Morning Song Analysis

Form and Meter

For 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 regularities t...

Speaker

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 kn...

Setting

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...

Sound Check

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...

What's Up With the Title?

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...

Calling Card

This 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 acknowledge. You might even say that Plat...

Tough-o-Meter

Plain, 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 by the promi...

Trivia

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...

Steaminess Rating

C'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 th...