It’s a problematic collection on a number of levels; racial slurs are used fast and loose and on more than one occasion, Plath makes an audacious claim of solidarity with the Jews of the Holocaust. Whilst her imagery and word choice are stunningly original, I could not help but find some strains and devices a little repetitive, namely triadic repetitions e.g. ' wars, wars, wars'. The language is sometimes very beautiful but didn’t touch the heart for me in a way that The Bell Jar did:

Ariel by Sylvia Plath | Poetry Foundation

The myth, then, is a diversion from the objective achievement. For the very reason that it has an originality that keeps it apart from any poetic fads.This is poetry to carefully read and which chilled me even though I largely took it to me during a heatwave on a train to Versailles. I got one of those 48 hour bugs. That's why he's still alive. If I had any strength in my limbs I would have sulphuric-acided his head last night. Plath’s poetry, considered part of the “confessional movement,” was influenced by Robert Lowell as well as by her friend, the poet Anne Sexton, who also explored dark themes and death in her work (and who, like Plath, committed suicide). Men are like big babies that drink beer and want you to wear high class lingerie. Okay, that's not much of a secret.

Ariel by Sylvia Plath | Goodreads Ariel by Sylvia Plath | Goodreads

I fear that I cannot be objective when I am writing (or talking) about Sylvia Plath because she speaks directly to my heart. I can relate to her poems, I can feel them.

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There is often a temptation to detect fanciful references that prefigure Plath’s suicide by asphyxiation (God knows, there’s enough mention of ‘carbon monoxide’), but to do so unfairly distils Ariel into autobiographical poetry. I prefer to read this as testament to Plath’s wonderfully morbid curiosity. Upon analyzing the collection of poems along with considering her other work, it is concluded that like her other poems, "Ariel" is "highly autobiographical, psychological and confessional poem." [5] Additional poems in her manuscript [ edit ]

Ariel by Sylvia Plath | Waterstones

Either disturbed by some haunting, otherworldly presence or simply because of the purring birdsong I awake on the early hours of this winter morning and I grab Sylvia Plath’s collection of poems Ariel, which is calling to me from my bedside table. Still drowsy with soft shades of silky sheets printed on my cheeks my glassy eyes try to focus on stray words that chop like sharpened axes. Streams of unleashed running waters wash over me but fail to cleanse my soul. I am unsettled. Disturbing images flood the still pond of my mind, I feel faint visualizing drops of blood soaking weaved carpets of fluffy snowflakes drawing impossibly flowery forms on shimmering innocence, red tulips opening their moist petals aroused by treacherous dew at dawn, warmth bitterly frozen in morbid colors. They are difficult, uncertain poems, some extremely obscure and all primarily dependent on central images. Formal rhythm and the logic of rational statement are both dispensed with, the main principle of organization being a free-association technique.

A 1965 review of Ariel by Sylvia Plath

In Ariel, the beauty of craft remains even as it reveals the fissures growing in the poet’s psyche. According to the Penguin Companion to American Literature:

Ariel by Sylvia Plath, First Edition - AbeBooks Ariel by Sylvia Plath, First Edition - AbeBooks

She will exhume the past, but before she does she would like to talk price. There is a charge, after all. It is betrayal that hurts the most, not the scrutiny of the multitude. Looking out into the audience, there is only a sea of interchangeable faces. They are of no consequence. It is the betrayal of a loved and trusted one that crushes. To believe in one, to have faith in one—just one, is to risk all.Some of her images take on forceful private meanings. Poppies are associated with violence and with the malignant blood cells of hemophilia, the Medusa head with the reality of death, bees with the life of the soul after death. And I force myself not to think of her tragic suicide and her mental condition when she wrote these verses. I choose to concentrate on the writer, on the genius, on the creativity which enables suffering to become universal works of art that offer comfort and redemption, on the flowing current of feeling rather than on the scabrous speculations hiding behind Sylvia’s supposed products of madness. Truth is I don’t want to know. Some things are best left unsought, some things need to be sensed rather than known, so I decide to surrender to Sylvia’s acidic voice and let the walls of this cage dissolve away and for the briefest of moments, I taste the undistinguishable flavor of exhilarating freedom. My experience with the entire collection was simultaneously very familiar and yet a little different. I got to revisit some of my old favorites, which still haven’t lost their magic over me. I’d love to explain why I love each and every one of them, and what they mean to me, however, I’m choosing to only mention some of them briefly. Most poetry is best experienced “blind” yourself, and if you are interested in reading some analyses, there are many out there that do a way better job than I ever could. If you want me to, I’d much rather direct any of you who are interested there, than do a butch-job Technically, the basic difference between the earlier and later poems is that the first were written for the eye, and the last for the ear. They need to be read aloud; they are original because she discovered in them her own speaking voice, her own identity. I like to commit suicide like some people like to visit their grandparents. You really don't want to, it's kind of a drag and there's nothing to do there, but you just feel you have to because you're a good person.