Summary

The first stanza of the poem figuratively depicts the inner world of the human mind. This landscape is imbued with a murky and celestial ethereality. The first line of the poem introduces this emotive scape: “This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary” (1). Desolation and confusion dominate this depiction, which is riddled with anxiety related to the ambiguous position of the speaker as subject and observer in this realm: “The grasses unload their griefs on my feet as if I were God” (3). The speaker establishes a sense of mystification in this portion of the verse. Sylvia Plath writes cryptically, “Fumy, spiritous mists inhabit this place” (5) and later intones, “I simply cannot see where there is to get to” (7), suggesting that the speaker’s sense of disorientation is not merely ambient but rather a terminal spiritual state.

In the second stanza of the...