Mushrooms Poetry Analysis
A quiet revolution: perhaps oxymoronic sounding upon first glance. However, this poem paints a picture of a story about exactly that, doing so through a subtle metaphor and simple but powerful visual imagery. Though a poem about the oppression of a group of people, it does not tell a story of despair. Quite the opposite, speaking instead of an uprising of a different sort, of hope as modest as mushrooms themselves.
Mushrooms may seem at first like a very peculiar thing to base an entire poem around. However, the author leaves many hints throughout the stanzas that this may be about more than a bunch of timid fungi. The first hint of this is in the second stanza: “our toes, our noses / take hold on the loam / acquire …show more content…
Looking on Sylvia Plath’s history and tendencies to write poems about the struggles of women of her age, women were likely the intended demographic. This poem is vague enough in its language, however, to apply to just about any group of ostracized individuals. Plath incorporates this message of silent oppression without being pushy or whiny, which is one of this poem’s greatest strength. The mushroom metaphor is strung through out of the poem as well, and is utilized to better convey the main themes. As, like timid mushrooms growing ‘whitely, discreetly / very discreetly,” the group being oppressed in question go largely unnoticed, having stories yet untold. They “aquire the air,” having been suffocated until they were able to surface at night. They would “diet on water / on crumbs of shadow,” which paints a clear image of the conditions these mushrooms have had to live under, adapting to poor circumstances which easily brings to mind stories of people who has lived in similar situations. And even as these fungi begin to up rise, even as their kind multiplies, no one notices. No one would suspect simple mushrooms to rise up against anyone else. As to many, “we are shelves / we are tables, we are meek / we are edible.” But in spite of those who believed that they would never amount to anything, “we shall by morning inherit the earth.” Mushrooms grow quickly, even if unnoticed. And that’s perhaps just how they like
A quiet revolution: perhaps oxymoronic sounding upon first glance. However, this poem paints a picture of a story about exactly that, doing so through a subtle metaphor and simple but powerful visual imagery. Though a poem about the oppression of a group of people, it does not tell a story of despair. Quite the opposite, speaking instead of an uprising of a different sort, of hope as modest as mushrooms themselves.
Mushrooms may seem at first like a very peculiar thing to base an entire poem around. However, the author leaves many hints throughout the stanzas that this may be about more than a bunch of timid fungi. The first hint of this is in the second stanza: “our toes, our noses / take hold on the loam / acquire …show more content…
Looking on Sylvia Plath’s history and tendencies to write poems about the struggles of women of her age, women were likely the intended demographic. This poem is vague enough in its language, however, to apply to just about any group of ostracized individuals. Plath incorporates this message of silent oppression without being pushy or whiny, which is one of this poem’s greatest strength. The mushroom metaphor is strung through out of the poem as well, and is utilized to better convey the main themes. As, like timid mushrooms growing ‘whitely, discreetly / very discreetly,” the group being oppressed in question go largely unnoticed, having stories yet untold. They “aquire the air,” having been suffocated until they were able to surface at night. They would “diet on water / on crumbs of shadow,” which paints a clear image of the conditions these mushrooms have had to live under, adapting to poor circumstances which easily brings to mind stories of people who has lived in similar situations. And even as these fungi begin to up rise, even as their kind multiplies, no one notices. No one would suspect simple mushrooms to rise up against anyone else. As to many, “we are shelves / we are tables, we are meek / we are edible.” But in spite of those who believed that they would never amount to anything, “we shall by morning inherit the earth.” Mushrooms grow quickly, even if unnoticed. And that’s perhaps just how they like