I loved this version far better than the one that was originally published by her husband, Ted Hughes.

Her symbols and recurring themes truly stand out. There is death, represented perhaps by the mausoleums. Purity and whiteness, which might signify a kind of untainted state. Red, maybe denoting passion or danger. Flowers, a symbol of beauty and fragility. The moon, often associated with mystery and the subconscious. Blackness, perhaps representing the unknown or the dark side of the human psyche. And then there is rebirth, a powerful theme that ties it all together.

It's truly stunning how I feel more in tune with her vision. I can fully appreciate experiencing her work from this perspective, the way she herself chose and arranged these elements. It shows her in complete control of her artistry.

Although Frieda explains her father's editorial decisions, it is understandable that she would defend him. However, it is not entirely satisfactory. The overall energy feels different. Some of the poems hit hard, leaving a lasting impact. But as Sylvia always circled back to the symbolism of winter to spring, it is felt and experienced just as she meant it here.

First review

Every time I don't love some book that other people adore, I experience a range of emotions. I feel bad, as if I'm somehow lacking. Or perhaps I think I'm stupid because I didn't fully understand it. Maybe I even consider myself a heartless gal, believing that I must not have a soul since I don't go crazy with excitement after reading it.

I've always been intrigued by Plath's life. It was so intense and tragic. I delved into some information about it, and it seems that all of her experiences are reflected in her poetry. Her poetry is intimate, unsettling, and brutally honest.
So, I truly liked a couple of her poems, and the rest were just okay. I'm not a die-hard fan yet, but it was still a good read. The actual rating I would give is 3.5 stars.
The next step for me is to read "The Bell Jar". I think perhaps I should have started with that one first.
Feb 05, 14

Also on my blog.

Final rating: 3.5 stars


Last May, I embarked on a cruise to Alaska with my parents, brother, and grandfather. The book I was reading at that time was of poor quality. Fortunately for me, there was an incredibly cool library on the ship.

I'm going to digress a bit here, but I find it rather lame that a cruise ship has a library while the island I live on has not had one since I was eight.

Anyway, getting back to the library. I picked up this interesting book called The Bell Jar. I enjoyed it so much that it became one of my favorites. Reading "Mad Girl's Love Song" piqued my interest in Plath's poetry, so reading this was somewhat inevitable.

This book was perhaps longer than necessary. All the poems in the first part are repeated in the second part, which is a facsimile of Plath's manuscript with all her edits and scribbles. The first part is just like the second part, except it's corrected. Many of the poems in this book didn't make sense to me until I analyzed them. Most caught my attention, but few held it. "The Jailor" and "A Birthday Present" were so interesting that they made me eager to know how they would end. "Lady Lazarus" took me back to the first time I read "Mad Girl's Love Song", while "Daddy" is very resentful and gripping. I also adored "Lesbos", "Elm", and (in some ways) "Wintering". I don't think I'm really inclined towards poetry, but Plath does an outstanding job even when you don't understand what she's talking about and have to add "analysis" to the end of every Google search. What can be said about this book is that it truly sets a certain tone throughout. It's a bit dark and depressing, but at the same time rich and full of emotion. You have to be in the right mood to read it, but it's always beautiful. I usually only keep five-star books on my bookshelf, but despite its flaws, this book had quite a few gems, so it's a keeper.

There are two adjectives that are commonly used by those who haven't read this book to describe it. It is often said to be a "feminist" book and a "depressing" one. I believe these two not-quite-accurate labels emerge so frequently because Sylvia Plath, unfortunately, is better known to the general public for being female and having psychological troubles rather than for being an accomplished poet.

This is not an agenda-driven book, nor is it a book targeted only at a select audience. Above all, it is not a depressing book. "Ariel" contains poems of awe like "Morning Song", poems of biting irony such as "The Applicant", and poems of such intense exhilaration that it blurs the line between the desire to live and the desire to die, like "Ariel". However, in all of these poems, Plath's fighting spirit is evident. The anger, the rage, and the "bite" in the poems about her reaction to her husband's adultery seem to me to be the mark of someone who is fighting so hard to reclaim her life because she so desperately wants to live. These are not the poems of someone who has given up and resigned herself to defeat. "I am too pure for you or anyone," she asserts, perhaps with a defiant head-toss, in one poem. In another poem, which tells of a swarm of bees that kamikaze-attacked a man (seemingly to punish him for his "lies"), she says, "They thought death was worth it, but I/Have a self to recover, a queen." This "queen" of the bees is transparently a symbol for Plath's inner self, which had hitherto been dormant beneath the heavy tarps of depression. It is described in language that is harrowingly alive, evoking metaphors of healing and resurrection: "Now she is flying/More terrible than she ever was, red/Scar in the sky, red comet/Over the engine that killed her--/The mausoleum, the wax house." In short, these are forcefully galloping, life-affirming poems. Just as some people lose their battles against cancer or other diseases, Plath ultimately lost her battle against depression, but these poems suggest that it wasn't for lack of trying. The final poem in this restored edition speaks of how the battle was a close one, with the outcome still in question until the very end: "This is the time of hanging on.... Will the hive survive, will the gladiolas/Succeed in banking their fires/To enter another year?/What will they taste of, the Christmas roses?/The bees are flying. They taste the spring."

Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.

This profound and somewhat haunting statement sets the tone for a complex exploration. Dying is often seen as a final and inevitable end, but here it is presented as an art form. It makes one wonder what it means to do dying "exceptionally well." Does it imply acceptance, grace, or perhaps a unique perspective on the process?

The accompanying image, a compressed photo of something titled "Secret," adds an air of mystery. The alt text "Secret" leaves us curious about what lies beneath the surface. Is it a secret related to the concept of dying as an art? Or is it a secret about the person who made this statement?

The final sentence, "I really wanted to love this, but it was just too depressing for my taste," shows a conflict within the speaker. There is an initial desire to embrace and appreciate whatever this is, but the overwhelming sense of depression gets in the way. It makes us question our own ability to face and understand the darker aspects of life and death. Overall, this piece leaves us with much to think about and a lingering sense of unease.

Sylvia Plath is truly one of my all-time favorite writers, and Ariel holds a special place as one of my most beloved collections of poetry.

The lines "Dying is an art, like everything else. I do it exceptionally well" are both haunting and powerful.

The poems in this collection are predominantly centered around the themes of sadness, suicide, and death. It's not the kind of reading that brings immediate joy, yet I am constantly amazed by the sheer force and the eerie nature of Plath's words. Since poetry is one of the most personal forms of expression, we can view the poems in Ariel as a captivating glimpse into Plath's mind. Considering that she took her own life shortly after these poems were written and compiled, it's devastating to assume that feelings of sadness and thoughts of death were at the forefront of her mind during that time, and this is clearly evident in the various poems.

I am an enormous fan of Plath, and it would be nearly impossible for me to discuss every single poem I adore in this collection, as I truly cherish them all. I discover such beauty in her words, even when she is penning about the brutality and the sheer awfulness of life. There is a profound and deep sadness within the beauty she describes. I find it to be both utterly fascinating and a work of genius.

Some of the highlights for me include the famous "Daddy", "Lady Lazarus", "Elm", "Ariel", "Medusa", and "Wintering". Each of these poems has its own unique charm and power, leaving a lasting impression on me.

Stasis in darkness.
Then the substanceless blue
Pour of tor and distances
- Ariel, Sylvia Plath

I found myself once again deeply enamored with Sylvia Plath through her captivatingly intricate and macabre poems. However, along the way, I also fell in love with Frieda Hughes. Her exquisitely composed foreword, articulate interview, and her unique and scathing poem at the conclusion of this collection truly charmed me. Thus, I am compelled to review both of them.

If the moon smiled, she would resemble you.
You leave the same impression
Of something beautiful, but annihilating.
- The Rival, Sylvia Plath

This book is filled with over a hundred highlights, and it has given me a newfound admiration for poetry anthologies. Each of Plath's poems oozes with raw creativity, passion, and depressive emotions (alongside savage vitriol towards her unfaithful husband, her parents, and society). In this collection, these emotions are emphasized and referenced across the poems, with complex imagery that constructs a landscape as imaginative as any in a fantasy. Frieda Hughes put it perfectly when she said:
She used every emotional experience as if it were a scrap of material that could be pieced together to make a wonderful dress; she wasted nothing of what she felt, and when in control of those tumultuous feelings she was able to focus and direct her incredible poetic energy to great effect.

Plath's poems are searing condemnations of the world, at times vicious and unreserved. They are both autobiographical and masterfully constructed scenes, hiding her message within fiction. At other times, her poems are sinistrally prophetic of her future, of the carbon monoxide that led to her death, the year of her passing, and the morbid voyeurism that would follow her story for decades. Of course, her poems also include loving tributes to her children, nature, and animals, but these often coexist with darker undertones in the very next verse. There are truly entire worlds hidden within this collection, and it is a joy to immerse oneself in them. I cannot include all of my favorite verses here, as that would amount to several hundred lines. But here is one that is both chilling in its premonition and beautiful in its diction.
They are carbon monoxide.
Sweetly, sweetly I breathe in,
Filling my veins with invisible, with the million
Probable motes that tick the years off my life.
- A Birthday Present, Sylvia Plath

Frieda Hughes, a talented poet in her own right, concludes this edition with her poem lambasting the 2003 film based on Sylvia Plath. It is a beautiful, heartfelt, and angry poem born out of her hatred for the media's dredging up of her mother's suicide.
They are killing her again.
She said she did it
One year in every ten,
Now they want to make a film
For anyone lacking the ability
To imagine the body, head in the oven,
Orphaning children. Then
It can be rewound
So they can watch her die
Right from the beginning again.
- My Mother, Frieda Hughes

This collection truly deserves 5/5 beautiful stars.

I've been grappling with the challenge of structuring my thoughts and responses regarding Plath. So, here's a somewhat random list of the things that crossed my mind while perusing Ariel. To all the Plath enthusiasts out there: please know that I hold Plath in high regard as a poet. My rating merely reflects my restricted understanding of her work, and I'm fully cognizant of the subjectivity of taste. However...

1. What precisely makes Sylvia Plath so remarkable? I'm not being sarcastic here. I truly want to know what her literary innovations are, what qualifies her to be deemed great. Is it formal invention? The subject matter? What is it? Ezra Pound is considered great because he instigated a literary paradigm shift from the stodgy Victorian poetry to something fresh, exciting, and new. Chaucer is great due to his remarkable command of Middle English and his diverse influence on other great writers (Pound himself being one of them). How did Plath breathe new life into poetry? More importantly: did she? In the book, I don't observe much in the way of traditional forms (sonnets, sestinas, and the like), and a significant portion of it is—or appears to be—free verse. Nevertheless, I believe there are other poets who can pen far superior free verse than Plath (Pound, H.D., Eliot, Ashbery, Jarrell, and the like). So, in terms of craftsmanship, how is Plath great? Why should we read her?

2. Many people, especially Americans like myself, have an obsession with the role of the Artist Martyr, a young soul brimming with tortured creativity who meets a tragic end, leaving us to wonder what masterpieces they might have produced had they lived longer (I'm looking at you, Jimi). To me, Plath's psychological issues and her untimely, disturbing death have enshrouded her work in a kind of perceived mystery and haunting allure. Or rather, I should say that Plath fans have deliberately endowed her work with such a façade. Quite frankly, I don't comprehend it. What if Plath had lived a long, healthy life? Would this impact the way we read her work? Should it?

3. I keep hearing that one shouldn't write about love or death. This is absurd. I think one can write about either, as long as the writing is outstanding, original, and innovative in some way. Plath frequently writes about death, but in a manner that I found inexplicably dull, which is rather ironic given the realities of her life. Her work on death sometimes borders on a juvenile fixation, like a teenager just coming to terms with her own mortality, yet having little of substance to convey about the entire experience.

4. Plath's work struck me as more cerebral than emotional, more focused on the mind and its idiosyncrasies than on any other aspect of human experience. That's okay. And perhaps this accounts for some of her style. Is she deliberately attempting to disorient the reader, to use her art to mimic psychological instability? I like this concept. I like it because it offers some validation for her form, her voice, her unusual juxtaposition of images. But then, why, after finishing each and every poem, did I feel nothing, think nothing, except for a vague suspicion that I had just squandered a significant amount of time? Perhaps I'm simply uncultured and uninitiated?

5. When I read something that resonates with me, it does so because I've learned something, and not just about the story or the characters or the craft of writing. All that is wonderful. But it resonates with me because I've learned something about myself. When I completed this book, I spent several days reflecting on it. I realized that I had learned nothing, gleaned nothing from Plath's work that enhanced my perception of myself or others, that didn't prompt new ideas or explore emotional depths. The entire experience felt flat, lifeless, disjointed, incoherent, and, I admit, rather exasperating.

I thought her book, The Bell Jar, was far superior to any of these poems. It made me almost wish that she had dedicated more of her time and talent to being a novelist rather than a poet. Oh well, such is life.

To be fair, perhaps two of these poems stood out to me in a positive manner. However, the rest seemed very strange and random. Honestly speaking, I simply didn't have the same connection to her poems as I did with her novel, and that was a bit of a letdown.

Overall, if you have the time, these poems are definitely worth checking out. But don't go in with the expectations of finding something on par with Emily Dickinson or other great poets, because you're likely to be disappointed.

“You are the only solid reality and envy piles up on you.”

This book completes the list of all that I managed to read this year. I very much wanted to close this reading year with such an important book that is the collection of poems by my beloved Plath. Poems that, as Plath herself mentions in the appendix, “were written at 4 am, in that unwavering, almost blue hour before the rooster crows, before the baby cries, before the clanging music of the milkman...”. In short, there where Plath sat alone, facing her undeniable talent, her thoughts, often dark, which nevertheless gave us truly, terrifying poems, with incredible imagery drawn from places where few can reach. Just before she entered the costume, the role that she was forced by herself, but also by her experiences to enter, oppressed by the musts of society. For me, poems like “Daddy”, “Lady Lazarus”, “Nick and the Candlestick” and “Death and Co.” are simply masterpieces.

This edition is delightful, giving the reader the possibility to read the poems both in English and in the excellent Greek translation, while the introduction by Plath's daughter is the cherry on the cake. A book that will truly adorn my library...

I don't even begin to pretend that I understood all of these poems, or all of any single one of them. But I have an intense love for them. The sounds they create, the vivid images they paint. The fierceness within them often leaves me breathless. Her depictions of the ordinary life of a mother stand in stark contrast to the violence, the hooks, the hisses, the shrieks, and the worms. However, this edition holds a special significance as it has restored Plath's original plan for her collection. Her tragic suicide meant that Ted Hughes was in control of the editorial decisions for publication, and unfortunately, he did not adhere to her wishes. Another aspect that makes this edition so remarkable is the forward and the interviews with Plath's and Hughes's daughter, Frieda. She presents a very different account of her famous parents than what we have constructed in our own imaginations. She speaks of a loving father who made efforts to keep the memory of Sylvia alive in the minds and hearts of her motherless children. Frieda even includes one of her own poems that echoes lines from her mother's work.

Some of the pieces that I especially adored are: 'Morning Song', 'The Applicant', 'Lady Lazarus', 'Tulips', 'The Jailor', 'Letter in November', 'Wintering', and the similes in 'You're'.

There are also several lines that deeply resonate with me. Such as “The wind gagging my mouth with my own hair”, “The moon lays a hand on my forehead/Blank-faces and mum as a nurse”, “Dying is an art, like everything else/I do it exceptionally well”, “The tulips are too excitable, it is winter here”, “I am myself. That is not enough”, “…the train shrieks echo like souls on hooks”, “Loveless as the multiplication tables”, “Viciousness in the kitchen/The potatoes hiss”, “The courage of the shut mouth, in spite of artillery.”, “Your wishes/Hiss at my sins.”, “Your dissatisfactions…/arrive through the mailslot with loving regularity”, and "Winter is for women."

I don't know how many times I will read and re-read the poems of Ariel and think that they are the most exciting things produced during the last years of the 1950s. Because he says a lot about the poetic construction starting from Sylvia's first adolescent poems or even the "among the ruins" that marks the beginning of the "collected poems". And he is so dialogical with Sexton's "to bedlam" that I imagine them reading each other violently.

I will read many more times and say that I don't like the translation we have today hahaha. If anyone is interested, read some poems translated by Marina Della Vale https://www.revistas.usp.br/clt/artic....

The works of Ariel hold a special allure for me. Each time I engage with them, I uncover new layers of meaning and beauty. The way he weaves words together to create powerful images and emotions is truly remarkable. It's as if he is painting a vivid picture in my mind with every line.

Moreover, the connection he has with the works of others, like Sexton, adds another dimension to his poetry. The dialogical nature of their works makes me wonder what kind of conversations they might have had if they could have met.

Despite my love for Ariel's poetry, I do have some reservations about the current translation. I feel that something is lost in the translation process, and I long for a more accurate and faithful rendition. However, I still encourage others to explore his works through the available translations, especially those by Marina Della Vale. Maybe they will discover the same magic that I have found in Ariel's poetry.