“Elm” is a poem by Sylvia Plath, dated 19 April 1962, first appearing in the collection Ariel published by Faber & Faber in 1965, and by Harper & Row in 1966.Barnard, 1978 pp. 121-128: Selected bibliography
Background
The poem was written while Plath lived in Devon, England, on April 19, 1962.
“Elm” was inspired by an enormous wych-elm that shaded the Devon house, “growing on a shoulder of a moated prehistoric mound.”Plath, 1981 p. 292: Notes: 1962, quote from editor Ted Hughes The poem is dedicated to Ruth Fainlight, a friend of Plath's who had suffered a miscarriage at that time. "It is your poem", she said in a letter to her friend. The painful experience brought back memories of Plath's own miscarriage the previous year, in 1961. In another letter, Plath wrote to Fainlight that she deeply identified with her because "I know how you feel", which is reminiscent of the first stanza of the poem ("I know the bottom, she says").
Theme “Elm” marks the beginning of the final phase of Plath's creative output before her death in February 1963. This poem, and the ones that followed, were written with an urgency that diverged from her formerly deliberate and measured crafting of each work.Bernard, 1978 p. 74Hughes, 1970 p. 192: “The powers that compelled her to write so slowly had always been stronger than she was.” Biographer Caroliine King Barnard writes:
Bernard adds: “All of the poems Plath wrote in the last year of her life were composed in this way.” She offers a selection of verses from the last five stanzas of “Elm” to illustrate the “unmitigated conflict” conveyed in the work.Barnard, 1978 p. 87
I am inhabited by a cry. Nightly it flaps out Looking, with its hooks, for something to love
I am terrified by this dark thing That sleeps in me ……………………………………..
What is this, this face So murderous in its strangle of branches —?
Its snaky acids kiss. It petrifies the will. These are the isolate, slow fruits That kill, that kill, that kill.Bernard, 1978 p. 87Plath, 1981 p. 192-193
Bernard observes that “there is no letting up...no release whatever. The poet is indeed inhabited by her cry; her nightmare is real, and reality is the nightmare.”
Footnotes
Sources Barnard, Caroline King. 1978. Sylvia Plath. Twayne Publishers, G. K. Hall & Co., Boston, Massachusetts. Plath, Sylvia. 1981. Sylvia Plath: The Collected Poems. Editor, Ted Hughes. Harper & Row Publishers, New York.