Get out the microscope, because we’re going through this poem line-by-line.
Lines 1-3
Overnight, very
Whitely, discreetly,
Very quietly
- Well, since the title of the poem is "Mushrooms," we're going to go ahead and assume that this first stanza is describing... wait for it... mushrooms. Yeah, we know. We're brilliant.
- These friendly fungi tend to poke their heads up from the soil at night, so it makes sense that the speaker describes this as happening overnight.
- "Whitely" describes the color of a lot of mushrooms. It's interesting that the speaker describes them as growing whitely, though. How exactly can you do something whitely? Could it be a reference the ghostly nature of mushrooms? Could it be to give them a sense of purity? We'll keep reading with those questions in mind.
- The speaker goes on to describe them as moving "discreetly" and "very quietly," which totally captures the silent way that mushrooms grow.
- We also know this is a Sylvia Plath poem, so we're pretty sure these sneaky mushrooms are symbolic of something else.
- That's just how this lady rolls. We're still waiting for the poem to reveal its hidden meaning though.
- We also notice a bunch of assonance (with the long I sounds), consonance (all those T sounds), and alliteration (with the V words) here, but we break down all those poetic sound games in "Sound Check."