“Child” by Sylvia Plath (1963)

According to her notes, “Child” was written on the same day in January 1963 that Plath revised “Sheep in Fog.” This poem describes Plath’s son, whom she hopes to keep as a “stalk without wrinkle” (Line 7). She hopes the child’s “clear eye” (Line 1) will see “images [. . .] grand and classical (Lines 8-9) rather than the “wringing of hands, this dark / Ceiling without a star” (Lines 11-12). Plath uses similar techniques here as in “Sleep in Fog”: employing tercets, contrasting lighter images with darker ones, and a closing finale which concentrates on a night-time sky without illumination.

“Words” by Sylvia Plath (1963)

Written 10 days before her suicide, this poem deals an argument in which “words” (Line 16) were used like “[a]xes” (Line 1). Written at the same time as when “Sheep in Fog” was revised, this poem employs several images that correlate. In “Words,” the “[e]choes” (Line 4) of the painful exchange “trave[l] / Off from the center like horses” (Line 5), much as the “horse” (Line 6) quietly moves through Plath’s other foggy landscape. The “white skull eaten by weedy greens” (Lines 12-13) reflects the “bones [that] hold a stillness” (Line 11) in “Sheep in Fog.” The “words, dry and riderless” (Line 16) here are described as “hoof-taps” (Line 17) that are “indefatigable” in “Words”—which is similar to “hooves, dolorous bells” (Line 7) in “Sheep in Fog.” In “Words,” Plath remembers this painful encounter, and notes that at the “bottom of the pool, fixed stars / Govern a life” (Lines 19-20), proclaiming that this cruelty was destiny. This is similar to the “heaven” (Lines 14) that is really “dark water” (Line 15) in “Sheep in Fog.” Although the “water” (Line 15) in “Sheep in Fog” has no “stars,” the Fates in both poems seem to have “fixed” (Line 19) the fact that there is no reprieve from betrayal and abandonment.

“Lady Lazarus” by Sylvia Plath (1962)

In this long poem, collected in Ariel (1965), Plath discusses her failed suicide attempts, which she escaped as “[a] sort of walking miracle” (Line 4). The poem, written in late October 1962, is noted for its powerful exploration of suicidal thought and its nearly singsong cadence. Throughout the poem, power is re-gained by Plath, even though she honestly talks about how she makes “[dying] feel like hell. / I do it so it feels real” (Lines 46-47). By the end, however, she is resurrected like a phoenix, “out of the ash / I rise with my red hair / And I eat men like air” (Lines 82-84). The fierce anger present here is absent from December’s fatalistic “Sheep in Fog,” revised just three months later.