Has anyone heard of the poem, "To a Jilted Lover" by Sylvia Plath. Can anyone help me analyze the main ideas?

Question

Here's the poem

To a Jilted Lover

Cold on my narrow cot I lie

and in sorrow look

through my window-square of black:

figured in the midnight sky,

a mosaic of stars

diagrams the falling years,

while from the moon, my lover's eye

chills me to death

with radiance of his frozen faith.

Once I wounded him with so

small a thorn

I never thought his flesh would burn

or that the heat within would grow

until he stood

incandescent as a god;

now there is nowhere I can go

to hide from him:

moon and sun reflect his flame.

In the morning all shall be

the same again:

stars pale before the angry dawn;

the gilded c**k will turn for me

the rack of time

until the peak of noon has come

and by that glare, my love will see

how I am still

blazing in my golden h**l.

Answer 1

She has obviously been left heartbroken by her man. It's not clear if they have broken up yet. The images of hot and cold, pain, and morning and night are used a lot throughout. Maybe he was the kind of lover who was always back and forth with her, he was good and then would turn like day turns to night and become a shadow of the man she knew. Stanzas 6 and 7 highlight the unpredictability of their relationship, she's clearly saying that they will have a blowup and then in the morning it would be as if nothing happened. He's her sun, he's warm and inviting but he also burns her to the point where she feels like she's in h**l.

I hope I helped, but the funny thing about poetry and literature, there is no one definitive interpretation and what i say is not always true and you can't ever really be wrong, as long as you can back up your claims with evidence then you're golden.

Answer 2

She is looking out the window at night (window square of black) and what she sees only reflects her inward gloom: the stars, the moon.

She herself is responsible for his leaving. (I wounded him). But her tiny slight grew out of proportion, so that he grew in her eyes (incandescent as a god.)

Even morning will not give her relief.

The gilded c**k is a double entendre: referring to his male member, as well as perhaps a sundial ornament.

"The peak of noon has come" is o****m, but for her it brings no relief; she is in a blazing h**l. IMO she is remembering their most passionate moments together. Poetry can be suggestive of interpretations without having a single, "means this, doesn't mean that" logic.

I hope you're old enough for this stuff! And BTW, I've never read SP, so I'm just winging my interpretation.