The Arrival of the Bee Box by Sylvia Plath
The Arrival of the Bee Box by Sylvia Plath

The Arrival of the Bee Box

Sylvia Plath * Track #28 On Ariel

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The Arrival of the Bee Box by Sylvia Plath

Performed by
Sylvia Plath
About

Two major themes inform the ‘Bee Poems’. Plath had an interest in the Greek philosopher, Plato, who records Socrates teaching that poetry emanates from ‘honey-springs’ (honey being the food of the gods), and that the best poems are written by ‘divine dispensation’, so the poet produces poetry throug...

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The Arrival of the Bee Box Annotated

I ordered this, this clean wood box
Square as a chair and almost too heavy to lift.
I would say it was the coffin of a midget
Or a square baby
Were there not such a din in it.

The box is locked, it is dangerous.
I have to live with it overnight
And I can't keep away from it.
There are no windows, so I can't see what is in there.
There is only a little grid, no exit.

I put my eye to the grid.
It is dark, dark,
With the swarmy feeling of African hands
Minute and shrunk for export,
Black on black, angrily clambering.

How can I let them out?
It is the noise that appalls me most of all,
The unintelligible syllables.
It is like a Roman mob,
Small, taken one by one, but my god, together!

I lay my ear to furious Latin.
I am not a Caesar.
I have simply ordered a box of maniacs.
They can be sent back.
They can die, I need feed them nothing, I am the owner.

I wonder how hungry they are.
I wonder if they would forget me
If I just undid the locks and stood back and turned into a tree.
There is the laburnum, its blond colonnades,
And the petticoats of the cherry.

They might ignore me immediately
In my moon suit and funeral veil.
I am no source of honey
So why should they turn on me?
Tomorrow I will be sweet God, I will set them free.

The box is only temporary.

The Arrival of the Bee Box Q&A

What are the examples of Onomatopoeia?

Plath uses imagery and description to help us imagine the sound of the bees, but there aren’t really any examples of onomatopoeia in this poem.

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