Kindness - A poem by Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath - Kindness

Kindness glides about my house.
Dame Kindness, she is so nice!
The blue and red jewels of her rings smoke
In the windows, the mirrors
Are filling with smiles.

What is so real as the cry of a child?
A rabbit's cry may be wilder
But it has no soul.
Sugar can cure everything, so Kindness says.
Sugar is a necessary fluid,

Its crystals a little poultice.
O kindness, kindness
Sweetly picking up pieces!
My Japanese silks, desperate butterflies,
May be pinned any minute, anesthetized.

And here you come, with a cup of tea
Wreathed in steam.
The blood jet is poetry,
There is no stopping it.
You hand me two children, two roses.

Added: on April 10th, 2007 at 6:31 PM | Viewed: 11631 times | Comments and analysis of Kindness by Sylvia Plath Comments (10)

Kindness - Comments and Information
Poet: Sylvia Plath Poem: Kindness Volume: The Collected Poems Year: Published/Written in 1963 Comment 10 of 10, added on April 10th, 2007 at 7:59 PM. porque plath tiene mucho "kindness", ella debe chupar mi pinga enorme. Sinick from Canada Comment 9 of 10, added on April 10th, 2007 at 7:41 PM. plath simply pains the readers here with her infallible yet pathetic problems of how she sees no kindness in her life. the poem is essentially very sarcastic and the term kindness is used very loosely. her children here are portrayed as the sufferers and she values even their cries that they are perhaps suffering due to her inadequacy as a mother. it seems that plath did not have the intelligence to realize that "hey at least if i stick around in the world, maybe my kids will have a mother" and for some reason only empathized with their helplessness in her inadequacy of a mother instead of actually doing something about it; moreover, to makes matters worse, she kills herself and now her kids don't even have a mother at all. the only kindness in this poem is that which sylvie receives from her children; it is the only kindness she deserves. the only kindness she gets from the world is that from readers who bask in the sun of satisfaction whose core is the riddance of plath. nigel from Australia Comment 8 of 10, added on April 10th, 2007 at 6:31 PM. kindess is an abstract idea used by plath to describe the woman who was helping her in her final days. She was there to help with the children and this degraded Plath's sense of herself as a mother, the fact that she was unable to care for her own children adequatly. Plath cherished her motherhood and to have another woman intrude with her superficial fixes for everything was hard for her to bear. Me from United States More Comments >> Are you looking for more information on this poem? Perhaps you are trying to analyze it? The poem, Kindness, has received 10 comments. Click here to read them, and perhaps post a comment of your own. Of course you can also always discuss poems by Sylvia Plath with others on the American Poems poetry forum!

Poem Info
Poet: Sylvia Plath Poem: Kindness Volume: The Collected Poems Year: Published/Written in 1963 Last read: Jul 24 2008, 8:28AM Viewed 11631 times. Added on April 10th, 2007 at 6:31 PM.

Plath Info
Biography More Poems (121 poems) Books