Morning Song Analysis

Welcome to the land of symbols, imagery, and wordplay. Before you travel any further, please know that there may be some thorny academic terminology ahead. Never fear, Shmoop is here. Check out our...

Free VerseFor a supposed song, this poem is distinctly un-song-like – unless, of course, it's a song by Bob Dylan, who doesn't care so much about rhyming or rhythm or any of the other formal regu...

"I"We never get to learn the identity of the speaker of this poem – but since Sylvia Plath was a confessional poet, chances are that this speaker has quite a bit in common with Plath herself. (We...

You've seen it all before. Heck, chances are you once played the starring role in this little drama. See, "Morning Song" follows a newborn baby from the sterile, silent rooms of a hospital to its b...

Notice how short some of the sentences are in "Morning Song"? They force you to pause – often in the middle of a line. That sort of choppiness might not seem immediately apparent when you're look...

We've got to hand it to Sylvia Plath. "Morning Song" seems like a pretty innocuous title, doesn't it? People sing songs all the time. This just happens to be one of them.But wait – who's singing...

Up Close and Personal: Confessional PoetryThis poem is all about laying emotions on the line – even if those emotions aren't exactly the sorts of feelings that most "polite" society would want to...

(4) Base CampPlain, ordinary English. A pretty darn familiar subject. Short, snappy lines. Need we say more? Plath sucks her readers into this poem with her first image – and she keeps us engaged...

Plath and her husband Ted Hughes had two children, Freida and Nicholas (source)."Morning Song" isn't the only poem Plath wrote on motherhood. Check out "Metaphors" as well, though she wrote many ot...

GC'mon, folks. It's a poem about a little baby. Seriously! Sure, we're guessing that sex played a part in the baby's journey into the world – but, after going through labor, we're not sure that t...