Maia

__Analysis of "Said the Poet to the Analyst"__

The poem "Said the Poet to the Analyst" by Anne Sexton is exactly what the title makes it out to be. The analyst and poet are discussing, mainly about the poet's poetry and the analyst's interpretation. The speaker of the poem is the poet, and she adresses the reader as if the reader were the analyst. Sexton coveys the discussion between the poet and the analyst through similes and powerful words with double meanings that really make you think long and hard about what analyzing a poem really does.

"Said the Poet to the Analyst" is written in a conversational manner since the speaker is addressing the reader directly. There are very few unknown or ambiguous words, which make the poem easy to read and comprehend. The rhyme scheme of the poem is ABABCDC, with the first two lines of each stanza not rhyming. The syllables in the lines don't match up or form a pattern in any way, even though the number of syllables are close. The last line of each stanza is only three words long, and each stanza is nine lines, which give the poem some sense of pattern and order. Overall, the poem has a free verse feel to it.

"My business is words. Words are like labels / or coins, or better, like swarming bees" is how the first stanza of the poem starts out. The first stanza is the speaker presenting her job as a poet through expressive similes. The poet goes on to explain how she chooses which words to speak through an extended simile with bees. She describes words as dead bees that are "unbuckled from their yellow eyes and their dry wings" to express how important words can be. In the case of the bees, the words that the poet takes are their souls. The next few lines

I must always forget who one words is able to pick out another, to manner another, until I have got something I might have said... but did not (lines 6-9)

demonstrate how the poet picks the words in such a random way that it is as if the words are choosing her. This also shows how powerful the words are since they decide if they want to be used by the poet or not, instead of the other way around. The ending result is the last two lines of the stanza, "something I might have said.../ but did not" which shows how the poet comes up with something beautiful that she might've been able to come up with, but actually did not. It was the words who came up with her poem, not herself.

The next stanza of the poem is the poet describing the analyst's job, which is basically to find deeper meaning in the poet's work. However, the poet states that it is impossible for the analyst to fully understand what the poet means in her poems because the analyst didn't write the poem and didn't know what was going on in the poet's head when she wrote it. Just because the poet "admits nothing" doesn't mean the analyst can understand the poem's true meaning and message. That, only the poet knows.

The poet demonstrates how the analyst can interpret her poem differently from how she wrote it with a crude example of a win at gambling as the plot of a poem. The poet gives her side of the poem, describing how she felt when she hit the lucky jackpot. Then, when the analyst interprets the poem in a different way, the tone of the example poem changes completely. At first, there was joy and happiness at winning the jackpot. With the analysts' analysis, however, the tone turns depressed and longing with the lines

then I grow weak, remembering how my hands felt funny and ridiculous and crowded with all the believing money (lines 16-18)

Because of the way the analyst understood the poem, the entire meaning and feeling of the poem changes. The words stay the same, but everything else changes. Besides being powerful, this shows how diverse words can be. Words can hold multiple meanings and interpretations in them, causing people to understand one poem in many varying ways. This is the poet's argument for why people shouldn't analyze her. Since there is much room for interpretation even in a single word, it is very unlikely that anyone will actually read and understand the poem as the poet intended for it to be.

I notice that Sexton appears to be using "Said the Poet to the Analyst" to make a statement. She is the poet in the poem, and is telling us, the analysts, not to analyze her. This makes my analysis of this poem quite odd, since Sexton is implying through the poet in her poem that people should not analyze her because they'll never understand what she is really trying to say in her poetry. Perhaps this poem does not really have a deeper meaning then, since it is so straightforward. Perhaps "Said the Poet to the Analyst" is simply a statement poem, a poem that is telling the readers something clear straight from the author rather than something to interpret. Yet, as Sexton has pointed out in her poem, how can we be sure our interpretation of a poem is correct? Only the poet understands what the poet has written. Then, if only the poet can interpret their own poetry, what does that mean for all our analysis's? Are they all wrong? Only Sexton knows.