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Is a metaphor found in the poem "Mirror" by Sylvia Plath?

When writers use metaphors, they use non-literal language to make connections between two things that aren't otherwise connected.


For example, imagine you said, "He's a dog." You're referring to a man with no standards. He's not literally a dog. He's human.


In "Mirror," Plath definitely uses metaphors. There are a number in the poem.


Take the first few lines as examples:


"I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
Whatever I see I swallow immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike."


If the speaker is the mirror, then it is not literally true that it swallows things. Images of things pass into mirrors like they are being swallowed, though, and that's the connection. Likewise, mirrors do mist, but the literal mist is water condensing on them. Here, "unmisted by love or dislike" is a metaphor for being emotionally unmoved, or objective. That's how mirrors see things.

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