Mowery holds a Ph.D. from Southern Illinois University and has written extensively for The Gale Group. In this essay, Mowery examines color and sea imagery in Plath's poem.

The most important aspect of a poet's creative effort is the manipulation of language to create unique images. It is through the clever use of the words that the writer invites the reader to experience routine images in new ways. For Sylvia Plath, the value of imagery "is not its novelty but its accuracy," notes Alicia Ostriker. An image is anything in a poem that calls on the reader to respond using the senses. Images are the sensory content of a work and they may be literal or figurative. The words "red rose" call on the reader to "see" a rose; the rough texture of sandpaper asks the reader to "feel" the gritty surface of the paper; the...