17 pages • 34-minute read
Two Sisters Of Persephone
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Literary Devices
Form and Meter
“Two Sisters of Persephone” is written in free verse—poetry that doesn’t rely on a set form, rhyme scheme, structure, or meter—peppered with near- and slant-rhymes (that is, words that don’t rhyme in the traditional sense but have sounds in common). The poem is comprised of 32 lines divided into eight stanzas of four lines each. Each line is fairly short, giving the poem a long and narrow effect. Visually, the lines are all roughly the same length and range from four to eight syllables.
The poem relies heavily on enjambment, a device which breaks lines in between their natural dialogue rest, particularly in the earlier stanzas of the poem. The opening lines are “Two girls there are: within the house / One sits; the other, without” (Lines 1-2). Were this written in prose, it would likely read, “Two girls there are. Within the house, one sits—the other, without.” The line break between the two lines of poetry pulls apart the natural clause and creates layers of meaning and misdirection in the poem. The poet uses this device later in the poem: “She bears a king. Turned bitter” (Line 24). The two parts of this line appear to refer to two different characters, but placing them side by side encourages the reader to look at it from different angles; perhaps the two sisters are both bitter.
The poem does not use a set meter, but the stanzas generally alternate between longer and shorter lines to give a sense of rhythm.
Allusion
The poem’s major allusion is placed within the title. Unlike other mythologically inspired poems, this one never mentions the underworld goddess, or any symbols or motifs from within the myth, again. This begs the question: why allude to Persephone at all?
The mystery deepens when we realize that in Greek mythology, Persephone had no sisters. She was caught between her mother—Demeter, the goddess of the harvest—and her husband—Hades, the god of the underworld, but is not typically associated with any other family members. Therefore, we must look at the title in a different way. Rather than being Persephone’s sisters, the characters in the poem are two sisters, both of whom are under the dominion of Persephone. Both are influenced by and symbolic of Persephone’s distinctive duality. Caught in between one life and another, Persephone spends half her days in light and the other half in darkness.
By opening her poem with Persephone’s name, instead of burying it in a later stanza, the poet instills this expectation from the beginning. Though the poem is not a mythological retelling or a criticism of that particular story, the allusion works as a framing device and lays the groundwork for the reader’s interpretation of the poem.
Assonance and Consonance
Plath’s poem does not follow a set rhyme scheme, but it does use near-rhymes and other auditory devices to create a sense of rhythm and unity. We see this first in the repetition of “within” and “without” (Lines 1-2) and in the repeated sounds of “Daylong” and “duet” (Line 3). The w sounds continue in the second stanza with “wainscotted” and “worked” (Lines 5-6), and the letter m recurs in “room” (Line 5), “mathematical machine” (Line 7), and “mark time” (Line 8). The third stanza favors r sounds in “barren enterprise” (Line 10), “Rat-shrewd” (Line 11), and “Root-pale her meager frame” (Line 12). The stanza also incorporates a near-rhyme in “enterprise” and “eyes” (Lines 10-11).
The fourth stanza makes use of the letters b and p (both front-of-mouth sounds) and the letter l: “Bronzed,” “blown,” “bright,” “a bed of poppies” (Lines 13-16) and “lies,” “pollen,” and “lulled” (Lines 13-15). The consonance continues into the next stanza with “Burns” and the slant rhyme “blood” and “blade” (Lines 18-19). Moving forward, there is the alliteration in “Grows” and “Grass” (Lines 22-23), the internal rhyme “bride” and “pride” (Lines 21, 23), and the near-rhyme “latter” and “bitter” (Lines 21, 24). The seventh stanza returns to the letter w with “sallow,” “wry,” “graveward,” “waste,” “Worm-husbanded,” and “woman” (Lines 25-28) and uses the letter a in “graveward” and “laid waste” (Line 27). The final stanza returns to the letter l in “lines,” “While flowering, ladies,” “love,” and “lest,” (Lines 29-31) and closes with the alliteration “Be but this black” (Line 32).
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