Wagner, Erica. (2002). Ariel's Gift: Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath, and the Story of Birthday Letters. New York: W. W. Norton. ISBN 0-393-32301-3. She obtained a Fulbright Scholarship to study at Newnham College, one of the two women-only colleges of the University of Cambridge in England, where she continued actively writing poetry and publishing her work in the student newspaper Varsity. At Newnham, she studied with Dorothea Krook, whom she held in high regard. [23] She spent her first year winter and spring holidays traveling around Europe. [5] Career and marriage [ edit ] Plath's stay at McLean Hospital inspired her novel The Bell Jar You really shouldn't have taken the kittens and given them to the neighbours without a by-your-leave. I think I am going to pour sulphuric acid on your head while you are sleeping. I'll do it tonight. Yes. As she rides, she begins to lose pieces of herself; she is shedding her past life and “stringencies” and becoming something new. She is merging with Ariel and becoming the “arrow” that will take her to a new life. The poem ends with the two charging on into the burning sun/future that awaits them.

Tabor, Stephen. (1988). Sylvia Plath: An Analytical Bibliography. London: Mansell. ISBN 0-7201-1830-1. Clark, Heather L. (2020). Red Comet: The short life and blazing art of Sylvia Plath (Firsted.). New York: Knopf. ISBN 978-0-307-96116-7. OCLC 1128061536.Hughes, Ted (April 20, 1989). "The Place Where Sylvia Plath Should Rest in Peace". The Guardian. London.

Beginning in October 1962, Plath experienced a great burst of creativity and wrote most of the poems on which her reputation now rests, writing at least 26 of the poems of her posthumous collection Ariel during the final months of her life. [28] [33] [34] In December 1962, she returned alone to London with their children, and rented, on a five-year lease, a flat at 23 Fitzroy Road—only a few streets from the Chalcot Square flat. William Butler Yeats once lived in the house, which bears an English Heritage blue plaque for the Irish poet. Plath was pleased by this fact and considered it a good omen.To begin with, the name Ariel refers to three different things: Sylvia Plath's own horse, which she loved to ride; the androgynous sprite from Shakespeare's play The Tempest; and Jerusalem, which was also called Ariel in the Old Testament. Critics who discuss Shakespeare's Ariel tend to read Plath's poem as an exploration of poetic creativity and process. Shakespeare's Ariel embodies this power, and Plath may be attempting to fashion a metaphor for the process of writing a poem. The poet begins in darkness, but is then hauled along by the inspiration of poetic language. The poem begins in passivity, but moves into one of control and power. The critic Susan van Dyne notes how the poet's self-transformation is manifest in her use of complete sentences, which begins midway through the poem. She becomes both male and female, horse and rider, poet and creative force, arrow and target. She is not merely a captive of the creative drive, but its agent.

The collection is divided into two sections. The first section contains poems that Plath wrote in the months leading up to her death, while the second section contains poems that she wrote earlier in her career. The poems in the first section are known for their rawness and intensity, and for their exploration of death and suicide. The poems in the second section are more reflective and introspective, and deal with themes of identity and gender. Look, let's get this straight. I am a tree, you are a woman. We can never be together, not in the way you'd like, anyway. Plus, you're kind of irritating. Middlebrook, Diane. (2003). Her Husband: Hughes and Plath– a Marriage. New York: Viking. ISBN 0-670-03187-9 The poem is written in three-line stanzas, known as tercets. The final line is the exception to this, bringing the poem to a conclusion. The speaker begins their ride in 'stasis darkness' and 'substanceless blue', which suggests the early hours of the morning. That the speaker is in stasis means they are not yet moving; however, they see the blue of the sky emerging and mountains (tor) in the distance.Taylor, Tess (February 12, 2013). "Reading Sylvia Plath 50 Years After Her Death Is A Different Experience". NPR . Retrieved July 11, 2017. The Colossus(1960) and the posthumous Ariel(1965) show a remarkable development. The first is a largely personal poetry, intense and delicately rendered, usually dealing with the relationship of the poet and a perceived object from which she seeks illumination, ‘that rare, random descent.’ Grady, Constance (January 22, 2019). "Sylvia Plath wrote this short story in 1952. It's now out in print for the first time". Vox. Archived from the original on November 12, 2020 . Retrieved January 12, 2021. Unpublished Plath sonnet goes online tomorrow". Associated Press. October 31, 2006. Archived from the original on September 26, 2014 . Retrieved April 29, 2012. Literary essayist William Davis describes "Ariel" as one of Plath's "most highly regarded, most often criticized, and most complicated poems". [3] The poem has been critiqued by numerous literary figures [3] and remains immortalized as the title poem to her most famous collection Ariel.

Anemona Hartocollis (March 8, 2018). "Sylvia Plath, a Postwar Poet Unafraid to Confront Her Own Despair". The New York Times. Archived from the original on March 8, 2018 . Retrieved March 9, 2018. Hemphill, Stephanie. (2007). Your Own, Sylvia: A Verse Portrait of Sylvia Plath. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 0-375-83799-X. Wagner-Martin, Linda. (2003). Sylvia Plath: A Literary Life. Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 0-333-63114-5. Bonhams: Plath (Sylvia) Three Women. A Monologue for Three Voices..." www.bonhams.com. Archived from the original on January 22, 2019 . Retrieved January 21, 2019.

Rose, Jacqueline (February 1, 1998). "The happy couple". The Guardian. London. Archived from the original on March 12, 2017. Stevenson, Anne (1990) [1989]. Bitter Fame: A Life of Sylvia Plath. London: Penguin. ISBN 0-14-010373-2. By the time Heinemann published her first collection, The Colossus and Other Poems in the UK in late 1960, Plath had been short-listed several times in the Yale Younger Poets book competition and had her work printed in Harper's, The Spectator and The Times Literary Supplement. All the poems in The Colossus had been printed in major U.S. and British journals, and she had a contract with The New Yorker. [57] It was, however, her 1965 collection Ariel, published posthumously, on which Plath's reputation essentially rests. "Often, her work is singled out for the intense coupling of its violent or disturbed imagery and its playful use of alliteration and rhyme." [10] Strangeways, Al; Plath, Sylvia (Autumn 1996). " 'The Boot in the Face': The Problem of the Holocaust in the Poetry of Sylvia Plath" (PDF). Contemporary Literature. 37 (3): 370–390. doi: 10.2307/1208714. JSTOR 1208714. S2CID 164185549. Archived from the original (PDF) on February 12, 2020.