Please read carefully as the speaker is a lover with a very deep feeling of love for someone (which could be male or female) the poem did not specify.
In a nut shell, Sylvia Plath wrote this poem in form of
villanelle. When a poem has 6 stanzas (where the first 5 stanzas are 3
lines each and the last stanza is 4 lines) of which line 1 is repeated
in line 6, 12, 18 and line 3 is repeated in line 9, 15, 19; such a poem
is referred to as a villanelle.
To summarize the poem, "It seems I made you up in my brain
because you left me too soon when your love inside of me was still very
fresh and strong; leaving me with the hope that you shall soon come back
to me until now I became old and could no longer recollect your name.
Whenever I remember how memorable our encounter used to
be_
your undeniable insane way of kissing; I always feel as if you’re just a
sweet fiction to me"
It is of little necessity to state the the theme of this
poem when it’s generally known that villanelles are French form of
poetry that discuss the subject of love.
Besides the use of repetition of lines such as "I shut my
eyes and all the world drops dead" and "I think I made you up inside my
head", the are other beauty devices created by Sylvia Plath in "Mad
Girl’s Love Song".
The expression "all the world drops dead" has an alliteration, a hyperbole, and also seems like a metonymy and more.
The expression "all the world drops dead" has an alliteration, a hyperbole, and also seems like a metonymy and more.
"my lids" is a synecdoche while the "The stars go waltzing out in blue and red" is a personification.
"God" "hell" "seraphim" "Satan" are all instance of religious allusion in the poem.
On the October 27th in the year 1932, one of those destined
to represent the female gender in the creative craft of literature was
born and innocently christened Sylvia Plath; not knowing such name will
stand the test of time. This reminds me of a quote from the Ifa divinity
which says "None of us at the beach can differentiate the footprint of
royals from paupers; no one can ever predict the future of a person
immediately at birth".
According to the article at poet.org,
Sylvia Plath had been eying fame before she even became a teen. Reading
voraciously, writing creatively, aiming to be a published public figure
before she entered her teen-hood. No wonder some people refer to
Chimamanda Adichie as the Sylvia Plath of Nigeria.
But upon all her strives and attempts, the lifetime of
Sylvia exemplified "qui cera cera". "On February 11, 1963_ during one of
the worst English winters on record, Plath wrote a note to her
downstairs neighbor instructing him to call the doctor, then she
committed suicide using her gas oven".
