The Full Text of “Cut”
The Full Text of “Cut”
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“Cut” Introduction
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The American poet Sylvia Plath wrote "Cut" in 1962. After suddenly slicing her thumb while chopping an onion, the poem's speaker compares her bloody wound to a series of surreal, disturbing, and darkly comic images. The speaker calls the shocking moment both a "thrill" and a "celebration" and addresses her injured thumb directly, as though it were an independent "little man." "Cut" suggests how trauma (physical or emotional) can alienate someone from their own body and perhaps even from reality itself. The poem can also be read as an intimate portrait of someone whose inner self-loathing has materialized into an act of conscious or unconscious self-harm. The poem was published posthumously in 1965, in Ariel.
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“Cut” Summary
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The speaker proclaims exhilaration at having cut her thumb while chopping an onion. She says that the tip of the thumb is almost entirely removed, although it hangs on by a thin strip of flesh that she compares to a hat.
The white, lifeless skin gives way to the soft crimson of the wound itself.
The speaker addresses her thumb directly, calling it a "pilgrim" who's had their scalp sliced off by an "Indian." Then she likens it to the red, bumpy flesh that hangs from a turkey's neck.
The blood spreads out on the floor like a rug coming directly from the speaker's own heart. The speaker walks on top of this rug while holding tight to a bottle of pink champange (perhaps a metaphor for her bleeding thumb or for some sort of antiseptic).
The speaker says that this incident is a cause for celebration. Blood pours out of her wound like an endless stream of British soldiers in their red uniforms.
She can't decide who these soldiers are fighting for, however. She addresses her cut thumb as her "little man" and then says she's sick. She has taken medication to stop feeling so frail and flimsy.
Next, she accuses her thumb (or possibly herself) of intentionally ruining itself, comparing it to a suicide bomber.
She says that the splatter of blood on the bandage of her thumb—which she likens to the white hoods that members of the Ku Klux Klan wear and then to a headscarf typically worn by a Russian or Polish grandmother—grows darker and rust-colored.
Seemingly addressing herself now, the speaker describes her heart as if it's been beaten into mush and balled up. That heart now has to face its crushing silence.
The speaker notes that an ambiguous "you" (either her heart, her thumb, or herself) is startled (perhaps a reference to the way her heart beats or her wound throbs). She concludes by calling herself and/or her thumb a soldier who has had their head bored into by a surgical instrument, a soiled young woman, and the remaining part of a tree after it has been cut down.
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“Cut” Themes
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Shock, Trauma, and Separation
“Cut” describes a woman's reaction to slicing her thumb while cooking. This experience of literal separation—the severing of “the top” of the “thumb” from the rest of it—leaves the speaker feeling bizarrely detached from, and fascinated by, her own body. Her intensely emotional and imaginative reaction to this “cut” suggests that it's a metaphor for psychological trauma—for some sort of emotional shock and/or separation. Through its figurative language, the poem implies that trauma can leave one feeling detached, disoriented, and alienated from parts of one’s life and even one's own self.
The speaker calls her cut "a thrill" and her bloody thumb “a celebration,” suggesting that she's excited or entertained by this wound. These aren't the feelings that would normally accompany a bad injury, and they suggest the speaker's shock at this unexpected intrusion into a mundane, everyday task (cooking). It's as though this sudden severing prompts her to consider the foreignness of her own body.
Indeed, the speaker's metaphors for her bleeding thumb suggest her growing sense of detachment from that body. For example, she compares her blood to "Redcoats," British soldiers from the American Revolutionary War, "run[ning]” out of her wound. She wonders “Whose side” these soldiers are on, a question implying that her body (including its blood/life force) may no longer be on the same “side” as her mind; one or the other may be experiencing this pain as an irrational "thrill" (and she may even be torn between competing desires to stop the bleeding and live or let it go and die). Through all of this, the speaker calls her injured thumb “you”—again suggesting that she feels a widening gulf between herself and her body.
She goes on to compare her wound to a series of almost cartoonish images: “A flap like a hat,” a “turkey wattle” (the red, loose, bumpy skin on a turkey’s neck), etc. These playful images suggest that the speaker isn’t describing the unpleasant incident literally so much as she is using it as an imaginative jumping-off point. That is, her cut sets her mind spinning, envisioning her thumb as anything but her own thumb.
However outlandish, these images are notably violent, suggesting that the speaker is dealing with underlying feelings of rage or helplessness. For example, she mentions a “pilgrim” whose “scalp” has been “axed” by an "Indian." Because this is a metaphor for her own thumb, which she's cut herself, she may identify with either the attacker or the attacked—or both. Either way, the image suggests that this wound signifies some deeper drama for her. The speaker’s literal “cut,” in other words, might also be a metaphor for emotional separation, shock, and trauma.
The poem doesn’t state what the underlying emotional wound of the speaker might be; instead, it seems to suggest that trauma in general—be it physical or emotional—can leave one feeling completely “cut” off from one’s usual reality. Just as the cut causes the speaker to see her thumb as something foreign, so too might a sudden psychological trauma—such as a separation from someone or something you're emotionally attached to—make your whole life feel foreign.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 1-28
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Self-Harm and Self-Hatred
“Cut” might be read as a portrait of someone who's at war with themselves. Though it’s natural to assume that the speaker’s “cut” is accidental, she never actually says it is. In fact, many of the poem’s metaphors seem to suggest the opposite: that the speaker’s mutilation of her thumb was more or less deliberate, and that it resulted from some deep, internal conflict. Consciously or unconsciously, the speaker may have harmed herself in an attempt to get rid of an internal enemy—a source of pain, shame, and self-loathing. Ultimately, the poem suggests that shame and self-loathing can create a kind of war within the psyche and can even lead to acts of self-harm.
Some of the poem's metaphors suggest that the speaker’s injury resulted from a deep inner conflict. For instance, she compares her thumb to a “scalp[ed]” “pilgrim,” but it's unclear whether she identifies with the injured party or the attacker. It's also unclear who in this historical scenario she sympathizes with: “Indian[s]” did sometimes harm or kill “pilgrim[s],” but settlers wreaked terrible havoc on Indigenous populations first. This ambiguity suggests that the speaker doesn’t see herself clearly as a victim or an aggressor, but rather that both sides of this conflict are playing out within her.
She also compares her blood to “a million soldiers run[ning]” out of her wound and asks “Whose side are they on?” Her confusion implies that she doesn’t know whether to side with her body, which is bleeding, or her mind, which is for some reason “celebrat[ing]” this injury. Again, her confusion suggests that she's at war with herself.
By subtly pitting the speaker against her own body, the poem suggests that the severing of the thumb was an act of self-sabotage. In fact, the speaker calls either herself or her thumb a “Saboteur” (someone who purposely sabotages something) and a “Kamikaze man” (a WWII-era Japanese military pilot who would destroy enemy ships by flying into them, thereby killing himself as well). These allusions suggest that the speaker may have purposely cut her thumb on a self-destructive impulse.
The poem further suggests that the speaker hurt herself in an attempt to free herself of an almost imperceptible enemy—one that seems to exist inside her. The speaker calls her thumb (or herself) a “Dirty girl,” hinting that this inner conflict involves a sense of self-loathing. In a patriarchal society, women are expected to be good and pure, so this loathing may reflect misogynistic cultural beliefs. In any case, the speaker seems to believe there's something wrong with her.
Her reference to the “Ku Klux Klan” (a white supremacist hate group whose members wear white hoods to hide their identities) may further suggest her inability to identify the source of her self-hatred. The speaker also calls her cut thumb a “trepanned veteran.” “Trepann[ing]” was a practice in which a doctor would cut a hole in a patient’s head to relieve built-up pressure in the skull. This metaphor seems to suggest that the speaker’s self-mutilation was an attempted solution to an unbearable pressure building inside her. By cutting her thumb, she was trying to “kill” the part of herself that's making her “ill.”
The poem thus implies that self-hatred can create an internal battle that leads to self-harm. The speaker invokes a whole cast of warlike characters, but all are, perhaps, just metaphors for the speaker’s internal conflict. And since the enemy is within, there's no one for the speaker to fight but herself. In this way, the poem implies that self-hatred can cause people to direct violence at themselves—the only enemy they can locate.
Ultimately, the poem never resolves the question of whether the speaker cut herself on purpose. This ambiguity becomes part of the poem's meaning: the speaker herself is so self-divided that she may not fully know whether the act was intentional.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 1-40
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Cut”
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Lines 1-2
What a thrill— ...
... of an onion.The first two lines of "Cut" present what seems, at first, like a pretty straightforward situation: the speaker, attempting to chop "an onion," has accidentally sliced into her "thumb instead." While the poem will go on to describe the speaker's emotional reaction to this cut in vivid detail, the incident itself is really only gestured to in the title and these opening lines.
The speaker's tone at the poem's start seems ironic. Though she calls cutting her thumb a "thrill" she probably isn't really deriving any pleasure from this accidental maiming. Her wry humor perhaps suggests that she's attempting to distance herself from the very real pain that she's in. The word "thrill" also points to the surreal mixture of surprise, confusion, and maybe even excitement that comes with suddenly, accidentally injuring oneself. This reminder of her fragile, mortal body is perhaps thrilling amidst the humdrum of everyday life.
Then again, the poem never actually says that this injury was an accident! The speaker may very well have intentionally cut herself, either consciously or unconsciously trying to resolve some inner conflict.
In any case, the speaker appears to be in shock. The /uh/ assonance and muffled /m/ and /n/ sounds in "thumb" and "onion" evoke a stunned numbness, as if the speaker hasn't fully processed what has happened to her. The soft /th/ alliteration in "thrill" and "thumb" also adds immediate intensity to the poem's opening.
Note, too, how the dash at the end of line 1 interrupts the speaker's thought, giving it a truncated feel that subtly mimics the way the speaker's thumb itself has been cut short:
What a thrill—
Indeed, the poem consists mostly of short lines arranged in neat quatrains (four-line stanzas). These short lines and stanzas grant the poem a choppy (pun intended!) feel that evokes not only the speaker's mangled thumb, but also, perhaps, the sharp abbreviation of her thoughts and feelings.
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Lines 3-8
The top quite ...
... that red plush. -
Lines 9-13
Little pilgrim, ...
... from the heart. -
Lines 14-17
I step on ...
... celebration, this is. -
Lines 18-21
Out of a ...
... are they on? -
Lines 22-26
O my ...
... Papery feeling. -
Lines 27-32
Saboteur, ...
... tarnishes and when -
Lines 33-37
The balled ...
... How you jump— -
Lines 38-40
Trepanned veteran, ...
... Thumb stump.
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“Cut” Symbols
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The Speaker's Thumb
The speaker has literally cut her thumb in the poem, but it's also possible to take this thumb as a symbol. Many readers specifically interpret the speaker's thumb as a phallic symbol—that is, as representative of male genitalia and masculinity in general. The speaker's thumb, in other words, might symbolize an oppressive, patriarchal society. The speaker's cutting of her thumb, in this reading, represents an attack on patriarchal oppression.
There are many hints throughout the poem that, in talking to her thumb, the speaker is symbolically addressing a patriarchal power—be it the colonialism of early “pilgrim[s],” the “soldiers” of various wars, or the terrorism of the “Ku Klux Klan.” Indeed, the speaker even calls her thumb “Homunculus,” which is Latin for “little man.” She also refers to her thumb as a “Kamikaze man” and a “veteran” (who would traditionally have been male at the time Plath was writing). The poem’s abundant war metaphors and imagery point to a long tradition of oppressive, masculine power.
The fact that the speaker is “thrill[ed]” by her cut thumb might suggest that the act of cutting it was an act of empowerment. By cutting her thumb, the speaker performs a symbolic castration; she's broken the oppressive hold that patriarchy has had over her life. The speaker then “step[s] on” the “turkey wattle / Carpet” (i.e., the blood) that “rolls” out from the wound, suggesting that the cut has reversed the previous power dynamic. Now she's the one in control.
The thumb goes from being “Dead white” to emitting a “red plush” of blood. This outpouring evokes menstruation and fertility, as if the speaker is suddenly empowered with flowing creativity. Likewise, the speaker says that “Out of a gap” (representing not only the cut thumb/castration but also, perhaps, the vagina) come “a million [Redcoat] soldiers.” The “red[]” color again suggests female vitality and fertility, both of which carry associations of creativity (i.e., the ability to create a human being). Basically, cutting the masculine thumb down to size has created space for the speaker's feminine energies.
(Note, however, that this is just one possible reading of a complex, ambiguous poem!)
Where this symbol appears in the poem:- Lines 2-16
- Lines 18-20
- Lines 22-23
- Lines 27-40
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“Cut” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Imagery
The poem uses vivid and provocative imagery throughout to describe the speaker's cut thumb. This imagery illustrates the speaker's feelings of simultaneous shock, detachment, and excited fascination. At times, it also seems to evoke the speaker's internal battle with herself.
For example, the speaker juxtaposes the "Dead white" skin around her wound to the "red plush" of the wound itself, suggesting that there's something beautiful or sensuous about this cut. However painful, this lush, soft wound is perhaps an exciting, alluring reminder of the speaker's vitality.
This image of a red wound surrounded by white skin then makes the speaker think of a "[l]ittle pilgrim" whose scalp has been sliced off by an "Indian." This image is at once cutesy (a diminutive "pilgrim") and brutal. It suggests that the speaker doesn't just feel one way about her injury; she's making light of it one moment and getting darkly dramatic the next. Here and elsewhere, the speaker's description of blood and gore might also make the reader squirm.
She goes on to compare the wound to a "turkey wattle," once again combining a comic image with her cut's gruesomeness. She then steps on a "[c]arpet" (presumably of dribbled blood) while "[c]lutching" a "bottle / Of pink fizz." Readers can envision the speaker walking across a bloody floor while holding tightly to her wound, blood "fizzing" to the top. This image also, however, calls to mind a bottle of rose champagne popped in celebration. The imagery of the speaker stumbling around with a "bottle" of bubbly while her severed thumb "flaps" and bleeds is both humorous and alarming.
Towards the end of the poem, the speaker describes the "Gauze" of her bandaged thumb as a "Ku Klux Klan / Babushka." Again, the speaker imagines her thumb as its own little person, the white gauze of its bandage making it look like a hooded terrorist or a grandma wearing a headscarf. The tension between the violent associations of the "Ku Klux Klan" and the more playful "Babushka" continue to suggest the speaker's inner conflict. Her wound is painful, comforting, shocking, and thrilling all at once.
Where imagery appears in the poem:- Lines 3-8: “The top quite gone / Except for a sort of hinge / Of skin, / A flap like a hat, / Dead white. / Then that red plush.”
- Lines 9-16: “Little pilgrim, / The Indian's axed your scalp. / Your turkey wattle / Carpet rolls / Straight from the heart. / I step on it, / Clutching my bottle / Of pink fizz.”
- Lines 18-20: “Out of a gap / A million soldiers run, / Redcoats, every one.”
- Lines 25-26: “The thin / Papery feeling.”
- Lines 29-34: “The stain on your / Gauze Ku Klux Klan / Babushka / Darkens and tarnishes and when / The balled / Pulp of your heart”
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Simile
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Metaphor
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Irony
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Assonance
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Consonance
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Enjambment
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"Cut" Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Hinge
- Plush
- Turkey wattle
- Bottle of pink fizz
- Redcoats
- Homunculus
- Saboteur
- Kamikaze man
- Gauze
- Ku Klux Klan
- Tarnishes
- Babushka
- Pulp
- Mill
- Trepanned
- Veteran
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(Location in poem: Lines 4-5: “Except for a sort of hinge / Of skin”)
A device attached to a door or gate that allows them to swing open or shut.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Cut”
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Form
"Cut" consists of 40 lines of free verse, spread out over 10 quatrains (a.k.a four-line stanzas). Most of the poem's lines are also quite brief, often consisting of just two syllables ("Of skin," "O my," etc.). Visually, these short stanzas made up of short lines might call to mind the "stump" of the speaker's cut "thumb." It's almost as though the speaker has sliced the page in half.
There are a few long lines, of course, which keeps the poem from becoming overly predictable. Overall, however, the poem uses lots of short lines, enjambment, and frequent stanza breaks to create a sense of perpetual motion. The reader can never get really settled within the poem, instead getting pushed forward down the page just as the speaker's blood spews up and dribbles onto the floor below.
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Meter
The poem is written in free verse and, as such, doesn't use a set meter. Free verse is the norm for most contemporary poems, including the majority of Plath's work. The poem's lack of meter adds to its pared-down, almost jagged feel and it also keeps things from ever becoming too stiff or predictable. Instead, the poem's language feels free and perpetually surprising, perhaps even evoking the speaker's own shock.
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Rhyme Scheme
As a free verse poem, "Cut" doesn't use a rhyme scheme. It does actually contain quite a lot of end rhymes—some full (i.e., "ill"/"kill"), some slant (i.e., "gone"/"onion") —but these rhymes are unpredictable. Readers don't know where or when a rhyme will show up, which makes sense for a poem that's describing a sudden, shocking accident. While a steady rhyme scheme might have provided the poem with soothing, consistent music, the lack of a rhyme scheme does the opposite: it keeps things surprising and, at times, even jarring.
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“Cut” Speaker
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The poem's speaker is someone who has just sliced into her "thumb" while chopping onions. The sight of blood welling up and a flap of skin hanging off conjures all sorts of surreal images in the speaker's mind: she compares her wound to everything from a little man in a "hat" to a scalped "pilgrim." The speaker's images range from the funny, to the gruesome, to the downright disturbing. And they all present the speaker's thumb and blood as entities that seem to exist separately from the speaker herself.
It's possible that this cut was accidental and that the speaker is expressing the simultaneous fascination, horror, and dissociation that can accompany an injury—the strange feeling of seeing your own body opened up before you. But the poem's violent imagery also suggests that the speaker is someone who's deeply at odds with herself, and there's the possibility that this cut was intentional. Either way, the speaker's response to the incident suggests that she's responding not just to the shock of this physical wound, but also to some sort of deep emotional trauma.
While the speaker doesn't necessarily need to be interpreted as Plath herself, the poem was inspired by a real event that resulted in the poet having to go to the hospital and get stitches. The poem makes no mention of this, however, focusing instead on the thoughts and emotions that arise in the moments after the injury.
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“Cut” Setting
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The poem presumably takes place in the speaker's kitchen, where she's slicing an "onion." Other than that, the poem contains no clues as to when or where this scene is occurring. Instead, everything unfolds in the speaker's mind as she observes her bleeding thumb. The poem's lack of setting helps to evoke the disorientation and detachment of the speaker, who is addressing her thumb as if it weren't a part of herself.
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Literary and Historical Context of “Cut”
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Literary Context
Sylvia Plath was one of the foremost poets of the 20th century. Famous for her intense, personal verse, Plath is usually grouped in with the Confessionalist movement of the 1950s and '60s.
Confessionalist writers wanted to drop the barrier between themselves and "the speaker" of their poems and to examine aspects of life that a conformist post-war society deemed too indelicate to talk about. Treating all of Plath's work as autobiographical would be an over-simplification, of course, and the term "Confessionalist" risks denying the subtly and imaginative possibilities of her poetry.
That said, the collection in which "Cut" appears, Ariel, was indeed highly personal, informed by Plath's complicated relationship to marriage, motherhood, family, and gender expectations, as well her lifelong struggle with mental illness. Throughout the collection, Plath is able to turn seemingly mundane moments into highly charged, psychologically intense confrontations with her own darkest impulses.
In fact, Plath spoke on this in a 1962 (the year she wrote "Cut") interview for the BBC, in which she said that her poems
come out of the sensuous and emotional experiences I have, but I must say I cannot sympathise with these cries from the heart that are informed by nothing except a needle or a knife, or whatever it is. [...] I think that personal experience is very important, but certainly it shouldn't be a kind of shut-box and mirror looking, narcissistic experience. I believe it should be relevant, and relevant to the larger things, the bigger things such as Hiroshima and Dachau and so on.
"Cut" (which was inspired by a real-life incident in which Plath early sliced her thumb off) is a good example of this philosophy, with the speaker's accident resulting in a descent into the darkest parts of her psyche that speak not only to her own pain but also to broader issues of oppression and violence.
"Cut" is also often compared to one of Plath's earlier poems, "Contusion," which similarly uses a physical injury to explore psychological distress.
Historical Context
The years after World War II (1939-1945) saw a renewed focus on family life. As men returned home from war, birthrates ballooned during a “baby boom” that persisted into the 1960s. American society promoted an idealized vision of family life that emphasized traditional gender roles, and women were defined in relation to their husbands and children—that is, as wives and mothers first. As a writer and academic, Plath found many of these stereotyped expectations oppressive. At the same time, she often found great joy and fulfillment in motherhood.
From adolescence onward, Plath also suffered from recurring bouts of suicidal depression. When she wrote this poem in 1962, she was living in England and dealing with a sudden split from her husband, Ted Hughes, who had left her for another woman. Though Hughes visited periodically, Plath was generally isolated, overwhelmed, and depressed throughout a cold English winter.
This situation, coupled with Plath's lifelong battle with mental illness, offers insight into the poem's themes of alienation and self-hatred. It was part of Plath's original Ariel manuscript, which she was struggling to find a publisher for—the poems were unlike anything else being written at the time. Writer and critic Meghan O'Rourke writes that "[i]t’s easy to forget now how radical Plath’s poetry—with its elemental female anger, its sexual voracity, its self-loathing knowingness—was in 1963." "Cut" showcases these qualities at once, and thus is often considered one of Plath's most important poems. It was published posthumously in 1965, two years after Plath's death by suicide.
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More “Cut” Resources
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External Resources
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A Recording of the Poem — Listen to a recording of Plath reading "Cut."
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A Look at the Poet's Life — A biography of Plath, and additional poems, from the Poetry Foundation.
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Two Versions of Plath's Ariel — A 2004 Slate article discussing the controversy surrounding the ordering and re-ordering of Plath's Ariel manuscript, in which "Cut" was first published.
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An Introduction to Confessional Poetry — The Poetry Foundation breaks down what made confessional poetry—the mode Plath's work is most often grouped with—so fresh and compelling.
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The Poet's Process and Influences — A 1962 interview with the BBC in which Plath talks about what interests her as a poet.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by Sylvia Plath
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