Sylvia Plath is raw, brutal and bitter. That's a fact I suppose, right? But you see even in her darkest poem (for me) Lady Lazarus she manages to end the poem with an inspiring, uplifting way. The poem comprises ten stanzas of three lines each, known as tercets, and a final single line conclusion. In “The Moon and the Yew Tree” Sylvia Plath presents, not a vision of the picturesque English churchyard outside her bedroom window, but a mental landscape with more melancholy, more solemnity, more Gothic gloom than any representation of physical reality could ever have. 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'. 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.

Ariel by Sylvia Plath | Goodreads

Also, you can listen Sylvia Plath reading it here There are also other poems she reads from the collection of Ariel, look it up if you haven't already.I feel this collection is not for everyone specially the young readers and the beginners. They might find it rather difficult to interpret or may find most of the poems too dark. Then there is the moon imagery and the aura of inevitability. “ I simply cannot see where there is to get to.” The line, uttered with deadpan acumen, foreshadows the decree of finality in “Edge,” her final poem. “ Her bare/Feet seem to be saying:/We have come so far, it is over.” The bare feet that prophesy this end are the feet of the girl who walks through the moonlit landscape like God. Ariel was the name of one of Plath’s favorite horses. In the introduction to the restored edition of Ariel, her daughter Frieda explains that this is what her mother had told her. While it is legitimate to interpret Sylvia Plath’s poetry autobiographically, it can limit understanding. Her poetry also stands alone. One can read into Ariel possible references to women’s entrapment, motherhood, her failed marriage to Ted Hughes and her suicide. But the poem also has universal themes beyond the poet’s own life. That menace carries over into the next bit of description (of the noise) and shift, though another image, into wry helplessness (“I am not Caesar”); at which point a sense of proportion reasserts itself: “They can die … I am the am the owner.”

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

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.

Poetry in Extremis — an analysis of Ariel

It has to do with her extraordinary outburst of creative energy in the months before her death, culminating in the last few weeks when, as she herself wrote, she was at work every morning between four and seven, producing two sometimes three poems a day.

Ariel by Sylvia Plath Download - OceanofPDF [PDF] [EPUB] Ariel by Sylvia Plath Download - OceanofPDF

Baldwin, Emma. "Ariel by Sylvia Plath". Poem Analysis, https://poemanalysis.com/sylvia-plath/ariel/. Accessed 1 November 2023. It starts as simple narrative description; but as “dark” is repeated it is somehow made to reverberate inwardly, crystallizing into a metaphor which voices her underlying sense of threat. Hard cover. Condition: Very good. First Edition. Third impression. Third impression. Very good copy, no dj., clean inside text. For such a rare book, a good deal.In the next set of lines, Plath’s speaker is being catapulted past dark, or as the speaker brazenly refers to them, “N*****r-eye / Berries.” The use of the word “N****r” in this context was not meant as a racial slur but was rather used as a general descriptor of darkness. While it is not used to refer to a particular person or type of person in this stanza, today, it is still considered racist to do so. In Plath’s time, this was not so much the case. The poem begins to conclude as the reader comes to understand that this ride on Ariel is more than just an accidental brush with disaster; it is a wake-up call, an opportunity (that the speaker takes) to change her way of life. In the first tercet of the poem, the reader is given a very brief description of the situation in which the speaker has found herself. (While it is probable that the speaker is Plath herself, it is not 100% certain.) 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. Plath stares her observers down. She smirks in the faces of her detractors. And she boasts in a loud clear voice, a voice clear as a bell—or a bell jar. Plath is no penitent. Her confession is revelation, not repentance.