Summary:

The poet likens a sudden awareness of middle-age to "a pear [that] spoils from the inside out" of which one "may not be aware / until things have gone too far."

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The narrator find himself in the kitchen where "the faucet drips" and "The magnets on the refrigerator crawl down / with the gravity of expired coupons and doctor bills." He looks into the refrigerator, trying to remember whether he has seen any of its contents before. He is preoccupied with his body, which is aging. His mind wanders. Suddenly, he is alert again, oriented to the present and ready to take charge--of his diet and of his life. "I'm full of hope. / I open the refrigerator. / I've seen this stuff before."

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The poem, spoken by an outside observer, produces an idealized image of pregnancy, of "heavy women" in a state of serene satisfaction with their state, "beautifully smug / As Venus," while in "each weighty stomach" a secret is developing in the dark: "the small, new heart." These pregnant women, though, are suspiciously unreal. Plath likens them to works of art, Madonnas attended by cherubs in Renaissance paintings. As ideals, these women "step among the archetypes" of motherhood.

By invoking these archetypes, especially in the pregnant women's hoods of "Mary-blue," Plath also hints at the pain associated with all motherhood: "the axle of winter" which "grinds round," and which will bring the star, and the wise men, and also the likelihood of suffering and loss. While the calm pregnant women are far away from it now, as they wait, Plath implicitly warns that pregnancy is a temporary state and that what follows is irrevocable and can be terrible. (21 lines)

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The speaker, the "barren woman" of the poem, describes her state as empty. She likens herself to a deserted space, a "museum without statues," at its center a fountain which, rather than issuing life, recycles its water, which "sinks back into itself." She imagines herself as a mother, but recognizes that "nothing can happen." The only one who pays attention is the moon, silently but ineffectually trying to soothe her. (10 lines)

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This five-line poem poses a direct question of distributive justice to a mother faced with scarce resources. "Indian Poem" asks the mother to decide how she will divide what little she has among her children. She must choose between her strong son who has no immediate need, her weak son who is bound to die soon , and her daughter, "who is a girl anyway." The poem presents an imperative choice, but acknowledges that in choosing, the mother will also suffer along with her children.

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A mother reflects on the developing body of her unborn child, her own contribution to its development, and her hopes that her daughter will grow to cherish her body and to know the love it can hold.

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This short poem, one of a series entitled "A Catch of Shy Fish," describes an old sick man whose life is "closing in" and who feels only pain ("mind is a little isle") until there enters "an impudence of red," flowers that, for him become a "ripe rebuke," a "burgeoning affluence" that "mocks [him] and "mocks the desert of my bed."

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It is the voice of the woman in bed that makes this poem, and she is a tough character as she reveals herself, physically and otherwise. "I won’t work / and I’ve got no cash. / What are you going to do/about it?" she demands in the first few lines. She implies that she is a loose woman and perhaps even comes on to the physician: "Lift the covers / if you want me . . . ." and later, "Corsets / can go to the devil-- / and drawers along with them-- / What do I care!"

The woman shifts subjects rapidly, between poverty and sexuality, hinting that she might be pregnant again, writing off her two sons. At the end, she delivers a proud challenge to the physician who has come to see her in the abandoned house: "Try to help me / if you want trouble / or leave me alone-- / that ends trouble. // The county physician / is a damned fool / and you / can go to hell! // You could have closed the door / when you came in; / do it when you go out. / I’m tired."

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An obese woman describes the advantages of being obese.

She is a fortress, strong, implacable, self sufficient, impervious to famine and weakness. She is a goddess, powerful, with the ability to crush anyone who does not take her seriously. Underlying the strong language of this poem is the reality of this woman's isolation. She is isolated from men and women alike, so afraid of being harmed by others that she chooses to be so threatening that no one will come near her. Her source of power is also her source of pain.

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Visiting an old folk's home in Jerusalem, the narrator notes the details of life and of nature--evening, the bees' buzzing busy-ness gone for the day, "the honeysuckle / in its golden dotage, all the sickrooms ajar." There ends, however, the "normal," for in the next lines we are brought up short with "Law of the Innocents: What doesn't end, sloshes over . . . even here, where destiny girds the cucumber." What are the Innocents doing in an old folk's home? And are the honeysuckle and cucumber vines the "destiny"--the liquid life-lines of feeding and IV tubes--that "gird" the occupants?

In the second stanza, the narrator recognizes that no matter what the occupants (or the narrator himself/herself) have ever accomplished, nothing of worldly success matters here. What is real are "horned thumbnail[s] hooked into an ear" and "gray underwear wadded over a belt."

The third stanza shows the narrator trying to come to terms with what he or she has seen and learned: old age is "minimalist," like the night air and the desert; light cannot overcome darkness; all that remains is the moment, itself nothing of any great magnitude: "finch chit and my sandal's / inconsequential crunch." The last stanza, one line, reads: "Everyone waiting here was once in love."

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