Ariel
by Sylvia Plath
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Read in September, 2007
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...more
This is not an agenda-driven book, it is not a book aimed at only a select audience, and it is, above...more
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Doesn't include my fave Plath poem...
The Thin People
They are always with us, the thin people
Meager of dimension as the gray people
On a movie-screen. They
Are unreal, we say:
It was only in a movie, it was only
In a war making evil headlines when we
Were small that they famished and
Grew so lean and would not round
Out their stalky limbs again though peace
Plumped the bellies of the mice
Under the meanest table.
It was during the long hunger-battle
They found ...more
The Thin People
They are always with us, the thin people
Meager of dimension as the gray people
On a movie-screen. They
Are unreal, we say:
It was only in a movie, it was only
In a war making evil headlines when we
Were small that they famished and
Grew so lean and would not round
Out their stalky limbs again though peace
Plumped the bellies of the mice
Under the meanest table.
It was during the long hunger-battle
They found ...more
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Read in January, 2007
recommends it for:
poetry lovers and those interested in mental health
Last summer I read The Bell Jar and last summer I came to love Sylvia Plath in a way that I didn’t even think was possible. I think she’s someone who’s easy to relate to but at the same time a figure that doesn’t even feel real to me. I understand her and yet I don’t.
That’s what makes Ariel so magical.
I’m not really a poetry person, but I had to read this after I first fell in love with Sylvia. What made this volume most remarkable to me was the time period in which she ...more
That’s what makes Ariel so magical.
I’m not really a poetry person, but I had to read this after I first fell in love with Sylvia. What made this volume most remarkable to me was the time period in which she ...more
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I know the fashionable thing is to rail on Ted's role as editor, but I love both versions of this collection. My favorites are the bee poems, and the ones she wrote for her kids.
You're
Clownlike, happiest on your hands,
Feet to the stars, and moon-skulled,
Gilled like a fish. A common-sense
Thumbs-down on the dodo's mode.
Wrapped up in yourself like a spool,
Trawling your dark as owls do.
Mute as a turnip from the Fourth
Of July to All Fools' Day,
O high-riser, my little loaf.
...more
You're
Clownlike, happiest on your hands,
Feet to the stars, and moon-skulled,
Gilled like a fish. A common-sense
Thumbs-down on the dodo's mode.
Wrapped up in yourself like a spool,
Trawling your dark as owls do.
Mute as a turnip from the Fourth
Of July to All Fools' Day,
O high-riser, my little loaf.
...more
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Like the woman herself, I feel this collection will haunt me, making me return to its poems again and again, to relive their ingenious craft and re-experience their sometimes cavalier approach to the grave topics of depression and suicide. Of all the lines on these subjects, the one that resonates most for me is the ultimate statement of the poem “The Arrival of the Bee Box,” in which Plath imagines that the container a mail-order beehive arrives in represents the stifling constraints ...more
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i studied this collection senior year of college in my "hand of the poet" seminar. i wrote a 20 page paper on 3 poems from here. i studied plath's handwriting. i analyzed the placement of each poem, and how hughes (sorry to say) kind of screwed everything up in that regard. to me, this is the ultimate. when i think of good poetry, this is the first thing that pops into my head. when i accidently cut my finger chopping up vegetables for dinner, i immediately begin reciting "cut...more
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Read in January, 2008
A certain AP English teacher gave this book to me as a high school graduation present and I never bothered to open it until last week.
State the obvious: Sylvia had some issue. Many of which I'm sure are featured in this collection of poems if you want to bother to analyze them. I've never been one for analyzing poems and literature.
My no good, ameture opinion is as follows:
The stuff I enjoyed had a good flowing theme to them (easy to follow for the ameture poetry reader), the stuff I di...more
State the obvious: Sylvia had some issue. Many of which I'm sure are featured in this collection of poems if you want to bother to analyze them. I've never been one for analyzing poems and literature.
My no good, ameture opinion is as follows:
The stuff I enjoyed had a good flowing theme to them (easy to follow for the ameture poetry reader), the stuff I di...more
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I know the fashionable thing is to rail on Ted's role as editor, but I love both versions of this collection. My favorites are the bee poems, and the ones she wrote for her kids. Here's the last two-and-a-half stanzas of the restored text:
"The bees are all women,
Maids and the long royal lady.
They have got rid of the men,
The blunt, clumsy stumblers, the boors.
Winter is for women--
The woman, still at her knitting,
At the cradle of Spanish walnut,
Her body a bulb in the col...more
"The bees are all women,
Maids and the long royal lady.
They have got rid of the men,
The blunt, clumsy stumblers, the boors.
Winter is for women--
The woman, still at her knitting,
At the cradle of Spanish walnut,
Her body a bulb in the col...more
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Read in January, 1994
I know, I know. Sylvia Plath is a bit of a cliche. Even Ryan Adams wrote a funny-sad song about her. LOL. But Ariel is really amazing, in terms of the intensity of her words. It's tantamount to setting her house on fire to get attention. It is painful to read. And we can probably blame her for launching the careers of a nation of suicidal female poets (though I still think that's a really cynical and chauvinist joke). But Sylvia's stuff is always compelling, especially in Ariel. Because of this...more
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I visited Seattle's new art museum the other day and saw on the wall a "Sylvia Plath Quilt" done by a woman artist. I sat in front of it for several minutes, recalling some of my favorite Plath poems.
Most come from her collection "Ariel". The one quoted in the quilt is:
Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.
In my early 20s Plath's work captured my interest and imagination. Suicidal feminist, how could she miss?
But now, 35 years ...more
Most come from her collection "Ariel". The one quoted in the quilt is:
Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.
In my early 20s Plath's work captured my interest and imagination. Suicidal feminist, how could she miss?
But now, 35 years ...more
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Read in December, 2006
Some editors mentioned this one is the darkly lyric poems, which is addressed as her own experiences with depression. For me, though mine is the one which republished in 2004 (restores Plath’s original order and the twelve poems missing from the first version--damn, and also contains a forward by her daughter, Frieda Hughes)--her works are always touching me intensely personal :-)
"Our voices echo, magnifying your arrival. New statue.
In a drafty museum, your nakedness
Shadows our safety. We stand round blankly as walls." ...more
"Our voices echo, magnifying your arrival. New statue.
In a drafty museum, your nakedness
Shadows our safety. We stand round blankly as walls." ...more
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you know what i hate about every depiction of sylvia plath--not just gwyneth paltrow's saddy-face performance--but every time anyone portrays her in any medium ever? she's always so fucking doomed. and i just don't buy it at all. this book is desperate and raw and bloody and tinged by death, but it is also ravenously and absolutely alive. i read it as a declaration, as evidence of a terrible struggle to survive. not a suicide note. "beware, beware. out of the ash i rise with my red h...more
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When I was in 10th grade, I read the original version of Ariel, and wrote Sylvia Plath's lines in silver and gold pen on my black boots. . . . like "I am nude as a chicken's neck. Does no one love me?" or "I am nobody. I have nothing to do with explosions." Cause nothing says teen angst like that.
I'm psyched about this new edition, with the poems ordered in Sylvia's original intended sequence (not Ted Hughes's). Ever since I read Patricia Hampl's essay, "The Smile of...more
I'm psyched about this new edition, with the poems ordered in Sylvia's original intended sequence (not Ted Hughes's). Ever since I read Patricia Hampl's essay, "The Smile of...more
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Read in July, 2007
an outstanding collection of poems. don't let her reputation fool you, just because she's every depressed high schooler's favorite poet doesn't mean she's not damn good. Concision, passion, attention to detail, and verbs that will straight up eat you. And what's more, there's an undercurrent of what we think of today as the rhythm of slam poetry in her work, certain poems have that spoken momentum that we associate with slam without all the cheesiness and predictability. read it again, you w...more
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Read in January, 1999
What most people know about Sylvia Plath is that she was a suicide, a tragic figure, and a writer. But if it weren't for her incredible talent and brilliance nobody would know even that. This book of poems is famous for the searing "Daddy" (which in my opinion has lost some of its power now that female rage - a la Courtney Love, Kathleen Hannah - has become fairly mainstream), but also illustrates Plath's genius. Although my favorite Plath poem, "Blackberrying," is not her...more
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Read in January, 2007
recommends it for:
poetry lovers; feminists
Plath writes the sort of acerbic and angry yet coolly formal poems that I admire (and envy), although some of her Holocaust imagery is distasteful, to say the least. Plath herself remains very distant to me. She's the sort of person (middle-class New Englander) who got published then while other folks didn't--and often still don't. There are other angry, sad, brilliant people out there, but too often we never read their words. I admire Plath nonetheless and am moved by her poems.
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Read in June, 2007
Sometimes, I am a very literal person. And this was one of those times. Which means, as you can guess, this didn't really float my boat. It kills me that I don't know exactily what the author means or can't even guess because they use such abstract terms. Some of the poems were really great, but that was only because I had watched the movie about her life and knew what was going on. I guess I am not a big poetry fan...and that makes me sad.
Liked "the Bell Jar" a lot better.
Liked "the Bell Jar" a lot better.
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Read in December, 2007
I've read very little poetry and I don't really know how to read it, other than to notice the images and emotions it evokes as I read. I spent the first few pages trying to understand the poems and thought I didn't like the book. Then I gave up trying to understand the poems and I loved it. I'm sure there are deeper levels at which to analyze and appreciate these poems, but it inspired me to read more poetry and that's saying something.
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Read in February, 1996
recommended to Emily by:
Peter Murphyrecommends it for: everyone on earth
My all time favorite book. Sylvia Plath, we hardly knew ye. I have lived, breathed, and eaten every one of these poems and they still reveal themselves to me again and again, in brand new ways. At times frighteningly dark, at times slyly funny, and more often than not, both, simultaneously. Emblematic of everything strange and domestic in the human condition; emblematic of how the unheimlich and the domestic can be one and the same.
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Read in July, 2008
I LOVE this collection. And I especially love this version because it has scans of Plath's writings of these poems. It's awesome to see where some of these poems originated.
Rereading these poems, some of them for like the umpteenth time, was cool, too.
I paid more attention to things that interest me, things that I can now talk about in a future work I'm developing that features some of my favorite writers, to include Plath.
Rereading these poems, some of them for like the umpteenth time, was cool, too.
I paid more attention to things that interest me, things that I can now talk about in a future work I'm developing that features some of my favorite writers, to include Plath.
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