The Colossus

Reading Plath's poem 'The Colossus' was an interesting experience- it was one of those poems that, upon reading for the first time, I couldn't tell what exactly it meant but I knew that I enjoyed it.  The first line really draws me in, gives me this pleasurable discontent that is so hard to explain- "I shall never get you put together entirely."

Even after I've read the poem several times, I just can't decide what it is that she's trying to put back together. In class, we threw around several ideas- the patriarchal poetic tradition, her own work, her marriage, even, but none of them really seemed to fit. It seems the Colossus itself is to me a sum of shards that I just can't piece together- but I suppose out of the possibilities I've entertained, the closest that comes to working and the one that breeds the most interesting questions is that this monster represents the poetic tradition that Sylvia Plath tried to fit herself into. 

Perhaps you consider yourself an oracle,
Mouthpiece of the dead, or of some god or other.
Thirty years now I have labored
To dredge the silt from your throat.
I am none the wiser.

This is my favourite stanza- especially if we're taking the Colossus to be the poetic tradition that she is trying to squeeze herself into. This crumbled monster still speaks from its place in the sand, and Plath has spent her entire life writing, reading, and trying to make something other than silt come out of its throat.

I still don't really think that this Colossus = White Man Poet tactic is exactly what she's going with in this poem, but then again I don't really know what she's going with at all.