In response to brutalities in Stalinist Russia, Mandelstam recommended, ‘The people need poetry that will be their own secret, that will keep them awake for ever, and bathe them in the bright-hired ...
The stanza hits the key points readers may expect of Plath’s poetry, and perhaps a poem more generally. It suggests a sense of despair as the writer struggles with internal demons. “Mess” and “chest” ...