no real depth or personality of its own. She also seems to show the burden of childrearing, "...I stumble from bed, cow-heavy and floral" yet still just seems to be stringing pretty words along. The last lines were the most confusing to me, "Whitens and swallows its dull stars. And now you try/Your handful of notes;/The clear vowels rise like balloons." To me it just seems like the child is crying but it also conveys the image of maybe putting something new out in the world. Balloons tend to symbolize belief, change, freedom. Maybe with this child comes freedom of some kind. It just seems kind of symbolic that Plath killed herself with her children in the house and this poem seems to have a detachment to children.
Critical Question: What do you think is the meaning of Plath's poem? Does it say something different about motherhood, or is it even about motherhood at all?
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