Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

In Sylvia Plath's "Contusion," a poem that offers a microcosm of existential anxiety, every word is meticulously chosen to evoke a sense of ominous finality. The poem opens with "Color floods to the spot, dull purple," painting an immediate image of a bruise, an injury that brings forth color in an otherwise "washed-out" body. The word "floods" is poignant, implying an overwhelming force that can't be contained. Here, the color serves as a metaphor for life itself, a momentary flare in the face of overwhelming whiteness, symbolizing emptiness or perhaps even death.

The poem moves from the physical body to the metaphysical world with the stanza "In a pit of a rock/The sea sucks obsessively,/One hollow the whole sea's pivot." The sea, often a literary symbol for the subconscious or for emotional depths, "sucks obsessively," creating a scene both destructive and magnetic. By making "one hollow the whole sea's pivot," Plath is commenting on the weight of a single moment or event in the grand scope of life. In the grand chaos of existence, sometimes all it takes is one pivotal instance to cause unraveling. This can also be read as a dark interpretation of interconnectedness - the idea that a single point can change or even disrupt the balance of a system as large as the sea.

The third stanza zooms in even further, shrinking the frame from the vastness of the sea to "The size of a fly." Here, "The doom mark/Crawls down the wall." In these lines, Plath articulates the inevitable approach of death, represented by a minuscule yet terrifying doom mark, evoking the relentless, crawling pace of fate. The scale has been reduced, but the existential weight remains undiminished, implying that the grand and the trivial are linked in the inexorable approach of "doom."

In the concluding lines, "The heart shuts,/The sea slides back,/The mirrors are sheeted," we're presented with a sequence of closures. Each closure signifies an end, a shutting down of systems both physical ("The heart shuts") and metaphysical ("The sea slides back"). Even the mirrors, which reflect reality, are "sheeted," covered up as if to prevent them from capturing any more images of a world that has come to a halt.

Through her tight, controlled use of language, Plath crafts a poem that is both devastating and beautiful. "Contusion" presents life as a series of closures, where even the most vivid colors fade into "the color of pearl." It is a sobering reminder of life's fragility, as well as its fleeting moments of vibrancy. The poem suggests that from the macroscopic scale of the sea to the microscopic "size of a fly," all levels of existence are bound by the same inexorable approach of finality. Yet, in the very act of articulating this bleak vision, Plath creates something that endures: a work of art that continues to engage, provoke, and move us.

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