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List Price: $12.00Amazon.com's Price: $9.60 You Save: $2.40 (20%)Prices subject to change.
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 811.54
EAN: 9780060931728
ISBN: 0060931728
Label: Harper Perennial Modern Classics
Manufacturer: Harper Perennial Modern Classics
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 128
Publication Date: March 01, 1999
Publisher: Harper Perennial Modern Classics
Release Date: February 03, 1999
Sales Rank: 299551
Studio: Harper Perennial Modern Classics
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
'In these poems...Sylvia Plath becomes herself, becomes something imaginary, newly, wildly and subtly created.'
-- From the Introduction by Robert Lowell
Amazon.com Review:
Sylvia Plath churned out her final poems at the remarkable rate of two or three a day, and Robert Lowell describes them as written by 'hardly a person at all ... but one of those super-real, hypnotic, great classical heroines.' Even more remarkable, she wrote them during one of the coldest, snowiest winters (1962-63) Londoners have ever known. Snowbound, without central heating, she and her two children spent much of their time sniffling, coughing, or running temperatures (In 'Fever 103°' she writes, 'I have been flickering, off, on, off on. / The sheets grow heavy as a lecher's kiss.'). Pipes froze, lights failed, and candles were unobtainable.
As if these physical privations weren't enough, Plath was out in the cold in another sense--her husband, Ted Hughes, had left her for another woman earlier that year. Despite all this (or perhaps because of it), the Ariel poems dazzle with their lyricism, their surprising and vivid imagery, and their wit. Rather than confining herself to her bleak surroundings, Plath draws from a wide array of experience. In 'Berck-Plage,' for instance, clouds are 'electrifyingly-coloured sherbets, scooped from the freeze.' In 'The Night Dances,' the poet stands crib-side, reveling in her son's own brand of do-si-do: 'Such pure leaps and spirals--Surely they travel / The world forever, I shall not entirely / Sit emptied of beauties, the gift / Of your small breath...'
Though at times they present the reader with hopelessness laid bare, these poems also teem with the brightest shards of a life, confounding those who merely look for the words of a gloomy, dispassionate suicide. Plath rose each morning in the final months of her life to 'that still blue, almost eternal hour before the baby's cry' and left us these words like 'axes/After whose stroke the wood rings...'
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - harrowingly alive, forcefully galloping, life-affirming poems
There are two adjectives commonly applied to this book by people who haven't read it: it is often said to be a "feminist" book, and a "depressing" one. I think these two not-quite-accurate labels arise so frequently because Sylvia Plath is, unfortunately, better-known to the general public for being female and psychologically troubled than for being an accomplished poet.
This is not an agenda-driven book, it is not a book aimed at only a select audience, and it is, above all, not a depressing ... Read More
Rating:  - A 'Just Right' edition.
I'm not going to review Ariel.
If you've come this far, you've already read the poems, either on-line, or in a paperback edition. There is nothing I could say about one of the greatest poetic works of the 20th century.
I will review this edition, however. It's just right. Not to fancy (Ariel somehow wouldn't work in a gilded leather bound edition), certainly not cheap. It's well bound, well put together, and the original manuscript works are here, in an easy to read format.
It's over ... Read More
Rating: - Totally Awesome a must have
So dark yet beautiful, a must have for every women. I was left speechless with it's intensity and shocked by the passion.
I ordered Ted Hughes, Birthday Letters, at the same time and read it after reading Ariel. Then I started reading them together one of his and then one of hers. I was moved to tears and spent an evening in near exhaustation, I'm left speechless.
Call me silly, but I can't help but see a very tragic modern day Romeo and Juliet with these two books. The expression of pain, ... Read More
Rating: - Not the Little Mermaid, please...don't do that.
This is the much heralded Plath collection that everyone should read if you're into poetry, Plath, or heck, even good work. At a time of internal angst and turmoil, Mrs. Hughes cranked this out in a distinct voice and the greatest poems of her work are here: Lady Lazarus, Daddy, etc etc...It's a genuine treasure of poetry. If you can, get the voice recordings of Sylvia reading her own work. She has a soulful, determined, almost English (huh, wonder WHERE she got that from) intonation that makes you want ... Read More
Rating: - Plath and motherhood
It seems every morbid well read teenage girl would carry a Sylvia Plath book around school, and I was one of them (I can't speak for the current Extreme Makeover, American Idol, online porn generation) Although I struck the Plath pose in high school, in all honesty I didn't really understand and appreciate her until my late thirties after I was married and had children. As a stay at home mother I know all too well the feeling of inadaquacy I must endure from those that deem me unworthy of anything too serious ... Read More
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Copyright © 2003-2008 Gunnar Bengtsson, Poetry Connection. All Rights Reserved.
Dewey Decimal Number: 811.54
EAN: 9780060931728
ISBN: 0060931728
Label: Harper Perennial Modern Classics
Manufacturer: Harper Perennial Modern Classics
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 128
Publication Date: March 01, 1999
Publisher: Harper Perennial Modern Classics
Release Date: February 03, 1999
Sales Rank: 299551
Studio: Harper Perennial Modern Classics