'candles'
Sylvia Sundays v. 2
Welcome to Sylvia Sundays, a series for paid subscribers! Every Sunday, I’m featuring a discussion of a poem by the 20th century poetry Sylvia Plath. While some of the poems are dark and haunting (per her reputation), many of them are tender and deeply moving. All of them have the amazing gift of super-charging the world around us into a place with the potential for magic, awe, delight, terror, and incredible mystery. I hope you contribute your own thoughts in the comments - thank you so much for being here!
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Today I’m featuring a gentle, contemplative poem that I think wonderfully characterizes Plath’s ability to look at everyday objects and find in them a sense of supreme mystery. Her knack for detail, her connections to both past and present, her strange and wonderful metaphors, her deep suspicion of beauty (can this light be trusted?), are all vividly on display in this poem. “Candles” was written in October of 1960 and Plath had a seven-month old daughter. In this poem she is nursing her baby by candlelight.
Here is the poem in full —