| ||||||||||||||||||
 Trade In this Item for up to £0.25
Trade in Collected Poems for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £0.25, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Plus, get an extra £5 when you trade in books worth £10 or more until June 30, 2012. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
Product Description
This volume contains all Sylvia Plath's mature poetry written from 1956 up to her death in 1963.
The text is preceded by an introduction by Ted Hughes and followed by notes and comments on individual poems. There is also an appendix containing fifty poems from Sylvia Plath's juvenilia.
'For me, the most important literary event of 1981 has been the publication, eighteen years after her death, of Sylvia Plath's Collected Poems, confirming her as one of the most powerful and lavishly gifted poets of our time.' A. Alvarez in the Observer
This collection was awarded the 1981 Pulitzer Prize for poetry.
Browse and search another edition of this book.
Through portico of my elegant house you stalk Read the first page
Concordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Plath's rich mastery of words lends itself to a jaunty, lyrical style that seems to sing from the page. It adds a compelling immediacy to such intense and intricate poetry as 'Daddy' and 'Lady Lazarus'. Frankly, at her best Plath is a joy to read and a master storyteller - both of her own emotions ('Edge', the final poem in this collection, is perhaps the single most harrowing work of art ever written) and of products of an unnervingly fertile imagination - one so versatile that she evades all stereotypes with a sidestep as neat and sharp as her turn of phrase.
It's not all doom and gloom, either. 'Balloons', despite it's uncertain and chilling pathos, displays a razor sharp wit, while 'You're' offers a sweet, bouncing lullaby to a sweet, bouncing newborn baby - hope and renewal delivered through the birth of a child ('a clean slate/with your own face on'). 'Cut' too, is an incredibly observant and tongue-in-cheek ode to a severed thumb, while 'Three Women' tackles the lives and feelings of three women undergoing three very different childbirths (one gives birth and returns home with her child, another is a young student who gives her 'terrible red girl' up for adoption and another is appalled by her male 'flatness' having miscarried) with such grace and intensity that it is a profoundly moving masterpiece.
I could go on. 'Mirror', 'The Moon and the Yew Tree', 'Fever 103' and 'Insomniac' are all personal favourites, and the Ariel poems alone are utterly life-altering, but there is so much more in this collection - from her Juvenilia through The Colossus to the very last poems - that is testament to the intense and intelligent scope of Plath's poetry, all of which is majestically woven with the threads of language more lyrical and alive than anything else I have ever read.
An introduction from the late Ted Hughes does appear to be somewhat cold and detached, even apathetic to Plath's work, but the poetry beyond will charm and sadden and cheer and astound and enrich read after read, year after year.
A truly essential purchase.
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
