About this title: This all-new edition of Sylvia Plath's shattering final poems--with a foreword by Robert Lowell--will appear during National Poetry Month.
Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Harper Perennial Modern Classics
Date Published: 1999
ISBN-13:9780060931728ISBN:0060931728
Description: Good. Used item may show library stamps, stickers and marks. Buy with confidence-your satisfaction is guaranteed at B-Logistics! Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. Please note that Expedited shipping is not available at this time. read more
Binding: PAPERBACK
Publisher: Harper Perennial Modern Classics
ISBN-13:9780060931728ISBN:0060931728
Description: Very Good. 0060931728 **Softcover**--Exactly as pictured--EXACT ISBN MATCH--cover has shelf wear at tips of corners and minor cover crease or curl, minor Spine Creasing, No personalizations, No marks in the text at all. Tight and well bound. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Harper Perennial Modern Classics
Date Published: 1999
ISBN-13:9780060931728ISBN:0060931728
Description: New. Brand New! Buy with confidence-your satisfaction is guaranteed at B-Logistics! Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. Please note that Expedited shipping is not available at this time. read more
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Harpercollins
Date Published: 1999-03-01
ISBN-13:9780060931728ISBN:0060931728
Description: NEW. Softcover. From an inventory that is 100% brand-new, 100% direct from the publishers' distribution channel. We carry NO pre-owned, NO remaindered. We pack in CARDBOARD to ensure the pristine quality is maintained. (Bubble-wrap alone is NOT sufficient to protect from USPS equipment. ) Guaranteed brand-NEW, protected with CARDBOARD, your satisfaction is guaranteed. BKLUVID: 9780060931728. read more
Binding: PAPERBACK
Publisher: Harper Perennial Modern Classics
ISBN-13:9780060931728ISBN:0060931728
Description: Fair. 0060931728 Reading copy. Crease lines are visible along front cover. This book reflects visible wear to the edges and corners. read more
Edition: 1st Edition, 4th Printing
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: HarperCollins Publisher, New York, N. Y.
Date Published: 1999
ISBN-13:9780060931728ISBN:0060931728
Description: Fine. No Jacket. 8vo-over 7¾"-9¾" tall. "In this poems...Sylvia Plath becomes herself, becomes something umaginary, newly, wildly and stubtly created. " read more
"People ask me how to gauge good poetry. Not that i'm a king or anything, but it's a legitimate question. Really a good poem can be a badly written poem, it depends (for instance, there are poetic elements to propaganda that i like.) It all depends on how lyrical and fetching the image is, whether it can convey feeling. That's my idea, anyway. And as far as unnerving, moving but quiet intensity goes, Sylvia Plath takes the cake. She's incredible!
She entices different interpretations. She's ideal for tattoos. These are words that can be delivered with subtlety or on long streaming banners, for what would be dissent or consciousness. They are embodied with vague fervor, attributable to anything, to anyone with thought; perpetuation of the sting and comfort well.
The easiest way to understand this is the title poem, "Ariel". One reviewer thought it was about intimate sex until he found out it was about her horse, perhaps. I once heard it was about the state of Israel being formed:
God's lioness, How one we grow, Pivot of heels and knees!--The furrow
...
And now I Foam to wheat, a glitter of seas. The child's cry
Melts in the wall. And I Am the arrow
It's interesting, because the twist of subjectivity makes it personal. But truly, the poem is ethereal. It is about anything surrendered to the feeling this poem exhibits. That's it's power: to be a blanket. To be a snug reminder of the thing being reminded of. And she is the best froster of these life-cakes:
I could not run without having to run forever. The white hive is snug as a virgin, Sealing off her brood cells, her honey, and quietly humming.
&
I remember a blue eye, A briefcase of tangerines. This was a man, then! Death opened, like a black tree, blackly.
I survive the while, Arranging my morning. These are my fingers, this my baby. The clouds are a marriage dress, of that pallor.
There is a likeness to her life, the navigator. Her angst in dealing with her father and her self-consciousness with her womanhood. These are anchors and the ship is a cloud. It's really relying on the new thoughts, the birth (said with much intent)--BIRTH of thought. It is a woman who gives birth, all the energy and humiliating exposure and sensation and compassion delivered into the verb and phrase:
They can only carry their dead. 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 cold and too dumb to think.
Will the hive survive, will the gladiolas Succeed in banking their fires To enter another year? What will they taste of, the Christmas roses?
What you get from Sylvia Plath is an intense weight, a precautious reverence for whichever deity holds her down. And then, a ticklish thumb to prod and poke the existence of her burden--to explore the mortality of its intent, its amorphous structure, not explicitly aimed at her but affecting her anyway. She is wholly affected by the surrounding world, you feel this in puncture in tempo:
And seen my strangeness evaporate, Blue dew from dangerous skin. Will they hate me, These women who only scurry, Whose news is the open cherry, the open clover?
Her genius is that she is not plagued, but incited to grow. To play with the pain and urgency of the image. It is a folding of life, gentle but conscientious; and observant of the noble causes which bring the absolute into the home. She is a caregiver and as soft as a heart. I don't like that she killed herself, but it's beautiful too. She was such a strained flower:
The moon is no door. It is a face in its own right, White as a knuckle and terribly upset. It drags the sea after it like a dark crime; it is quiet With the O-gape of complete despair. I live here. Twice on Sunday, the bells startle the sky-- Eight great tongues affirming the Resurrection. At the end, they soberly bong out their names."
This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary. The trees of the mind are black. The light is blue. The grasses unload their griefs on my feet as if I were God, Prickling my ankles and murmuring of their humility. Fumey, spiritous mists inhabit this place Separated from my house by a row of headstones. I simply cannot see where there is to get to. The moon is no door. It is a face in its own right, White as a knuckle and terribly upset. It drags the sea after it like a dark crime; it is quiet With the O-gape of complete despair. I live here. Twice on Sunday, the bells startle the sky - Eight great tongues affirming the Resurrection. At the end, they soberly bong out their names. The yew tree points up. It has a Gothic shape. The eyes lift after it and find the moon. The moon is my mother. She is not sweet like Mary. Her blue garments unloose small bats and owls. How I would like to believe in tenderness - The face of the effigy, gentled by candles, Bending, on me in particular, its mild eyes. I have fallen a long way. Clouds are flowering Blue and mystical over the face of the stars. Inside the church, the saints will be all blue, Floating on their delicate feet over the cold pews, Their hands and faces stiff with holiness. The moon sees nothing of this. She is bald and wild. And the message of the yew tree is blackness - blackness and silence."
"1st draft of review: To be honest, I was a little nervous when I first grabbed the book from the library. This was Plath's last book and last poetry in her life, and many of the poems I had grown up with. I wanted to read this book very carefully. I wanted to make sure that nostalgia wouldn't cloud my review, or the huge fame that surrounds this book. But, thankfully, the more I read, the more those trivial worries faded and I was immersed in Plath. Sometimes the poems lose focus, sometimes they're not as strong as they could be, but they're fast and hard and breathless. They push the reader into who Plath was, into the sorrows and thoughtfulness. Her words aren't perfectly laid out; they're thrown about, bouncing off of each other until they make sense. They have no accuracy or precision, but always land a lucky strike. The whole thing really is brilliant and earns its right as a classic.
"Morning Song" kicked the book off and I was already intrigued by the speed and energy: "And now you try/Your handful of notes;/The clear vowels rise like balloons." In "Sheep in Fog", the slow and eerie tone captivated me: "They threaten/To let me through to a heaven/Starless and fatherless, a dark water."
When I got to the epic "Lady Lazarus", I began to get nervous again. A lot of times when things are reread as an adult, they're not as powerful, or disappointing. But I was pleased to still feel the weight and power of her words, renewed in my eyes because I'm an adult now. I could appreciate her sentiment more now.
"Tulips" was jumbled, restless, but utterly astounding and painful. I loved the power in the line, "I am nobody; I have nothing to do with explosions". "Cut" was disturbing with its whimsical/gory lines: "Little pilgrim,/The Indian's axed your scalp." I loved "The Night Dances" ("A smile fell in the grass./Irretrievable!" and "Through the black amnesias of heaven./Why am I given/These lamps, these planets/Falling like blessings, like flakes//Six-sided, white/On my eyes, my lips, my hair//Touching and melting./Nowhere."
"Berck-Place" was a little hard to follow, but was so emotional, that it was the pure emotion that pulled me through it: "Where are the eye-stones, yellow and valuable,//And the tongue, sapphire of ash" and "What is the name of that colour?-/Old blood of caked walls the sun heals,//Old blood of limb stumps, burnt hearts."
Her title poem, "Ariel", was fantastic and had an amazing build up to the end. It was followed by "Death & Co", another one I grew up with and was more in love with than ever: "Bastard/Masturbating a glitter,/He wants to be loved." In "Lesbos", she really flies off the handle - it read hot, fast, and ready to rip itself open. I didn't like it as much as some of her other poems, but still liked the energy. "Getting There" is epic and even when her poetry is jumbled and bruised, it had such bite and fierceness that it keeps you captive in its chaos, not letting you go.
"The Rival" is poignant and sympathetic, "If the moon smiles, she would resemble you./You leave the same impression/Of something beautiful, but annihilating." "Daddy" didn't move me as much as it did when I was a teenager and, after reading her book, I think there were many other poems that were a lot stronger that didn't get as much recognition as they should have. I liked, "You're" and "Fever 103*".
"The Bee Meeting" was a clunker for me and I struggled through it. It was the start of many bee poems to come, some that really stood out and some that left me a little bored and confused. "The Arrival of the Bee Box" really dazzled me, especially the last line.
"Little Fugue" has a really bad line (I thought): "Death opened, like a black tree, blackly." Seriously? I chuckled a little since it reminded me of bad on-line poetry. Really? At least this was the only line that bad. After the little lull it had, though, it picked up with "Years": "O God, I am not like you/In your vacuous black,/Stars stuck all over, bright stupid confetti./Eternity bores me,/I never wanted it."
Other fantastic ones included: "The Munich Mannequins", "Paralytic", "Poppies in July", and "Contusion."
"Edge" was frightening and tense, especially since I was nearing the end of the book, as if I was nearing the end of her life: "The woman is perfected./Her dead//Body wears the smile of accomplishment".
"Words" was the last poem, and lead the book to a slow trickle of the end, surprisingly quiet: "While/From the bottom of the pool, fixed stars/Govern a life."
Bottomline: Fantastic. Definitely a classic and will buy soon."
"This has happened several times now. Friends or family sitting around after dinner, and people begin reciting their favorite poems, in whole or in part. It's wonderful being around people who love the rhythm of language. I join in with my favorites from Sylvia Plath and, well...it kind of stops things. Stares and silence. Poems about suicide and father hatred can do that I guess. Yet these are the ones stuck in my head, not because I share the sentiments but because the poems are so bold, raw, soaring and beautiful.
At last in Naples Italy, late at night in the piazza with new friends, struggling with my Italian, I found a fellow soul who loved Plath as much as me. I recited several poems from Ariel to him -- in English of course, as he sat transported."
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