Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

The poem "Pheasant" by Sylvia Plath is an intricate meditation on the balance between ownership and freedom, humanity and nature. Plath begins the poem with a stark entreaty: "You said you would kill it this morning. / Do not kill it." This immediate sense of conflict between human intervention and the natural world provides a tension that unfolds throughout the piece.

The pheasant becomes a symbol of life that refuses to be tamed or defined. Its odd appearance, "The jut of that odd, dark head," startles the speaker, but this is precisely what she values. The bird doesn't fit neatly into human-made landscapes; it is an alien presence in the "uncut grass," and it is this out-of-place-ness that bestows upon it a "kingliness, a right."

Ownership and the human desire for possession are scrutinized through the speaker's pondering: "It is something to own a pheasant, / Or just to be visited at all." Plath suggests that the mere encounter with this wild creature grants a certain privilege; ownership, in this context, would only tarnish the experience. Importantly, the speaker clarifies, "I am not mystical: it isn't / As if I thought it had a spirit." She sees the bird not as a magical creature but as a living being fully "in its element," and that alone imbues it with a certain majesty.

The bird's footprints left "on the snow in our court" last winter become another object of reflection. These prints are a testimony to the pheasant's existence, its crossing into human territory. The "crosshatch of sparrow and starling" signifies other, more common birds, against which the pheasant's rarity stands out: "Is it its rareness, then? It is rare." But it's not just its rarity that makes it remarkable; it is its mere existence and its interaction with the human realm without being consumed by it.

The poem moves toward its climax as the speaker imagines a whole host of pheasants on the hill, "green and red, / Crossing and recrossing: a fine thing!" This scene of abundance contradicts the earlier idea that the bird's value lies in its rarity. Plath seems to argue that beauty and worth aren't restricted to things that are rare or owned; they can also reside in the everyday or the plentiful, as long as they remain "in their element."

The poem closes with the speaker's acknowledgment of her own trespass into the pheasant's world: "It was sunning in the narcissi. / I trespass stupidly. Let be, let be." The final lines suggest a newfound awareness, a plea to allow the bird its autonomy and freedom. The phrase "Let be" serves as an ethical injunction for both the speaker and the reader, urging a respectful coexistence with the natural world.

In "Pheasant," Sylvia Plath addresses intricate ethical and existential themes through the lens of a simple, yet charged, encounter. It prompts us to consider our place in the world and questions our often exploitative relationship with nature, asking us to see, admire, and "let be."

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