"Metaphors"

Sonnet:

A poem that consists of 14 lines, 

commonly 3 quatrains finished with a 

couplet when in English form.

Metaphor:

Something used to represent something else that it isn't, 

but might share a slight resemblance to.

First of all, I wouldn't call "Metaphors" by Sylvia Plath a sonnet because it is only 9 lines long, and sonnets are supposed to have 14 lines. Also, sonnets typically have 10 syllables in each lines, while this poem has 9 in each.

I tried counting how many metaphors were in this poem, and that proved to be quite the difficult task! I ended up settling on 15 metaphors, though considering what each individual person will call a metaphor, there could be as few as 7.

I went along and chose a metaphor to think through, and the one I selected was:

"This loaf's big with its yeasty rising."

I think the two things that are being compared in this metaphor are the speaker and a baking loaf of bread. The speaker is talking about how she is growing, most likely in the sense that she is pregnant. It's like when someone says they have a bun in the oven. It's exactly the same thing, just with different wording! The big rising loaf in the oven is the baby growing inside the stomach of the speaker.

This is a metaphor because while she calls it a loaf of bread, it's actually a baby.