WEATHER TALK

With all the rain we have had this fall, the mushrooms have been popping up all over the place. They are interesting to observe, coming up so fast and growing so rapidly. Sylvie Plath wrote a poem about them that we used to study when I taught eighth grade literature, amd I don't see a mushroom now that I don't think of that interesting little piece.

Mainly, the poem was about something that arose overnight and spread rapidly until it took over the world. And like all poetry, the mushrooms (which are not mentioned in the poem, only in the title) obviously symbolize something else. I had the bright idea that since the poet eventually committed suicide (why did so many writers do that?) that the mushrooms stood for depression.

Recently, I went online to read the poem again and read other folks' interpretaions. There were many.

One was that they stood for the women's liberation movement because Plath was a feminist. Another idea was that because she was pregnant at the time she wrote the poem to describe how that experience felt. That's a unique way to describe a new life growing inside of a mother!

The most unusual theory was that the mushrooms represented communism or maybe even China, which was the big enemy in the 60s when the poem was composed. Others thought that maybe it was war.

Not one mentioned depression. But I'm sticking to my belief anyway.

That's a nice aspect of poetry: Readers can interpret it any way they want!