Ariel (FF Classics)
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Amazon.co.uk Review
It is difficult to read Sylvia Plath, one of the finest poets of the 20th century, without the knowledge and half-knowledge of her life and death intruding and cementing meaning on to her work. This, her second collection, published posthumously in 1965, contains some of her most fabulously versatile and energetic verse despite her preoccupation with death which is often as theatrical as it is agonising. The volume begins as she wanted with "Morning Song", a colourful, rich poem to her baby: "Love set you going like a fat gold watch". In it, she sees herself as "cow-heavy and floral in my Victorian nightgown", contrasting beautifully with the child's mouth which "opens clean as a cat's". She need not mention milk. The "clear vowels" of the baby's cries "rise like balloons", re-emphasising the lightness and playful joy she could experience through motherhood. "Night Dances", about the "pure leaps and spirals" her son performed in bed before laying down, comfort her. "Surely they travel / The world forever, I shall not entirely / Sit emptied of beauties, the gift / Of your small breath, the drenched grass / Smell of your sleep, lilies, lilies." The risky, running images and associations are breathtaking, still. There is something redemptive in her love for her child which eases her anguish. "The blood blooms clean / In you, ruby. / The pain / you wake to is not yours ... You are the one / Solid the spaces lean on, envious." Her infamous poems "Lady Lazarus" and "Daddy" are also here. In both, the first person narrator is a persona, a fiction that overlaps with autobiography. Plath once explained that "Lady Lazarus" is "a woman who has the great and terrible gift of being reborn. The only trouble is, she has to die first." Deeply sardonic in tone, she has the levity of Dorothy Parker in moments. "Dying is an art, like everything else. / I do it exceptionally well." But there is resurgence after melt-down: "Out of the ash / I rise with my red hair / And I eat men like air." Anger with her father, characterised as a Nazi, Herr Enemy extends in "Daddy". "Daddy, I have had to kill you. / You died before I had time-- / Marble-heavy, a bag full of God." It remains a staggering and disturbing poem in which she imagines herself the daughter of a Nazi and a Jew. Plath would have preferred to end the collection with "Wintering", a less contorted poem about storing honey from her beehive. It ends hopefully: "The bees are flying. They taste the spring." Often puzzling or plainly obtuse, Plath's all the better for that. --Cherry Smyth
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
"Sylvia Plath's last poems have impressed themselves on many readers with the force of myth. They are among the handful of writings by which future generations will seek to know us and give us a name."-- "Critical Quarterly""It is fair to say that no group of poems since Dylam Thomas's "Deaths and Entrances" has had as vivid and disturbing an impact on English critics and readers as has "Ariel." Sylvia Plath's poems have already passed into legend as both representative of our present tone of emotional life and unique in their implacable, harsh brilliance...These poems take tremendous risks, extending Sylvia Plath's essentially austere manner to the very limit. They are a bitter triumph, proof of the capacity of poetry to give to reality the greater permanence of the imagined. She could not return from them."-- George Steiner, "The Reporter"
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
54 of 56 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
I have read Plath inside out and backwards, and intermittently for eight years (I discovered her at the age of 22). She is now the subject of the final chapter of my thesis, which i am just preparing for submission. My PhD supervisor encouraged me to buy this book for the sake of my thesis, although I was reluctant to buy yet another book (funds are very limited!). After all, I already had the 'Collected Poems' which lists the poems in the order plath wanted at the back of the book; I am familiar with all of them. Furthermore, I have owned and lost no less than three copies of the published 'Ariel' owing to my habit of carrying it about places with me! (Please be assured I am not some suicide-obsessed pseudo-goth.) However, this book is superb. even though I knew the correct order of the poems, reading them like this is a completely different experience. The foreword by Frieda Hughes is extremely touching, showing her troubled loyalty to both parents (Ted Hughes, who of course edited the first publication of Ariel, leaving out about a dozen of the poems that he felt were inflammatory; and including in their place some of her very last, extremely depressed/depressing works that were written shortly before her death) who have for forty years been set one against the other in the popular imagination. The trajectory of the restored text takes you down before taking you up again, famously (as noted by Hughes in his foreword to the 'Collected Poems') beginning with the word 'love' and ending with 'spring'; this being precisely as Plath desired.
Whether or not you feel you wish to add this book to your collection is impossible for me to judge, but I consider this to be an essential bookshelf item, and furthermore ought to be read alongisde the prior version of 'Ariel'. The latter ends on a note so hopeless - precluding all possibility - that it shuts down on the reader like a lens. This restored text opens up a horizon. For those more interested in suicide (or what Frieda Hughes called in a poem of her own, a 'sylvia suicide doll') than in poetic or writerly integrity, then perhaps this book is not the best choice. For anyone interested more in the poetry, however, and in what it meant for this woman to write,and what it has meant that her words were compromised, then I recommend it. But whether you buy it or not, it's absolutely right and proper that this book be published.
Whether or not you feel you wish to add this book to your collection is impossible for me to judge, but I consider this to be an essential bookshelf item, and furthermore ought to be read alongisde the prior version of 'Ariel'. The latter ends on a note so hopeless - precluding all possibility - that it shuts down on the reader like a lens. This restored text opens up a horizon. For those more interested in suicide (or what Frieda Hughes called in a poem of her own, a 'sylvia suicide doll') than in poetic or writerly integrity, then perhaps this book is not the best choice. For anyone interested more in the poetry, however, and in what it meant for this woman to write,and what it has meant that her words were compromised, then I recommend it. But whether you buy it or not, it's absolutely right and proper that this book be published.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
After reading the other reviews I think I'm a bit of a Philistine so far as Sylvia Plath is concerned. I find much of her poetry obscure and hard to fathom, even though some of the imagery is spectacular and original. I also wonder whether I have the same edition (the cover looks the same as that shown on Amazon's site except that mine is grey instead of what appears to be dark blue) because others refer to starting with the word `Love' (so does mine) and ending with `Spring'. Mine ends with `life', and lacks the foreword by Frieda Hughes, which might perhaps have helped.
For me, the intrusion of blood, hospitals, an ambulance, sirens, etc makes many of the poems feel morbid. Even so, I can see a bleak beauty in her work and would like to understand it better. There is a depth and obscurity to the poems, which improve with familiarity. I like `The Moon and the Yew Tree' and the bee poems, but in my view this is not an easy volume for the casual reader.
For me, the intrusion of blood, hospitals, an ambulance, sirens, etc makes many of the poems feel morbid. Even so, I can see a bleak beauty in her work and would like to understand it better. There is a depth and obscurity to the poems, which improve with familiarity. I like `The Moon and the Yew Tree' and the bee poems, but in my view this is not an easy volume for the casual reader.
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
We finally have Ariel as Sylvia Plath intended it - the poems in the order left in her black ring binder in 1963. This powerful collection should be savoured and treasured more than it is. Additionally, the forward by Freida Hughes is an insightful personal memoir. Worth all the waiting.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Best poetry book ever writen...
Regarding previous editions of Ariel, I was beautifully surprised to acknowledged three main novelties in this restored edition: (1) the original selection of poems, as in the... Read more
Published 9 months ago by Charles DePaulo
Ariel: The Director's Cut
The best single collection of poetry natively written in the English language, barring "Complete Poems of" collections. Read more
Published 10 months ago by Failed Writer
Value for money
I bought this when in college doing A Level English, so had to buy it rather than out of choice. However compared to book stores the price was fantastic. Read more
Published 15 months ago by Sarah
A marvellous read!
Sylvia Plath was an excellent poet, even if she is sometimes very difficult to comprehend.
But AMAZON, you need to get your act together! Read more
But AMAZON, you need to get your act together! Read more
Published on 1 Feb 2010 by Henrik Both Bisbo
Beautiful, raw, urgent poems that should be read.
I have always loved Plath's poetry and her anthology 'Ariel' is her poetry at its very best. Written during a difficult period in her life, these poems have a rawness and energy... Read more
Published on 4 May 2009 by Alice Song
Plath's work entices you into her world...
This is not simply a book of poetry written by a female writer. This is real, and raw. The emotion evoked and shared between reader and poet is out of this world... Read more
Published on 1 April 2007 by ejrlx
The First Time's Always Best
This was the first poetry book I read. I knew that - after reading 'Bell Jar' - Sylvia Plath would be my favourite poet. These poems express her yearning and overall defeat. Read more
Published on 20 Mar 2007 by Michael David O'Neill
She touches the unstable in all of us...
'Ariel' is an anthology you'll return to again and again. The wonderful thing about poetry is that it is that it is for everyone. Read more
Published on 7 April 2005 by "michaelmcculley"
Poetry that breaks
There are few more searing books of poetry in the English language. It breaks, fragments, cuts like crystal. Hard, fragile truths. Read more
Published on 7 Mar 2005 by Theo Erasmus
Maybe more of an Icon than a book
It is often impossible for the average reader to understand what Sylvia Plath is on about. A hasty study of her biographies (there are many) may allow you to pick out certain... Read more
Published on 30 Nov 2004 by RA Brown
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