Explication of Metaphors by Sylvia Plath

     Chapter five's topic revolves around all different types of figurative language. This includes similes, metaphors, and how poetry's language is almost always figurative, not literal. The poem Metaphors by Sylvia Plath begins with the line, "I'm a riddle in nine syllables" and the rest of the poem stays true to the word "riddle" as it was a list of what I  first thought were irrelevant metaphors. Plath names off all sorts of things that I believed had no meaning such as, "an elephant, a ponderous horse", "this loaf's big with it's yeasty rising", and "O red fruit, ivory, fine timbers!" However, when I googled this poem, I discovered some interesting analyses. There are nine lines in the poem, each line containing nine syllables, to represent the nine months of pregnancy. After I discovered this, the poem began to make much more sense to me. Plath is using what seems to be unrelated metaphors, to describe her experience as a pregnant woman, making these metaphors suddenly make sense.
     The line about the melon and two tendrils creates the image in the reader's mind of a woman with a large, round belly, far along in her pregnancy, with two little legs sticking out. When she talks about a loaf growing bigger with it's yeasty rising, this could come to symbolize a child, growing in the womb, becoming bigger and bigger each day, almost like how a piece of bread dough expands with the presence of yeast. Plath's last line is "Boarded the train there's no getting off". I think she has finally come to the realization that pregnancy leads to parenthood, and that's a journey that there is no escaping from. Usually, pregnancy is discussed in a light that is glamorous, beautiful, and rewarding, but this is not how pregnancy is discussed by Sylvia Plath. She describes her experience as something she takes with a grain of salt, and not favorably but acceptably.