Faun:A Semantical Dissection
...ooh goody,I like to interpret poems.
MECHANICS: Faun is a well crafted, maybe even brilliantly, crafted poem. The poem is vocally pleasing. The use of thirty-seven "o's" in eighty-nine words bring about a uniting flow to the lyrics. This occurrence of "o's" is about three times normal usage. But better still, Path's use of seven "double o's",(about ten times normal usage)gives the readers the impression that the owl eyes described in the text are looking up from the page to us. (Subliminally, of course.) Intergraded with this stunt is a remarkable talent for painting a mood and a landscape with only a modicum of words.
STORYLINE: The episode that gave birth to this poem is real rather than allusive; A woman awaits the return of her husband who is very late in returning home. She hears a cry emanating from the swamp by the river. She walks to a stand of barren trees and watches his approach. He is drunk. He falls and fills the stark woodland with a drunken scream. After a moment he gets up, now steady, and walks toward the cabin. The woman turns and walks back to the cabin. She is sad. She knows that the man, the drunkard, the adulterer, will soon walk through the cabin door, glib in manner, mitigating her concerns with charm and flirtatious wit. And the morning will begin another day...
COMMENT: The once obligatory and now simply bothersome literary allusions to classical Greek and Roman mythology almost ruined a great poem, but didn't. I never liked Sylvia Plath. I never forgave her for her posthumous embrace of radical feminism. I've changed my mind.
