Hooray! You have added the first book to your bookshelf. Check it out now!
[−]
  • Search Digit-count Valid ISBN Invalid ISBN Valid Barcode Invalid Barcode
Blog this item

Ariel

By Sylvia Plath, Frieda Hughes (Preface)

(52)

| Paperback | 9780571236091

Like Ariel?
Join aNobii to see if your friends read it, and discover similar books!

Sign up for free

Book Description

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, snContinue

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

Critics

  • Ariel: The Restored Text by Sylvia Plath

    The confessional women poets of the 50s and 60s like Sexton and Plath are the star witnesses desired by feminists to prove the inequalities of sex. However such critics tend to also feel uneasy about the personae of such poets. As Adrienne Rich said ... (read full critics)

    readysteadybook published on Sat, 12 Mar 2005

2 Reviews

Login or Sign Up to write a review

  • I lay my ear to furious Latin.
    I am not a Caesar.
    I have simply ordered a box of maniacs.
    They can be sent back.
    They can die, I need feed them nothing, I am the owner.

    I wonder how hungry they are.
    I wonder if they would forget me
    If I just undid the locks and stood ... (continue)

    I lay my ear to furious Latin.
    I am not a Caesar.
    I have simply ordered a box of maniacs.
    They can be sent back.
    They can die, I need feed them nothing, I am the owner.

    I wonder how hungry they are.
    I wonder if they would forget me
    If I just undid the locks and stood back and turned into a tree.

    detail from “The Arrival of the Bee Box” by Sylvia Plath

    Is this helpful?

    Niklas Pivic said on Apr 30, 2010 | Add your feedback

  • Il mondo reale, ma come non sapevamo che fosse

    The tulips should be behind bars like dangerous animals...

    Is this helpful?

    Paolo Cavallo said on Feb 18, 2009 | Add your feedback

Book Details

Improve data of this book

Prices Change currency & sellers

ISBN Edition List Sale Seller
9780571236091 Paperback $16.38 $12.92 The Book Depository
Other editions →
Added to Shelf Added to Wish List

Inline Translation Mode

Left click to navigate, right click to translate.

inline translation guide

or close

Inline translation is not ready for this page yet.

Inline translation mode.

Share this page with your friends.

The viewport has not loaded.