The following version of this poem was used to create this guide. Plath, Sylvia. “The Moon and the Yew Tree.” The Collected Poems. HarperPerennial Modern Classics, 2018.

Note that all parenthetical citations within the guide refer to the lines of the poem from which the quotations are taken.

“The Moon and the Yew Tree” is a poem in twenty-eight lines and four stanzas. In the first stanza the inner world of the human mind is described figuratively. In the second stanza the speaker describes the moon and its mysterious effect on humanity. By the third stanza the author has extended her rumination on the moon and its relation to the yew tree. In the fourth and final stanza of the poem the exterior world of the moon and the yew tree is contrasted with the ceremonies happening in a church.

Throughout the verse the speaker communicates in a confessional tone. The nature of the confession is rooted in self-observation and contemplation of the moon and the natural world. In these elements the speaker locates an animating force at odds with the spiritual world of the Abrahamic religious traditions. The speaker grapples with this discord through the imagination of her own death.