Hello. Let us discuss Sylvia Plath and her poems in this lecture. She was born in 1932 and
died at an early age in 1963. We will see the historical and literary context first and then look
into her life briefly. Touch upon the background to her poems we have chosen for this
discussion, Mirror and Daddy. Analyse the poem and then offer our impressions.
(Refer Slide Time: 00:42)

Here is a historical and literary context for understanding Sylvia Plath. The Great Depression
in 1929, the Second World War in 1939 and 1945 actually put people into trouble. Some
Europeans came to the US, and some Americans went to the Europe. That is how this kind of
exchange of people was happening. We have confessional poets like Robert Lowell, Anne
Sexton and Adrienne Rich in these times, they were making waves across the country.
They gave free expression to their self without inhibitions. They focussed on the multifarious
sufferings of body and soul and a shipwrecked image to represent their place in the world.
Plath was married to Ted Hughes, a well-established British poet of the times.
(Refer Slide Time: 01:32)

Sylvia Plath was a poet and also a novelist. She belongs to actually two traditions, both
American and British literature. She was born in the US, but she married the British poet, Ted
Hughes in 1956 and committed suicide in 1963. She had a brief marital life of 7 years. And
this kind of suicide happened for many reasons, and one of them is betrayal. Betrayal is
betrayal from her husband and then her own uncontrollable creativity which led to her
depression and then finally suicide. Actually, she attempted she suicide many times and at
last she succeeded.
We have confessional poetry in the US, and the Alvarez group in the UK. These two groups
actually influenced Sylvia Plath’s poetry. She is a feminist par excellence as we can see from
“Lady Lazarus,” a poem.We have a quotation from this poem,

“Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair

And I eat men like air.”

This is the feminist understanding of Plath that we have in this poem, ‘Lady Lazarus.’ From
this we can understand, Lazarus was a character in the bible and she wrote not about the male
Lazarus but about the Lady Lazarus.
(Refer Slide Time: 02:51)

We have chosen two poems for discussion, one is the “Mirror” and another is “Daddy.”
Mirror was perhaps written in 1961, and published in “Crossing the Water” in 1971, after her
death. It is a free verse poem of two nine-line stanzas, consisting of 18 lines. It is a poem
which reflects on a fractured self, a divided self as we can see in the poem. “Daddy” was
written in 1962, 4 months before her death in 1963. This pre death period was considered to
be an excellent creative period for Plath. This poem is a poem of 16 five-line stanzas with 80
lines in total. It is a reflection on authority as sources of oppression and depression.

(Refer Slide Time: 03:41)

First, let us see the poem, Mirror. We have two stanzas, first we will see the first one, next,
we will see the second stanza. The first stanza is here. It is actually the voice of a mirror,
there is a mirror and the mirror speaks;

“I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
Whatever I see I swallow immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
I am not cruel, only truthful,
The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
Most of the times I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked as it so long
I think it is part of my heart. Bit it flickers.
Faces and darkness separates us over and over”

There is a mirror on the wall and this mirror looks at the opposite wall and in between some
images are seen and this particular poem tells us about this mirror meditating on the opposite
wall. This is a mirror reflection as an image of mental reflection, examination of the self and
also the other.

(Refer Slide Time: 04:52)

Here is the second stanza, now, the mirror assumes another voice. The voice of a lake;

“Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman.
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.”
.............................

First, we saw the mirror, then the mirror turned into a lake and the lake assumes itself,
whereas the woman is presented as an other. So, this mismatch in our normal understanding,
the woman is expected to have this self, but then, the lake assumes the self and the woman
becomes the other for the lake.

(Refer Slide Time: 05:55)

We have some questions which can help us understand the poem much better. Let us look
into these questions and after that, if we read the poem again, we can understa nd the poem
much better. What impression of the speaker do we get from the poem? Here, we have a
speaker, who is that speaker? Mirror and the lake. What does the mirror do? It meditates.
What does the lake do? It receives the woman everyday and reflects her image back to her.
What does the woman do? She looks at the woman and she also look into the lake and she
sees herself, but then she sees the truthful picture of her own life and she finds it brok en,
particularly in the water, when the water moves, she can see her own divided self. What do
we as readers do after reading the poem? It is a big task for us. In confessional poetry, we
have the responsibility of sharing the emotions, experiences of this speaker of the poem that
we read.
How is drowning literally and figuratively linked with Plath’s own life? We can see it pre
figures her own drowning, her own death, that is her own suicide. In her case, she committed
suicide by turning on the gas in the kitchen. This death by drowning or water is a common
phenomenon in the universe. We all float while we are alive and also, after our death. We see
the dead body floating on the water at the end of the poem, rises everyday like a terrible fish.
That’s it.

(Refer Slide Time: 07:31)

We have the thematic contrast between self and other, illness and health, suffering and joy,
life and death, nature and human beings. We also have the contrast between trust and
betrayal, light and darkness, young and old, beauty and ugliness, surface and depth, and at
last, appearance and reality.
What is important for us in this poem is the trust and betrayal within her own life, the trust
she had in her father, the trust she had in her husband, both were betrayed. Her f ather died
early, in the case of the husband, the husband went on to have affair with another woman.
And in her case, she was thinking about her own beauty which probably she was losing as she
had started giving birth to a child. So, this change in her own body, in her appearance might
have led to feel more depressed and then she would have probably committed suicide after
writing so many poems of great poetic worth.

(Refer Slide Time: 08:32)

There are a number of poetic devices in this poem. Alliteration and consonance, we have in
line number 2, I see, I swallow immediately. We have distinguished between the two. We
have underlined “S;” we have highlighted “L.” So, that is how we can see the difference
between alliteration and consonance here. Then, we have assonance in the second line also,
that is I see, I swallow immediately. ‘See,’ ‘me’ these two vowels have similar sound pattern.
Then we have consonance in ‘I am not cruel,’ ‘only truthful.’ Then allusion we have to ‘a
little God,’ perhaps it is a kind of reference to Cupid or it’s a kind of reference to God who is
omniscient, who knows everything.
The mirror may be considered to have some knowledge of everything that happens in the
room so we can say omniscient. But then a little God, we associate with Cupid looking over
human beings and putting them into trouble with love and other things. We have
personification in mirror as meditating. This is an object which does not have any
consciousness, but it meditates, more than a human being it meditates. Then we have
assonance and consonance in, ‘it is part of my heart.’
Then we have metaphor in “but it flickers,” there is a reference to the candle, perhaps some
kind of lamp image we have. Then we have personification in candles and moons as telling
lies, these candles do not give the truthful picture of the human being present in the context.
Moons also, moonlight, will not show the correct picture, that is the authentic picture.That is
why these are used in literature as beautiful. Whereas, the mirror understands that they are
liars.

Then we have metaphor- drowned a young girl and an old woman rises. When she comes to
the lake, she sees herself as a young girl, but then after some thought, she rises as an old
woman. She becomes old or she becomes conscious of the old age within her. Finally, after
this drowning, she rises like a terrible fish.
(Refer Slide Time: 10:45)

Let us see the rhyme, rhythm and meter in this poem. It is actually a free verse and there is no
end rhyme at all. Not even a single rhyming pair between the two stanzas also, perhaps
indicating the clearly broken self of the speaker. Rhyming words normally refer to this kind
of coherence, unity. And here, this poem does not have any, even between stanzas, it does not
have any and so, it refers to the divided self of the speaker.
Then the rhythm, the sentences that we have in this poem are short, declarative sentences and
sometimes, we have the long lines. They indicate the urgent and upset mind of the speaker.
Again, the meter is irregular with strong breaks. Actually, strong stops are there in the middle
of lines and commas at the end of lines. The line lengths vary from 9 syllables to 14 syllables.
They look like 2 perfect stanzas. A tentative tonal grouping we have attempted in the two
lines we have given here;

“Now I am a lake, a woman bends over me,
Searching my reaches for what she really is.”

(Refer Slide Time: 11:56)

Here is the overall impression. The speaker assumes the voice of a mirror and speaks about
its role of truthful reflection of what is around, including the pink and speckled wall opposite,
which it becomes. The mirror changes its shape to that of a lake, again with the property of
reflection. The mirror and the lake, both have the same reflective quality. Now the opposite
wall is a depressed woman who sheds tears and so the lake swells. The water in the lake
increases. The lake reflects the ageing of a young girl into an old woman.
While the mirror is not cruel, the lake turns out to be a murderer of the woman as she drowns
in it. The other can be nurturing or destructive, suggesting the importance of the other, that
significant other like family members, friends, teachers and so on, in the life of human
beings. Particularly the father and the husband in Plath’s life; they were significant others and
they were sources of oppression, depression for Plath.

(Refer Slide Time: 12:59)

We have the next poem, “Daddy.” It is a long poem; we will have only short extracts f rom
this poem. Now let us see the first extract from stanzas 1 and 2. ‘Daddy’ is an informal term
and the poem is all informal, very personal for Sylvia Plath.
“You do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot
For thirty years, poor and white,
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo. 5

Daddy, I have had to kill you.

You died before I had time-
Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,

Ghastly statue with one gray toe
Big as a Frisco seal” 10

Here we have this repetition throughout the poem, this “ooh” sound will be there, it indicates,
some critics have said that, it is more like a nursery rhyme and in the second stanza, in the
first line itself, we see the sense of revenge that is there in the speaker.

(Refer Slide Time: 13:56)

“In the German tongue, in the Polish town
Scrapped flat by the roller
Of wars, wars, wars.
But the name of the town is common.
My Polack friend 20

Says there are a dozen or two.
So I never could tell where you
Put your foot, your root,
I never could talk to you.
The tongue stuck in my jaw.” 25

We have this problem of identity, linguistic identity in the case of Plath. She has German
origin because her father was a German. Her father spoke German language and he also
wanted her to speak in German with him. We have repetition of words like “Wars, wars” and
this war assumes greater proportion in this poem, a personal poem, Daddy. We have this
communication problem which she mentions in one line, “I never could talk to you.”

(Refer Slide Time: 14:51)

Another extract we have here, ‘You stand at the blackboard, daddy,’ actually, Plath’s f ather
was a professor, so, she says,

“You stand at the blackboard, daddy,
In the picture I have of you,
A cleft in your chin instead of your foot
But no less a devil for that, no not
Any less the black man who

Bit my pretty red heart in two.
I was ten when they buried you.
At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do.”

She mentions about her own suicidal tendency after the death of her father at a young age.
So, she wants to reach out to her father, go back to her father, join with her father, probably
indicating some kind of electro complex, which Plath also mentions in one of her notes.

Plath’s father was Professor Otto Plath. She looked at a picture of her father standing in front
of a blackboard that she refers to in this poem.
(Refer Slide Time: 15:52)

Another extract is here,

“If I ‘ve killed one man, I ‘ve killed two-
The vampire who said he was you

And drank my blood for a year,
Seven years, if you want to know.
Daddy, you can lie back now.

There’s a stake in your fat black heart
And the villagers never liked you.
They are dancing and stamping on you.
They always knew it was you.
Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I am through.

That is the last line of the poem, “daddy, daddy, you bastard, I am through.” The sound “U”
is repeated, emphatically repeated, throughout the poem and in some cases, we have this

rhyming- you, you, you, through in the last line, it is very clear. This killing the father, killing
the husband, she achieves poetically, imaginatively at the end of the poem and she feels
relieved after taking the revenge. In the case of the father, he had already died, but in the case
of the husband, he was living and she had marriage of seven years at this time and so she
refers to this seven year. And this poet assumes the image of a vampire slayer, referring to
her father and her husband.
(Refer Slide Time: 17:05)

We have a thematic contrast between father and daughter on the one hand, husband and wif e
on the other hand; Individual and society, human beings and God, victim and victor, revenge
and forgiveness, love and hate, life and death, faith and betrayal. This whole poem is personal
for Plath, she examines the kind of disturbed, conflicting relationship that she had with her
own father and with her husband. And that is why she has written such a poem. After writing
the poem, probably she felt free, relieved and this kind of feeling that is present in human
beings, after reading some people may feel relieved about their own hidden emotions.

(Refer Slide Time: 17:49)

A number of poetic devices are found in this poem as well. We have simile in ‘live like a
foot;’ metaphor in ‘black shoe’ referring to her father. And then, simile, ‘big as a Frisco seal,’
Frisco, here, refers to San Francisco, the sea and the seal that she found when she was a child
in San Francisco. Alliteration and assonance, we have in ‘where it pours bean green over
blue;’ this bean-blue is alliteration; bean “ee” sound refers to assonance. Then we have
metonymy, blue referring to the ‘blue ocean.’
Then we have metaphor in a barb wire snare for German language. This language is a snare, a
trap for the speaker, that is why she says a barb wire snare. Simile we have in ‘chuffing me
off like a Jew.’ This whole poem evokes the image of the Second World War. The number of
Jews being killed in Germany by Hitler and his concentration camps and officers. Some
people were taken by trains to the place of death. Many concentration camps were there. So,
chuffing me off like a Jew, probably some kind of onomatopoeic effect also we can see in
this line.
We have assonance in ‘clear beer of Vienna.’ We can see the sound in clear, beer of Vienna
that is why we have indicated “seeing sound” in brackets. We have alliteration in ‘bright
blue.’ Then allusion in ‘a cleft in your chin instead of your foot.’ A cleft footed person is
considered to be a devil. In this case, Plath’s own father has a cleft in chin. And she says,
‘You may have a cleft in your chin, that does not mean that you can cheat me. I can
understand very well that you are a devil.
Then lastly, we have this allusion ‘a man in black with a Meinkampf face.’ This is a reference
to Hitler and also to Ted Hughes, her Husband who often wore a black coat.

(Refer Slide Time: 19:55)

Now let us come to rhyme, rhythm and meter in this poem. This is a free verse poem of
course; it is unrhymed, but in a stanza form of five 5 lines each with the dominant sound of
“u:” do, shoe, Achoo, blue, two, du, true, gobbledygoo, who, glue, through. And this sound
alone dominates throughout the poem. We have rhythm in the short lines with alliteration,
assonance and repetition of words and phrases indicating a fast-paced rhythm. It is an
outpouring of emotion, anger, revenge from the speaker.
In the case of meter, we have irregular meter with line lengths of 2 syllables to 12 syllables,
from 1 foot to 6 feet. Then we have caesura, enjambment and end-stopped lines. Here, we
have another passage to give an example for caesura, enjambment and end-stopped lines in
this context:

“The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna
Are not very pure or true.
With my gipsy ancestress and my weird luck
And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack
I may be a bit of a Jew.”

There is a kind of a guilty feeling in Plath because she was a Jew, she escaped whereas many
millions of people died and that is also possible interpretation for this poem.

(Refer Slide Time: 21:28)

Here, we have the overall impression. “Daddy” is a confrontational poem of a daughter with
a father, a wife with a husband, an individual with the society, a human being with God and
all sources of authority. The speaker takes a poetic revenge on a dead father and living
husband for their oppression of her, which is presented through the images of ‘a black shoe
and a vampire.’
Invoking the German and Jewish origin of her parents and the black coat used by her
husband, Plath conjures up the holocaust image in the poem to represent the sufferings of
victims of various forms of patriarchal oppression in the world. Not surprisingly, this poem
became an iconic poem of the feminist movement.
(Refer Slide Time: 22:17)

To give a summary of our discussion, we have seen the historical and literary context in
which Sylvia Plath wrote her poems. Belonging to two different traditions, both American
and British, she was able to write confessional poetry and also poetry which belongs to this
Alvarez group in Britain. We looked at 2 poems, one the “Mirror” and the other “Daddy.”
The mirror is more objective whereas Daddy is more personal, more revengeful, more
expressive and these poems have become very popular among the readers. They give
expressions to the feminist understanding of rebellion, resistance against patriarchal
oppression in the world.
(Refer Slide Time: 23:06)

Here are some references which may be of some help to you to understand Plath and her
poem much better. The last reference by Uroff says she is not exactly a confessional poet,
because she uses more of strategies to express herself which are not exactly confessional.
That means, she is not talking about her own self because she imagines many things. Her
father was not a tyrant like she has presented in the poem, the kind of Jewish references that
she had mentioned, they are all imagined.
So, this poem and many other poems written by Plath are not exactly confessional, they are
just expressions of emotions using rhetorical strategies. Thank you!
Hello. We are going to deal with the poetry of P. K. Page from Canada in this lecture. First,
we will see the historical and literary context, then look into the life of Patricia Kathleen Page
often known as P.K. Page, then we will discuss two poems by this poet “The Metal and the
Flower,” “Remembering;” analyse these two poems and then offer our impressions.
(Refer Slide Time: 00:46)

Let us start with the historical and literary context. As you know Canada is a multicultural
country with diverse groups of people from various lands, including Britain and France.
Naturally, Canadian literature is available in different languages, of course, the dominant
literature is in English. When settlers came to Canada and started writing poetry, they
followed the traditional English Victorian poets. We have some examples here W.H.
Drummond, Robert Service and John McCrae, they followed the Victorian tradition. As it
happened in the US and UK, some kind of reaction against the traditional poetry happened.
So, we have modernist poets in Canada who were influenced by Ezra Pound and T.S Eliot.
These poets were known as the Montreal group. We have some examples in A.J.M. Smith,
A.M. Klein, F.R. Scott, Robert Finch and E J Pratt. These poets, together published one
anthology called “Book of Canadian Poetry” in 1943 to represent modernist poets.
We also have a group of modernist women poets who were associated with these men in
different ways. Some examples are Dorothy Livesay, P. K. Page, Margaret Avison, Miriam
Waddington, Anne Marriot and Anne Wilkinson. Our poet P.K. Page belongs to this
modernist women poets’ group. But then over a period of time, every poet matures and takes
different shapes and colours.
(Refer Slide Time: 02:34)

P.K. Page was born in 1916 and she died in 2010. She was an author with multiple identities
in her own name. As a poet she is known as P.K. Page, as a painter, she is known as P. K.
Irwin, Irwin is the surname of her husband and then we have another name, Judith Cape f or
her novels. She wrote a novel with this name, Judith Cape. So, these multiple identities
reflect the multiple identities we have in Canada.

She was born in England, brought to Canada and raised there and then she lived in the world,
in the sense, along with her diplomat husband, she went to different countries- Australia,
Mexico, Guatemala and many other countries, particularly, Brazil. It was in Brazil, she
discovered her painting capabilities. She was born to a military officer as a daughter to be
trained as an independent woman. But later on, she loved a married poet that is F.R. Scott. He
was already married and he was senior to her by many years, more than 15 years.
But then, she was waiting for the marriage to happen with F.R. Scott, it did not happen and
then later on, she married a widowed diplomat, who again, was much senior to her. She
pursued this marriage and career with a difficult balance. She remained in marital life and
also, she was able to become a good poet, a well-known poet. She published many books of
poetry like “As Ten as Twenty” in 1946, “The Metal and the Flower” in 1954, the second
volume won her the Governor General’s Award for her poetry.
Later on, she shifted her temperament sensibilities to other concerns affecting mankind. The
title ‘Planet Earth’ reflects this kind of environmental awareness in her poetry. Throughout
her career, she was involved in many art forms like poetry, painting, drawing, writing essays,
novels and things like that. The poems which are well known are “Stories of Snow,” “After
Rain,” “The Flower and the Metal,” “Deaf Mute in the Pear Tree.”
(Refer Slide Time: 05:01)

First, let us see this poem, The Metal and the Flower. For copyright reasons, we are not able
to have the whole poem here. But you can find this poem in the Poetry Foundation page and
also in the textbook that we have, Norton Anthology of Poetry. We will read some lines,
some selected lines from this short poem,

“Intractable between them grows
a garden of barbed wire and roses
...
Dare they meet, the blackened wire
tears the intervening air.”

We have omitted some lines in between that is why we have used these 3 dots. In the very
first stanza, we have this problem of this unidentified “them.” When we come to the
discussion, we will see that.
(Refer Slide Time: 05:48)

The second stanza, we have here, there is a garden in which trespassers and d ogs can enter
and the people who have built this garden, who have established this garden, we have some
comment on that, in the 3 lines we have,

“While the two who laid it out
find the metal and the flower
fatal underfoot.”

The people who built this garden, they have this metal and the flower which becomes f atal
for them, but trespassers and dogs, they just come in go without much difficulty. That is why
we have this trespassers and dogs in contrast to the owners of this garden.

(Refer Slide Time: 06:30)

Then we have another stanza here with some lines omitted,
“Black and white at midnight glows
this garden of barbed wire and roses 15
...
beneath a rainy moon or none
silver the sheath on barb and thorn.”

(Refer Slide Time: 06:48)

Some kind of shift in tone takes place in the first 2 lines we have here. That is why we have
highlighted them and ask this question- who is the speaker? There is a speaker who narrates
the poem but then when it comes to these 2 lines, we have some shift in tone,
“Change the garden, scale and plan; 20
wall it, make it annual.”

Then, we have a reference to flower and wire throughout the poem, here, also we have it.

“While they sleep the garden grows.
deepest wish annuls the will: 25
perfect still the wire and the rose.”

Who? The question of who remains.
(Refer Slide Time: 07:28)

We have a number of questions. With these questions, if you read the poem, you will be able
to get much better understanding. What does the title indicate? It refers to a metal and flower.
The metal is hard and the flower is soft. So, two opposite qualities are brought into this poem.
What does the “them” in line 1 refer to? That is the question we have, unidentified, we have
to infer. Is the garden out of bounds? For whom? Why? Why does the speaker say “change
the garden?” How does the “wish” contrast with the “will?” Deepest wish, is it something
unconscious desire, welling from the heart? And then, the will which is conscious.

So, the deepest wish, the deepest desire annuls or destroys the conscious, rational thought
process. How is the garden perfect with the wire and the rose? The wire is manmade, rose is
natural. How are they perfect together in the garden? Then, we have this question, how does
the speaker transfer the meaning of the metal and the flower to the wire and the rose at the
end of the poem? And most importantly, what feminist experience or awareness do we find in
this poem on ‘The Metal and the Flower?’
(Refer Slide Time: 08:50)

Perhaps, when we look into the thematic contrast between many opposites given in this
poem, we can get some understanding, get some answers to these questions. The title starts,
‘metal and flower.’ Then throughout the poem, we have this wire and rose or flowers. Metal
and flower, wire and rose, boundary and trespassing, innocence and experience, black and
white, light and darkness, garden and wild: garden is not natural, it is manmade, and the wild
grows on its own. Human beings and plant are nature, man and woman, them and us. The big
question that we have is- what does this “them” refer to? unidentified “them” and “the two” is
also mentioned here. Who are these two? Who are they?

(Refer Slide Time: 09:45)

A number of poetic devices we have in this poem. The metal and the flower appeared to be
symbolic of male and female qualities- hard and soft qualities. We have a simile and
metaphor in these 2 lines,

‘Burning briars like flames devour
their too innocent attire.’

We have this transferred epithet in ‘innocent attire;’ the attire, itself, is not innocent. The
attire worn by the people or this symbolically the briars with flames, that is innocent. That is
why we have contrasted innocence with experience. We have again a simile in,

“Dogs like arrows moved along
pathways that their noses knew.”

Some kind of awareness we have in the roses. The dogs come from outside and the
trespassers come from outside, they do not have any problem, the roses are aware of them.
‘Dogs like arrows moved along pathways that their noses knew.’ We do not have this
problem for dogs, they can get in. We also have another alliteration here, “find the metal and
the flower.” Then we have hyperbaton,

“Black and white at midnight glows
this garden of barbed wire and roses.”

We will have normally a sentence like this,’ this garden of barbed wire and roses, glows
black and white at midnight,’ but we have this disorder in this line. Then, we have this
metaphor, “Doused with darkness roses burn.” Also, it has a simile in the next line, “coolly as
a rainy moon;” one is metaphor, another is simile, doused with darkness. We douse f ire and
here, this doused with darkness roses burn. There is an element of fire in roses. How do we
explain this? Roses are soft, cool, but then how do they burn? And again, we have this ‘rainy
moon,’ this rainy moon may be like transferred epithet. The moon itself is not rainy, rain does
not affect the moon at all. Maybe rain in moonlight, that is a context we may have.
So, many of these poetic devices from symbol to metaphor to simile, they all contribute to
some kind of mysterious awareness in this poem between the metal and the flower.