- set you goingphraseChapter 1 →
Started you moving or functioning, the way you wind up a mechanical device and release it. Here it means the act of love caused the baby to begin existing and living.
“Love set you going like a fat gold watch.”
- midwifenounChapter 1 →
A trained person, usually a woman, who assists during childbirth. In the poem she delivers the slap that starts the newborn breathing.
- dumbadjectiveChapter 1 →
Struck silent, unable to speak — not stupid. The parents are rendered speechless by the strangeness of the birth moment.
- bluntadjectiveChapter 1 →
Emotionally dulled or numbed, without sharp feeling. The speaker uses it to describe the parents' unexpected detachment at their child's birth.
- distilsverbChapter 1 →
Slowly produces or condenses something drop by drop, the way moisture gathers from a cloud. Here the cloud gradually forms a mirror-like surface of water below it.
“Than the cloud that distils a mirror to reflect its own slow / Effacement at the wind's hand.”
- EffacementnounChapter 1 →
The gradual wiping out or erasure of something until it disappears. The cloud is slowly erased by the wind, just as the speaker feels her own identity fading.
“Than the cloud that distils a mirror to reflect its own slow / Effacement at the wind's hand.”
- draftyadjectiveChapter 1 →
Full of cold currents of air coming through gaps or openings. It describes the museum-like chill and impersonal atmosphere surrounding the baby.
- vigilnounChapter 1 →
A period of staying awake through the night to watch over someone. Here it refers to the mother's nightly wakefulness listening for her infant's cry.
- vowelsnounChapter 1 →
The open, resonant sounds (like a, e, i, o, u) produced by the human voice without blocking the breath. Plath uses them to suggest the baby's first pure, open-mouthed cries.
“The clear vowels rise like balloons.”
Morning SongShort story by Sylvia Plath