Product Description

These poems are, in Robert Lowells' words, "events rather than the record of events, and as such, represent the triumph of the poet's romantic ambition".

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #14983 in Books
• Published on: 1968
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 88 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Sylvia Plath churned out her final poems at the remarkable rate of two or three a day, masterworks Robert Lowell describes 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, revelling 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..." --Martha Silano

From the Publisher
We are pleased to announce the publication of eleven more titles into the new typographic look. The specifications for the books are high -beautifully produced, they all have flaps and are sewn and printed in Italy. The latest batch represents some of the core titles of the backlist (Philip Larkin's Collected Poems, Ted Hughes's New Selected Poems, James Joyce's Poems and Shorter Writings) along with key, single volumes that should be part of any poetry lover's library (and whose reissue, in the form in which they were first published, will give a whole new generation the pleasure of coming to the books as original readers).

Customer Reviews

Wonderful. And important.
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.

Living like a foot
The opening poem in this collection is one of the most moving and imaginatively powerful celebrations of life ever written, depicticting the joy and hope that lies in the birth of child and setting the tone for the entire collection; a tone that contrasts heavily with the traditional view of Ariel as 'poetry of depression'. Indeed, even in such poems as 'Daddy' and 'Lady Lazarus' there is a certain feeling of elation which an astute reader will no doubt pick up on, and rarely is there any feeling of the author's 'wallowing in misery'.

It is clear from the outset that Plath sets out to present a balanced and almost comprehensive outlook on life; it's ups and its downs, its triumphs and its failures, and, in what is a rather excellent book of poetry (with a few fairly minor flaws) Plath has achieved just that. Though not quite '[a] woman completed', Plath nevertheless produced a collection that is both moving and intriguing.

complex but brilliant poetry
i'm studying Ariel for my A-level course, and have discovered Plath to be a fabulous poet. of course, she had her problems in life, but these serve to fuel her brilliant and unique poetry. i must admit, some of the poems i find difficult to get into, but others are simply perfect, e.g. Edge, one of her last poems. if you buy one poetry book this year, make it this one!