Scan barcode
binchsensei's review against another edition
3.25
Really like this edition with the manuscript and early drafts.
jeanbigurra's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
mysterious
reflective
sad
medium-paced
4.5
akankshya107's review against another edition
5.0
Stasis in darkness.
Then the substanceless blue
Pour of tor and distances
- Ariel, Sylvia Plath
I fell back in love with Sylvia Plath with these fascinatingly complex and morbid poems - but I think I fell in love with Frieda Hughes along the way, with her beautifully composed foreword, eloquent interview, and her singular vitriolic poem at the end of this collection. So I'm going to review them both.
If the moon smiled, she would resemble you.
You leave the same impression
Of something beautiful, but annihilating.
- The Rival, Sylvia Plath
I have over a hundred highlights from this book, a thousand new brain cells in my head that spawned to try to understand the poems and a newfound appreciation for poetry anthologies. Each poem by Plath drips raw creativity, passion, and depressive emotion (and savage vitriol towards her adulterous husband, her parents, and society). In the collection, they drill home the beauty of these emotions compounded and referenced across poems, with complex imagery, which constructs a landscape as inventive as any fantasy. Frieda Hughes said it best:
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 indictments of the world, vicious at times, and hold nothing back. They are both autobiographical and masterful scene construction, hiding her message in fiction. At other times, her poems are sinisterly prophetic of her future, of the carbon monoxide that caused her death, the year that she died, and the morbid voyeurism that will follow her story for decades. Of course, her poems include loving praises of her children, nature, and animals, but these often co-exist with darker subtexts in the very next verse. There are truly worlds hidden in this collection, which are a delight to sink into. I can't include all my favorite verses here, because that would be a couple hundred lines - but here's one that is 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 masterful poet in her own right, ends this edition with her poem deriding the 2003 film based on Sylvia Plath. It is a beautiful, heartfelt, and wrathful poem based on her hatred of the drudging up of her mother's suicide by the media.
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
5/5 beautiful stars.
Then the substanceless blue
Pour of tor and distances
- Ariel, Sylvia Plath
I fell back in love with Sylvia Plath with these fascinatingly complex and morbid poems - but I think I fell in love with Frieda Hughes along the way, with her beautifully composed foreword, eloquent interview, and her singular vitriolic poem at the end of this collection. So I'm going to review them both.
If the moon smiled, she would resemble you.
You leave the same impression
Of something beautiful, but annihilating.
- The Rival, Sylvia Plath
I have over a hundred highlights from this book, a thousand new brain cells in my head that spawned to try to understand the poems and a newfound appreciation for poetry anthologies. Each poem by Plath drips raw creativity, passion, and depressive emotion (and savage vitriol towards her adulterous husband, her parents, and society). In the collection, they drill home the beauty of these emotions compounded and referenced across poems, with complex imagery, which constructs a landscape as inventive as any fantasy. Frieda Hughes said it best:
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 indictments of the world, vicious at times, and hold nothing back. They are both autobiographical and masterful scene construction, hiding her message in fiction. At other times, her poems are sinisterly prophetic of her future, of the carbon monoxide that caused her death, the year that she died, and the morbid voyeurism that will follow her story for decades. Of course, her poems include loving praises of her children, nature, and animals, but these often co-exist with darker subtexts in the very next verse. There are truly worlds hidden in this collection, which are a delight to sink into. I can't include all my favorite verses here, because that would be a couple hundred lines - but here's one that is 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 masterful poet in her own right, ends this edition with her poem deriding the 2003 film based on Sylvia Plath. It is a beautiful, heartfelt, and wrathful poem based on her hatred of the drudging up of her mother's suicide by the media.
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
5/5 beautiful stars.
clairescotia's review against another edition
4.0
Not a huge Plath fan, she doesn’t speak to me or my experience, but I appreciated her daughter’s foreword, copies of the manuscript and other information added to this book. Even if I don’t always connect with the writer/author/whatever, I appreciate the cultural impact and am always fascinated in them as a person
krythstal's review against another edition
3.0
me encantaría que me hubiese gustado más y seguro que 'the bell jar' va a ser un antes y después para mí pero siendo honestos creo que 'ariel' es un caso de no eres tú; soy yo.
alettarrr's review against another edition
2.0
Had to read it for my literature class. There were some poems I kinda liked, but not a lot. Most of them seemed just really vague to me.
However, it did make me realise that I like rhyme and some sort of metre in my poems, so that's something.
And the images Plath tried to paint were not vivid enough for me.
However, it did make me realise that I like rhyme and some sort of metre in my poems, so that's something.
And the images Plath tried to paint were not vivid enough for me.
kitmacneil's review
2.0
There is so much to say about this book. There were a number of delightfully jarring passages and it possesses a biting starkness that I admire, yet sadly the positives of this collection were outweighed by her racist imagery. The persistent use of the words Africa, black, negro, the “n-word,” Jew, Indian, and many others as a means of connecting the feminine experience to othering reveals more about Plath’s own racist underpinnings than the sexism she is trying to write about.
It was very disappointing, as I don’t remember coming across these comparisons in her other works (Bell Jar, Colossus and other poems), but I suppose I’ll have to scrutinize those a bit more closely.
It was very disappointing, as I don’t remember coming across these comparisons in her other works (Bell Jar, Colossus and other poems), but I suppose I’ll have to scrutinize those a bit more closely.
moon_lightganeing's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
4.0