Part III, Chapter 18: "The Colossus" by Sylvia Plath

The speaker of this poem compares her father, who has passed away, to a statue.
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. bray
    a cry of or similar to that of a donkey
    Mule- bray, pig-grunt and bawdy cackles
    Proceed from your great lips.
  2. bawdy
    humorously vulgar
    Mule-bray, pig-grunt and bawdy cackles
    Proceed from your great lips.
  3. oracle
    an authoritative person who divines the future
    Perhaps you consider yourself an oracle,
    Mouthpiece of the dead, or of some god or other.
  4. dredge
    remove with or as with a power shovel
    Thirty years now I have labored
    To dredge the silt from your throat.
  5. silt
    mud or clay or small rocks deposited by a river or lake
    Thirty years now I have labored
    To dredge the silt from your throat.
  6. pithy
    concise and full of meaning
    O father, all by yourself
    You are pithy and historical as the Roman Forum.
  7. flute
    form grooves or furrows in
    Your fluted bones and acanthine hair are littered
  8. anarchy
    a state of lawlessness and disorder
    In their old anarchy to the horizon-line.
  9. cornucopia
    a horn filled with fruit and grain symbolizing prosperity
    Nights, I squat in the cornucopia
    Of your left ear, out of the wind,
  10. keel
    one of the main longitudinal beams of the hull of a vessel
    No longer do I listen for the scrape of a keel
    On the blank stones of the landing.
Created on Mon Jun 07 14:16:27 EDT 2021 (updated Mon Jun 07 14:26:04 EDT 2021)

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