Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

The poem "Brasilia" by Sylvia Plath evokes a landscape of futurism juxtaposed with elements of the archaic and the personal, capturing a sense of alienation and existential disquiet. Named after Brazil's modernist capital, the poem seemingly draws on the ambition and utopian ideals behind the construction of the city. Brasilia was meant to represent a break from the old, a shiny epitome of progress and modernism, and Plath captures this by depicting "people with torso of steel / Winged elbows and eyeholes."

The futuristic image of "people with torso of steel" starkly contrasts with the human vulnerability expressed in lines that portray the speaker's baby as "a nail / Driven, driven in." This baby exists in a world where people are envisioned as superhuman, with "torso of steel," yet its flesh-and-blood existence-its "shrieks" and "three teeth cutting"-emphasizes the dissonance between the envisioned utopia and the lived human experience.

The symbolism of "eyeholes" waiting for "masses / Of cloud to give them expression" underlines a form of hollowness in this new world, a lack of soul or emotional depth. The mechanical, almost robotic humans await some kind of divine inspiration that may or may not come. This waiting contrasts sharply with the immediate physicality of a shrieking baby, who doesn't await "expression" but simply is-a creature of needs and instinctual drives.

The speaker's self-description, "And I, nearly extinct," resonates as a cry of existential despair. Her juxtaposition to her baby, who is actively "nosing for distance," and to the imagined steel-bodied people, underscores her feelings of obsolescence, as if she doesn't fit into this new world. Furthermore, the lines "O You who eat / People like light rays, leave / This one / Mirror safe, unredeemed," seem to address a devouring, omnipotent force, questioning the price of 'progress' or 'enlightenment' that consumes individuality and humanity.

Then there is the old story "the star," a probable reference to the Biblical story of the Star of Bethlehem that guided the Magi to the baby Jesus. The star, a universal symbol of guidance and destiny, here serves as a foil to the futuristic "super-people," hinting at a timeless, cyclical nature of human existence that no amount of modernity can erase. The concluding lines refer to "the dove's annihilation," perhaps an allusion to the Christian symbol of the Holy Spirit or peace, which seems to be destroyed in this brave new world.

The poem forms a tapestry of contrasts: the inhuman and the painfully human, the futuristic and the archaic, the individual and the cosmic, sown together by an atmosphere of existential dread and disquiet. By setting these disparate elements in conversation, Plath exposes the incongruities and ethical quandaries presented by visions of utopia and the relentless march of progress. "Brasilia" serves as a critique of modernity's discontents, capturing a moment of profound alienation and the dark underbelly of progress.

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