The Colossus (Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Sylvia Plath
- First Published: 1960
- Type of Work: Lyric
- Genres: Free verse, Poetry, Lyric poetry
- Subjects: Parents and children, Folkloric or magical people, Suicide, Poetry or poets, Fathers, Death or dying, Symbolism, Gods or goddesses, Depression, mental, Life and death, Giants, Greece or Greek people, Rome, Statues
The Poem
“The Colossus” is a fairly short poem in free verse, with six stanzas of five lines each. The title of the poem, which also serves at the title of Sylvia Plath’s first collection of poetry, suggests both the classical world in which huge statues or monuments were constructed (for example, the Colossus of Rhodes, an ancient wonder of the world) and the enormity of the subject for the writer.
The poem is written in the first person, but the speaker of the poem does not place herself in a recognizably contemporary world; instead, she chooses a strange...
[The entire page is 1585 words long]
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