Elm

Elm

by Sylvia Plath

For Ruth Fainlight

I know the bottom, she says. I know it with my great tap root:
It is what you fear.
I do not fear it: I have been there.

Is it the sea you hear in me,
Its dissatisfactions?
Or the voice of nothing, that was your madness?

Love is a shadow.
How you lie and cry after it
Listen: these are its hooves: it has gone off, like a horse.

All night I shall gallop thus, impetuously,
Till your head is a stone, your pillow a little turf,
Echoing, echoing.

Or shall I bring you the sound of poisons?
This is rain now, this big hush.
And this is the fruit of it: tin-white, like arsenic.

I have suffered the atrocity of sunsets.
Scorched to the root
My red filaments burn and stand, a hand of wires.

Now I break up in pieces that fly about like clubs.
A wind of such violence
Will tolerate no bystanding: I must shriek.

The moon, also, is merciless: she would drag me
Cruelly, being barren.
Her radiance scathes me. Or perhaps I have caught her.

I let her go. I let her go
Diminished and flat, as after radical surgery.
How your bad dreams possess and endow me.

i am inhabited by a cry.
Nightly it flaps out
Looking, with its hooks, for something to love.

i am terrified by this dark thing
That sleeps in me;
All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity.

Clouds pass and disperse.
Are those the faces of love, those pale irretrievables?
Is it for such I agitate my heart?

i am incapable of more knowledge.
What is this, this face
So murderous in its strangle of branches?——

Its snaky acids hiss.
It petrifies the will. These are the isolate, slow faults
That kill, that kill, that kill. 

Meanings of Elm

Sylvia Plath’s poem “Elm” presents a woman as an elm tree with her experience of lost love. The poem sheds light on the main ideas of femininity, knowledge, and fear.

Meanings of Stanza 1-2

I know the bottom, she says. I know it with my great tap root:
It is what you fear.
I do not fear it: I have been there.

Is it the sea you hear in me,
Its dissatisfactions?
Or the voice of nothing, that was your madness?

The speaker of this poem is a male. He presents the conversation of a female. She says that the male knows the depth of her personality. She is of the view that he knows that this bottom is her “tap root” and he is afraid of it, but she is not fearful. She knows that, and he has already explored it. She then questions him about his fear and asks him whether he is afraid of the sea or the depth in her or it is simply dissatisfaction, or that it is silence in her that causes him to get mad. Although these questions seem to be put forward by the lady, it also seems that this could be a tree conversing with the readers about the knowledge or episteme and its production. The verses cryptically present the main theme of love and the impacts of its loss.

Meanings of Stanza 3-4

Love is a shadow.
How you lie and cry after it
Listen: these are its hooves: it has gone off, like a horse.

All night I shall gallop thus, impetuously,
Till your head is a stone, your pillow a little turf,
Echoing, echoing.

The speaker compares love to a shadow saying that it is worthless to cry and lie down after you experience love, for you cannot reach a shadow or get it. Similarly, love is like a horse, having strong hooves to carry it very fast when it runs away. The next fourth stanza shows the speaker stating she could also run like a horse impetuously until the very lover reaches his grave with his head like a stone and turf as his pillow with a voice echoing about love. This shows how these two stanzas present the fleeting moments of love compared to a shadow that immediately disappears or a horse that leaves very fast, making the lover die.

Meanings of Stanza 5-6

Or shall I bring you the sound of poisons?
This is rain now, this big hush.
And this is the fruit of it: tin-white, like arsenic.

I have suffered the atrocity of sunsets.
Scorched to the root
My red filaments burn and stand, a hand of wires.

The fifth stanza presents the speaker with a choice of a question that she could bring the sound of poison though generally, it does not. However, she seeks the permission of her lover. She states that though it is rain, it is complete silence and compares her love with a tine-white thing having arsenic in it, a white poison. Immediately after this, the speaker states that she has suffered the cruelties of the sunsets that bring depression and disappointment of love to an end. This makes her body become filament, such as a handful of wires. The speaker, a female, presents her experience of the end of love and its impact on her physical body. These verses show the theme of the experience of love and the impact after love ends.

Meanings of Stanza 7-8

Now I break up in pieces that fly about like clubs.
A wind of such violence
Will tolerate no bystanding: I must shriek.

The moon, also, is merciless: she would drag me
Cruelly, being barren.
Her radiance scathes me. Or perhaps I have caught her.

The speaker states that she has broken up into pieces. In fact, this is the storm that comes at the end of love. Then, it breaks into violence, and it does not tolerate any spectator. Therefore, she is bound to shriek due to this torture. The next stanza shows her telling her lover that even the moon is merciless as it brings her memories. Presenting the moon as a female, she states that it makes her barren while its radiance taunts her. It has caught her in the act of love. This stanza hows the personal thematic idea of the suffering of love.

Meanings of Stanza 9-10

I let her go. I let her go
Diminished and flat, as after radical surgery.
How your bad dreams possess and endow me.

i am inhabited by a cry.
Nightly it flaps out
Looking, with its hooks, for something to love.

Again speaking in the first person, the speaker states that she has permitted the moon to go. It means that she has no power over the cyclical nature of time. However, it is also like her lying flat and diminished as if after a complete surgery, or transformation. She goes on to say that even a cry stops her from speaking about it. It is like a bird with its hooked claws looking for something which is likely love. This image of the bird or surgery shows her helplessness after being in love or after she faces abandonment. These two stanzas add to the main idea of the loss of love

Meanings of Stanza 11-12

i am terrified by this dark thing
That sleeps in me;
All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity.

Clouds pass and disperse.
Are those the faces of love, those pale irretrievables?
Is it for such I agitate my heart?

The speaker again presents love as a bird that is a dark thing. It lives inside her. She states that she feels its feathery turnings and its malignity, but she is unable to do anything. Moving to the next stanza, she comes to the clouds, which just pass and disperse in different directions, possibly indifferently. She adds by asking a question whether what she sees are faces of love or not and also that these faces are pale and yet irretrievable. Then she questions herself, asking whether her agitation is for such pale faces. With this image of love as a bird and her emotions as a cloud, she presents her suffering of love after she faces abandonment. These stanzas continue to accentuate the main idea of loss of love.

Meanings of Stanza 13-14

i am incapable of more knowledge.
What is this, this face
So murderous in its strangle of branches?——

Its snaky acids hiss.
It petrifies the will. These are the isolate, slow faults
That kill, that kill, that kill.

Presented through figurative language, the speaker has shown various angles of her empirical experience of love. She states that she has no more knowledge of it. Yet, she has one more experience of this torture of knowledge that she finds the branches strangling to kill without identifying the face. This leads her to state that its smell is acidic, and it hisses like a snake. It kills one’s will to show any resistance. Therefore, it isolates a person and kills him/her. The echoing of killing continues to reverberate in the last line, making it clear that the speaker has presented her knowledge about love and has nothing to state further. The extended metaphor of elm ends with this strangulation of branches that is also murder. These stanzas complete the main idea, which is the loss of love and the end of the person who has faced this loss.

Summary of Elm

• Popularity of “Elm”: Written by Sylvia Plath, a great English writer and poet, “Elm” is an emotive poem. This poem depicts the melancholy of a woman enduring the pain of lost love. It shows how catastrophic life becomes when love departs. Although the poem addresses the trauma of a single lady, the feelings and emotions could be generalized. The factual description of pain and suffering makes this poem popular among the readers.
• “Elm” As a Representative of Pain: This poem is about the emotional transformation of a lady, a victim of lost love. The poem begins when the speaker compares the elm tree to a woman who knows the hidden truths through personal experience. Keeping the tree in the center, the speaker confesses that she has experienced a huge loss in love when she says she knows the roots and the bottom. She compares love to an elm tree filled with a sea of dissatisfaction and a maddening sense of nothingness. Also, she describes love as a shadow and irretrievable as the sound of a horse running away. As the poem moves forward, the writer compares the loss of love to the gravitation power of the moon and the scene of the sunset. She says that this great loss wreaks havoc not only in the victim’s life but also on those who are closely related to it. Although love has departed from her life, the bird inside her heart still cries for love. However, by this time, the speaker understands that it is her lost love that causes her unbearable depression.
• Major Themes in “Elm”: Loss, sorrow, depression, and man versus nature are the major themes of the poem. This poem paints the sorrow and depression caused by love. The speaker of the poem is the victim of lost love. The writer uses haunting words and vivid imagery to convey a sense of instability and self-deprecating. She personifies a tree to paint a surreal scene. The tree speaks about its life, its haunting experiences, and its suffering. It also addresses the speaker’s expertise on the subjects of sorrow, depression, and fear. It is interesting that the speaker and the elm share a common psychological identity, with their two ideas sounding one. Throughout the poem, the speaker seems to be in a tumultuous state of mind. She is having bad dreams and seems to have experienced bouts of depression and madness. The painful condition of the speaker sheds light on the transience nature of love. The poem shows how love’s departure leaves horrific impacts on one’s life.

Analysis of Literary Devices Used in Elm

Sylvia Plath used various literary devices to enhance the intended impact of his poem. Some of the major literary devices are analyzed below.

1. Assonance: Assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds in the same line, such as the sound of /e/ in “Listen: these are its hooves: it has gone off, like a horse” and the sound of /o/ in “I know the bottom, she says. I know it with my great tap root.”
2. Consonance: Consonance is the repetition of consonant sounds in the same line, such as the sound of /t/ in “And this is the fruit of it: tin-white, like arsenic” and the sound of /r/ in “My red filaments burn and stand, a hand of wires.”
3. Enjambment: It is defined as a thought in verse that does not come to an end at a line break; rather, it rolls over to the next line. For example,

“Its snaky acids hiss.
It petrifies the will. These are the isolate, slow faults
That kill, that kill, that kill.”

4. Irony: Irony is a figure of speech in which words are used in such a way that their intended meaning is different from the actual meaning of the words. This is an ironic poem that speaks about intense emotions an ironic way.
5. Imagery: Imagery is used to make readers perceive things involving their five senses. Sylvia Plath has used imagery in this poem, such as “My red filaments burn and stand, a hand of wires”, “Now I break up in pieces that fly about like clubs” and “The moon, also, is merciless: she would drag me.”
6. Metaphor: It is a figure of speech in which an implied comparison is made between objects different in nature. The poem uses sadness as an extended metaphor to show how it eats one’s peace of mind.
7. Rhetorical Question: Rhetorical question is not asked to receive an answer; it is just posed to make the point clear. Sylvia Plath has posed rhetorical questions at many places in the poem to emphasize her point, such as, “Are those the faces of love, those pale irretrievables?” and “So murderous in its strangle of branches?”
8. Symbolism: Symbolism is using symbols to signify ideas and qualities, giving them symbolic meanings that are different from the literal meanings. The poem uses symbols such as; madness, sadness, depression, and love.

Analysis of Poetic Devices Used in Elm

Poetic and literary devices are the same, but a few are used only in poetry. Here is an analysis of some of the poetic devices used in this poem.

1. Diction: The poem shows descriptive diction having rhetorical devices, symbolism, and impressive images.
2. Free Verse: Free verse is a type of poetry that does not contain patterns of rhyme or meter. This is a free verse poem with no strict rhyme or meter.
3. Tercet: A tercet is a three-lined stanza borrowed from Biblical Hebrew poetry. Here, each stanza is tercet

Quotes to be Used

The lines stated below are useful when explaining the transience of love.

“Love is a shadow.
How you lie and cry after it
Listen: these are its hooves: it has gone off, like a horse.”