Ariel

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The next tercet gives the reader slightly more description. Plath’s speaker describes Ariel, the horse, as being “God’s lioness.” This is in an attempt to show the strength and power of the horse; she is a fearful being. Perhaps even more so than the speaker realized a few seconds ago. The two of them, rider and horse, are merging. They are growing together as “one.” In 2004, a new edition of Ariel was published which for the first time restored the selection and arrangement of the poems as Plath had left them; the 2004 edition also features a foreword by Frieda Hughes, who is the daughter of Plath and Ted Hughes. 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.

Ariel by Sylvia Plath - Poem Analysis Ariel by Sylvia Plath - Poem Analysis

When I was little and my dad used to dress up in his SS uniform I used to think he looked so smart and handsome. Of course, later, the penny dropped. Sylvia Plath has been, and probably always will be, a poet whom words hits me harder than many others’ ever will. Many of the poems in this collection are very familiar to me: I’ve shed tears over them, adored them, resented them, analyzed them to death and absorbed their every message in my heart over the course of years now. However, this was my first time reading this collection as a whole, as opposed to fragmented pieces over time.Merely trying to imagine the ways, in which this lady could have further overwhelmed the literary world had she lived a full life, gives me goosebumps.

Ariel by Sylvia Plath — a review and analysis - Literary Ariel by Sylvia Plath — a review and analysis - Literary

A Birthday Present shows the fragility of mental health, with the risk of losing it as invisible veils and the only wish being hale for one day as a birthday present remaining. Poetry is slow reading and must be read aloud, otherwise, I believe, one gets nothing from it. It must also be read over several days or weeks; I usually aim for no more than 3 poems a day when reading poetry. One in the morning, one in the afternoon and one in the evening. Reading aloud also shrinks the universe, and slows time. These poems resisted even 3 a day on some occasions, purely because of their nature and theme. The language is sometimes very beautiful but didn’t touch the heart for me in a way that The Bell Jar did: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.

Ariel by Sylvia Plath | Goodreads

It probably won't be right to draw comparisons between the Sylvia Plath who wrote Mad Girl's Love Song during her time at Smith's and the Sylvia Plath of Ariel. There's a world of difference between a Sylvia merely mourning lost love and a bitter, lonesome, vengeful, depressed Sylvia trying to live out the last vestiges of a tumultuous life by seeking a form of catharsis through these poems. And, indeed, a very personal set of poems these are. She is credited with advancing the genre of confessional poetry and is best known for two of her published collections The Colossus and Other Poems and Ariel, as well as The Bell Jar, a semi-autobiographical novel published shortly before her death. 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. Absolutely and whole heartedly… Not just to anyone interested in poetry, but to anyone interested in these topics as well.

How does a doomed poetess in her late twenties see death? Sylvia Plath was, in poetry at least, a stubbornly brave young woman, determined to face reality objectively, but at the same time neither to posture nor to cant. 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'. 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). The last works were something quite new in poetry. I wrote at the time in The Observer that Plath was “systematically probing that narrow, violent areas between the viable and the impossible, between experience which can be transmuted into poetry and that which is overwhelming.” I went out with this guy once and then I found out he liked to catch rabbits. So he was toast. I should have dimed the bastard.