| Title | : | The Collected Poems |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0808595040 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780808595045 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages | : | 349 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 1981 |
| Awards | : | Pulitzer Prize Poetry (1982) |
The Collected Poems Reviews
-
“Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
and I eat men like air.” -
Astute, ironic, and intense, Plath's poems brood over a wide range of topics, through language that's cutting in its precision. The poet's sharp intellect consistently is interesting, but her early collections read as less forceful and breathtaking than her later ones; with age, Plath moved away from the stiff but accomplished formalism of her early poetry toward a risk-taking aesthetic of the theatrical. Had she had the chance to develop that style, she likely would have fulfilled her early promise and published several daring volumes.
-
Whoo-boy, nobody has given me more trouble than Sylvia Plath. Only Byron may be as difficult in seperating the personality from the work, and with him we at least have a good bit of time since the works were actually written. I half-wonder if anybody can really be objective about her work.
See, she has a group of followers who just about worship her to the point of Tori Amos's fans, where everything she's done is meaningful and perfect. Her suicide date is celebrated. Every word she wrote is put through the lens of her suicide. (Hemingway commited suicide too, but if I recall correctly people celebrate his LIFE and not his death.) And don't even get me started on all those who read Plath and practically no other poetry.
Sounds like I don't like her much, eh? Actually I have no problems with her--just her fans I find irritating. Her work is good, and not about suicide (or sad things) at all. "Daddy" good as it is, isn't even close to her best work (though it may be the most quintessential). The best way to read her, IMHO is to pretend you know nothing of the women and get over the obsession with tacking every poem to her biography. Poems are meant to be free. If you want her life story read her diary. -
just bought this yesterday, on a scale of 1 to 10 how mentally-ill do you think i am ?
-
I keep coming back to Sylvia Plath whenever I'm trying to make sense of my own troubles. Since my troubles rarely make sense, that means I come back to this quite often.
Which is so incredibly cliched, it would normally make me cringe. I mean, its screams "I'm a damaged girl, and I read Sylvia Plath, just like all the other damaged girls!"
But I don't cringe, because ultimately, her poetry makes me feel. I have this incredibly old, earmarked and tattered edition that is full of notes in the margins, words underlined and phrases highlighted. Scraps of paper with my thoughts tucked between the pages. Its the only book I have ever taken a pencil to and its incredibly private. It doesn't live on my bookshelves with the rest of my collection. And its the only book I don't lend out the friends and family. I'm selfish with it.
Each time I pick it up, I flick to a random page, and take it all in again afresh. Each reading means something different to me, or I see something a different way. For how angry, destructive and wrenching these poems are they also set the reader free, and that's why I keep coming back to them. -
Sylvia Plath was super gangsta. She stuck her head in an oven and killed herself. Besides that, she wrote some pretty dope poetry and was super fresh.... (I apologize for writing in outdated youthful urban slang, but I was bored and thought it might "spice up" these less-than-mediocre reviews. I can see now, after closer examination, this was a terrible decision... Once again, I apologize for the inconvenience).
Also.... reading Plath's poems extremely intoxicated on alcoholic beverages can be a rewarding and exciting adventure... However!!...... I strongly advise you DO NOT stick your head in an oven during this drunken escapade to replicate how the author might have felt before her last seconds on earth expired...This could end in truly deadly results or, even worse, a failed attempt to make a joke out of this shameful incident at future family gatherings or while hanging out with friends. This will only lead to ridicule and the epiphany that close family and friends have not been laughing with you all those years, but at you....
Finally, I mostly read this book because I was accused of being misogynistic due to the lack of women authors I have read. I hope I have proven to you all that I am not misogynistic and do, in fact, like women. After reading Sylvia Plath (a woman), I hope you all think I am not misogynistic anymore...
However, I still believe women have smaller brains and belong in the kitchen...
I don't know, after sobering up, her words are a bit clamoured together and read densely. I CAN'T DO IT! I am sorry world, but there is not enough booze for me to get through it. I shamefully throw in the towel, its just too dense...I guess I really do hate women after all...sorry. Life is too short to torture yourself and drudge through this...Plath taught us that!
Super dope quotes:
"We mask our past in the green of eden, pretend future's shining fruit can sprout from the navel of this present waste."
"Horizontal lines are like dusk...everyone breathing the same."
Also the poems "Pursuit" and "Tale of a Tub" are pretty great. -
Bramavo questo libro da anni, conoscevo già la sua penna perché i suoi diari esprimono la sua sofferenza, la sua malattia, il suo amore ma leggere le poesie è ben altro. In entrambi i casi si entra all’interno della sua vita, perché sia le poesie che il diario vogliono dire quotidianità. La sua poesia è definita confessionale, è stata lei stessa a contribuire la diffusione di questo nuovo genere poetico, una poesia che si ispira alla vita quotidiana e personale di chi scrive. Nella sua poesia i temi costanti sono la sofferenza, il dolore, la morte, la voglia di farla finita, la vita mal vissuta, il tradimento, l’amore non ricambiato… e pochissime gioie. D’altronde la sua breve vita è costellata da poche gioie, a parte la nascita dei due figli: Frieda Rebecca e Nicholas.
La poesia della Plath non è per nulla una poesia facile, nel leggerla si sta veramente male. Perché quei versi trasmettono davvero tanto dolore e tantissime urla. Poesie davvero pungenti che fanno riflettere molto e fanno capire il suo malessere e la sua vita in generale.
Impossibile non leggere questo mattoncino se si vuole approfondire la sua esistenza: poesie difficili da dimenticare, perché lasciano il segno dentro. -
My psychiatrist laughed when I said I read Sylvia Plath, "why do all you young women" etc. I do think part of it is that Sylvia becomes a friend if you go through some of the same stuff she did. Any famous person who shares your condition does. But to say that's all she's good for, as if there's no merit or instruction in her work...
And then, once again, it's back to the emotional Plath -- phrases that crush your head both because they are so well wrought and also because you know exactly what she was talking about.
I've spent a dozen years reading this book and I've learned that Plath and I may cross over emotionally, but our poetic jaws are not the same. I don't always understand how her construction works. Part of why I keep reading.
Having her all together like this, including juvenilia, is a lesson, especially as her life was so short. I've sought several other complete works since stumbling across this one. -
I had this exact edition and carried this book with me all the time. My favorite poem is below in it is below:
I Am Vertical
By Sylvia Plath
But I would rather be horizontal.
I am not a tree with my root in the soil
Sucking up minerals and motherly love
So that each March I may gleam into leaf,
Nor am I the beauty of a garden bed
Attracting my share of Ahs and spectacularly painted,
Unknowing I must soon unpetal.
Compared with me, a tree is immortal
And a flower-head not tall, but more startling,
And I want the one's longevity and the other's daring.
Tonight, in the infinitesimal light of the stars,
The trees and the flowers have been strewing their cool odors.
I walk among them, but none of them are noticing.
Sometimes I think that when I am sleeping
I must most perfectly resemble them --
Thoughts gone dim.
It is more natural to me, lying down.
Then the sky and I are in open conversation,
And I shall be useful when I lie down finally:
Then the trees may touch me for once, and the flowers have time for me. -
http://angelerin.blogspot.com/2016/03...
I really enjoyed reading Sylvia Plath's poetry. Ever since I read The Bell Jar (and then googled Sylvia and learned more about her) I have been fascinated by her life and her work. I also loved her book of unabridged journals. So when I saw there was a book of her poetry I just had to buy it and read it.
Sylvia Plath's writing is just so addicting. Everything flows beautifully and I just loved so many of these poems. I had such a great time reading this book while I was out relaxing in a cabin in the woods. I still wish I was there on vacation reading this book of poetry.
These poems are just so emotional and honest. They speak to me as a woman. There is just something about Sylvia Plath's writing that I connect with at the very core of myself. I'm sure some psychiatrist would have a field day with that, but there it is.
Overall I thought The Collected Poems of Sylvia Plath was a great book of poetry that I would recommend to all Sylvia Plath fans, even if you aren't a poetry fan.
-
It really does not get much better than Sylvia Plath.
-
It was really interesting to read so many of Sylvia’s poems chronologically, and too see her find a voice of her own over the years. While I have to say that most of the poems she wrote before 1959 either bored or puzzled me, as she used very complicated syntax and overembellished them – which resulted in nothing more than a collection of vague and highly impersonal lines –, it was well worth reading this volume for what followed. I mean, here’s her last poem:
The woman is perfected.
Her dead
Body wears the smile of accomplishment,
The illusion of a Greek necessity
Flows in the scrolls of her toga,
Her bare
Feet seem to be saying:
We have come so far, it is over.
Each dead child coiled, a white serpent,
One at each little
Pitcher of milk, now empty.
She has folded
Then back into her body as petals
Of a rose close when the garden
Stiffens and doors bleed
From the street, deep throats of the night flower.
The moon has nothing to be sad about,
Starting from her hood of bone.
She is used to this sort of thing.
Her blacks crackle and drag.
(Edge, 5 February 1963)
absolutely chilling. -
First: my rating applies to the edition, not the poetry.
After hacking away at this collected poems for the better part of six months, I'm not sure I have any interest in rating the poems. I think, in part, this is due to a certain experience I had in reading, as if this were a history book or a chronicle rather than a work of literature. Of course, while that reveals something (unsavory?) of my predisposition as a reader, I think it at leaves gives a hint as to how the work struck me.
Whereas the work of other poets of Plath's era, and certainly before, can still touch me in the current moment, as living documents, the majority of this volume felt artifactual, archeological. That is not to say there are not poems that have and continue to hit me in the solar plexus like a sledge — "The Rabbit Catcher," for instance, will likely be a treasured poem for as long as I have a relationship with language. But aside from these highlights, I often had the sensation of reading through an excavation.
In my mind, there is no question of Plath's talent; at moments it terrifies me ("There is no mercy in the glitter of cleavers, / The butcher's guillotine that whispers: 'How's this, how's this?'" — "Totem"). Furthermore, I think there is an abundance to be learned from her that is completely separate from her hypertragic biography. But the biography does haunt her collected poems; it butts its forehead into the reading experience and dulls the ear with its wailing. Certain Plath devotees are liable to put a reader off with their fetishization of her horrible life story; I have been put off in the past. Working past such acolytes, I still sensed their demands in editing of this collected poems.
What am I getting at? What is needed?
A new edition of selected poems. Faber has presented, in this volume, an excellent resource for scholars & collectors. But the truth is that practicing poets, interested outsiders, and casual newcomers have no need for most of what this book offers. We don't need or want the juvenilia that closes the book. Most of the end notes gloss Plath's weird ideas of what the poems were "about," or charts biographical context. And, frankly, many of the poems just aren't good — or, rather, they aren't up to the standards that Plath herself sets in other poems.
What we need is an edition of selected poems, not simply Ariel in one form or another, that judiciously picks from all the work, surrenders biography to anything other than a note on the author, and keeps Ted Hughes many arm lengths away (with all due respect, sir). A sensational life story does not write a poem, and neither does such a biography warrant that we collect and document every scribbling ever written by an author. I say, let Sylvia rest, and let the great poems be revived, free of the shackles that bound their author.
That's a bit dramatic, but you'll have to forgive me — I just finished reading a few hundred pages of Sylvia Plath. -
So it turns out "The Collected Poems" means literally everything Sylvia Plath EVER wrote. It's arranged more or less chronologically, and when I was about halfway through the book I was all set to only give it three stars. At 2/3 of the way through, it had gone up to four stars, and by the last 20-30 pages there was no way it was getting anything less than five.
Although her earlier poems aren't to my particular taste, and you can tell her command of the craft is still developing, it's so wonderful to be able to trace that evolution from obviously talented novice to absolute master. Moving, evocative and completely unforgettable. -
By her own admission, Sylvia Plath rarely discarded a poem. Even if they were, in her eyes, imperfect, she accumulated them. For this we should all be grateful. Poetry as an art form can be rather subjective and artists, even those as gifted as Plath, can drift in and out of style. By presenting her work chronologically and without culling you can viscerally feel her growing as a poet. At the beginning of this collection I was wondering what all the fuss was about, and by the end I could barely stand putting the book down.
-
Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And eat men like air.
I had read a number of these repeatedly over the years, yet the curse of the collected tome often enervates. Much was the case here, specifically with a few of the longer narrative poems, ones which struck me as burdensome in just the same manner as how Robert Frost fails. Each line convinced me why I prefer Anne Sexton. -
Se “La campana di vetro” può essere considerato semi-autobiografico, è qui - nelle poesie – che viene fuori il ritratto autentico di un’anima aggraziata ma profondamente infelice e incompresa, annichilita dal gravoso fardello della solitudine. La sua spiccata sensibilità – soprattutto immaginativa - è parte integrante dell'immensa statura poetica che la caratterizza. I suoi versi sono una vorticosa girandola di emozioni.
Ogni altra parola è superflua. -
Ha llegado el momento que tanto tiempo llevaba posponiendo. Ha llegado el momento de leer los últimos versos y cerrar las tapas definitivamente. Casi tres meses acompañada por Plath y todos sus sentimientos. Casi tres meses dosificando sus poemas, temiendo que llegara el signo de puntuación que marcaba el final de nuestra historia. Lo sentía como una despedida realmente dolorosa porque ya no habría más versos por descubrir pero, tras unos días dándole vueltas, me he dado cuenta que estaba totalmente equivocada. No hay más versos por descubrir pero siempre podré regresar a ellos y dependiendo del momento me llegarán de diferente manera.
«La primera vez que ocurrió, yo tenía diez años.
Y no lo hice adrede.
La segunda sí, estaba decidida
A llegar hasta el final, a no regresar jamás.»
Me ha sido imposible buscarle un hueco en la estantería y es por ello que sigue en mi mesita de noche. Siento que de esta manera no me estoy despidiendo, siento que de esta manera sigo sintiendo su presencia a mi lado. Muchas noches me sorprendo abriendo el libro por una página aleatoria, leyendo unos versos antes de dormir y sintiendo calidez, como si Plath fuera hogar. Sé que es un ritual que seguiré haciendo. Sé que es un ritual que quizás me acompañe de por vida.
«Morir
Es un arte, como todo.
Yo lo hago extraordinariamente bien.
Tan bien que me parece el infierno.
Tan bien que me parece real.
Lo mío, supongo, es como un llamado.»
Leer a Sylvia Plath siempre me maravilla pero su poesía es algo muy especial, un paso más allá. Sus versos tan tristes y dolorosos que hacen pura magia. Sus versos tan potentes que se quedan grabados a fuego.
Ya había leído muchos de sus poemas pero lo había hecho con unas traducciones distintas y un cambio de traducción en poesía se nota mucho. Tenerlos todos al alcance en un mismo libro me parece algo fascinante pero he echado algo en falta. Un pequeño detalle que valoro mucho a la hora de leer poesía, eché en falta que fuese una edición bilingüe aunque comprendo que se convertiría en un ejemplar mucho más extenso e incómodo.
[*Los versos que he plasmado pertenecen a uno de mis poemas favoritos, Lady Lázaro.] -
What do most know about Sylvia Plath? The poetess who killed herself with her head in an oven?
I would not argue that it is possible to read Plath without bearing in mind that she was an emotionally and psychologically troubled person — indeed, a large number of her poems are layered with such psychological intensity that perhaps allowed her to conjure startling but impactful imagery from line to line. However, for me, Plath’s allure lies not simply in the Freudian whirlpool that so characterises her life (especially her strange relationship with her father) but in that unique voice of hers/her personas. My favourite poems of hers are those which lean towards the confessional in style — the voice and the themes — and which contain such pithy lines as “Father, this thick air is murderous. I would breathe water.” Below are a few exceptional excerpts:
1. Resolve
“today I will not / disenchant my twelve black-gowned examiners / or bunch my fist / in the wind’s sneer”
2. Black rook in rainy weather
“I do not expect a miracle / or an accident // to set the sight on fire / in my eye, nor seek / any more in the desultory weather some design / but let spotted leaves fall as they fall / without ceremony, or portent”
3. Old Ladies’ Home
“From beds boxed-in like coffins / The bonneted ladies grin. / And death, that bald-head buzzard, / stalls in halls where the lamp wick / shortens with each breath drawn.”
4. The Sleepers
“Ousted from that warm bed / we are a dream they dream / their eyelids keep the shade / no harm can come to them / we cast our skins and slide / into another time”
5. Mushrooms
“We shall by morning / inherit the earth / our foot’s in the door”
6. Two campers in cloud country
“Planets pulse in the lake like bright amoebas / the pines blot our voices up in their lightest sights... we’ll wake blank-brained as water in the dawn”
7. Mirror
“In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman / rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish”
8. Three Women
“It is the exception that interests the devil / it is the exception that climbs the sorrowful hill / or sits in the desert and hurts his mother’s heart / I will him to be common / to love me as I love him / and to marry what he wants and where he will”
9. Paralytic
“My mind a rock / no fingers to grip, no tongue / my god the iron lung / that loves me, pumps / my two / dust bags in and out / will not / let me relapse / while the day outside glides by like ticker tape” -
I have read and liked Bell jar by Sylvia Plath and I thought I would love to read more by her.
According to the Pulitzer Prize-winning (won in 1982 for poems) The Collected Poems volume published in 1981, Sylvia Plath wrote 445 poems. Wow !!!
She was famous for her poems after all and yes I liked few but nothing stood out as wow,this is amazing.
Now I'm going to give it a reread. Might change my reading after that .
Few poems that I found good
“I am terrified by this dark thing
That sleeps in me;
All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity.
Clouds pass and disperse.
Are those the faces of love, those pale irretrievables?
Is it for such I agitate my heart?
I am incapable of more knowledge.
What is this, this face
So murderous in its strangle of branches? -
Its snaky acids kiss.
It petrifies the will. These are the isolate, slow faults
That kill, that kill, that kill.
From the poem "Elm", 19 April 1962”
“I
I walk alone;
The midnight street
Spins itself from under my feet;
My eyes shut
These dreaming houses all snuff out;
Through a whim of mine
Over gables the moon's celestial onion
Hangs high.
I
Make houses shrink
And trees diminish
By going far; my look's leash
Dangles the puppet-people
Who, unaware how they dwindle,
Laugh, kiss, get drunk,
Nor guess that if I choose to blink
They die.
I
When in good humour,
Give grass its green
Blazon sky blue, and endow the sun
With gold;
Yet, in my wintriest moods, I hold
Absolute power
To boycott color and forbid any flower
To be.
I
Know you appear
Vivid at my side,
Denying you sprang out of my head,
Claiming you feel
Love fiery enough to prove flesh real,
Though it's quite clear
All your beauty, all your wit, is a gift, my dear,
From me.
"Soliloquy of the Solipsist", 1956” -
P(l)athology
Biblimythological poetry
composed by looking-glass fingertips that reveal,
reflect the gothic in her-you-me. Her Hermes
hovers
emasculated, molting
while molding her soul, bound as 'collected'
but rather selected "to laud such man's blood!"
Self-proclaimed editor or profaned self-redactor?
Only the Hughes-abused knows.
Regardless, blessed is the reader of her meter,
her versed verse.
Each word ablution's evolution to transmogrify the mind
from angelic bog to morbid garden,
or vice versa,
bridged by a byway of
Christian bristles,
sisyphean thistles, and a
"forked/ Firework of fronds."
Listen to the hymns, those auditions of shadows cast by him-her-all,
presaging not adderall but lithium.
Listen to the din, "[he] quit her at cock's crowing," hormoanal de-spirit udone.
"'Fond phantom,' cried shocked Father Shawn."
It's sung, from wisp of whispurr
to dream of (s)cream, listing lilt, so listen
to the human cues that cure curses and curse cures.
Scrutinize epicurean chiaroscuros with a penchant for sentient dimensions.
Linger over the linguistic triptychs for lunatics.
On high, erudite Aphrodite whirls emerald arrows to pierce the senses of those in Seine.
A swath of poems perfunctorily pastoral, florist obsessed, but
highly redeemed for what comes before, after, some between.
The epilogue a piquing prelude to the symphony that came before.
The book itself should be shaped like a rhododendron dodecahedron
festooned with festering, post-fenestration figures.
Semi-evil Victorian voice announces that
"The dark is melting. We touch like cripples." -
فتشت كثيرا علي هذا الكتاب ... اعتقد انه يجمع جميع اشعار سيلفيا بلاث او اغلبها، رغم ان ��لقراءة لسيلفيا بلاث تتركني في حالة نفسية سيئة ولكنها تستحق المخاطرة ... ضعت ووجدت نفسي الاف المرات اثناء قراءتي هذا الكتاب .... دخلت في دوامات نور وظلام لا نهائية ....
احببت جميع الاشعار القصيرة والطويلة، احببت بطريقة خاصة
lady Lazarus
pursuit
i am vertical
the thin people
قرأتها نسخة كيندل وساحرص علي اقتناء نسخه ورقيه .. لانني اريد تحديد الاشعار التي احببتها بشكل خاص ... -
It’s incredible how each of Plath’s poems is just as good as if not better than the previous. I can’t even write a review that’s more articulate than that; Plath is one of if not the best modern American poets.
(Why no ‘Mad Girl’s Love Song’ though?) -
Un oasis intelectual. Los poemas de Sylvia Plath son como las cicatrices, escritos en tinta indeleble. Sus poemas están colgados del techo, desgarran lentamente la carne del lector, igual que los ganchos de un matadero. Son los poemas de alguien que no pudo con la vida, de alguien que no sobrevivió. De alguien que es íntima amiga de la tristeza. La desolación habla a través de los versos de Sylvia.
Soy vertical.
Pero preferiría ser horizontal.
No soy un árbol con las raíces en la tierra
absorbiendo minerales y amor materno
para que cada marzo florezcan las hojas,
ni soy la belleza del jardín
de llamativos colores que atrae exclamaciones de admiración
ignorando que pronto perderá sus pétalos.
Comparado conmigo, un árbol es inmortal
y una flor, aunque no tan alta, es más llamativa,
y quiero la longevidad de uno y la valentía de la otra.
Esta noche, bajo la luz infinitesimal de las estrellas,
los árboles y las flores han derramado sus olores frescos.
Camino entre ellos, pero no se dan cuenta.
A veces pienso que cuando estoy durmiendo
me debo parecer a ellos a la perfección,
oscurecidos ya los pensamientos.
Para mí es más natural estar tendida.
Es entonces cuando el cielo y yo conversamos con libertad,
y así seré útil cuando al fin me tienda:
entonces los árboles podrán tocarme por una vez,
y las flores tendrán tiempo para mí. -
«Faremo come se fosse stato soltanto un brutto sogno.»
Un brutto sogno.
Per chi è chiuso sotto una campana di vetro, vuoto e bloccato come un bambino nato morto, il brutto sogno è il mondo.
Io ricordavo tutto.
Forse l'oblio, come una neve gentile, avrebbe dovuto attutire e coprire tutto.
Ma quelle cose facevano parte di me. Erano il mio paesaggio.
Sylvia Plath, La campana di vetro -
"Οι φωνές της μοναξιάς, οι φωνες της θλίψης
Σωρεύονται στη ραχη μου αδιάκοπα
Πώς να τις απαλύνει αυτό το μικρό νανούρισμα;" -
It would be an understatement to say that I fell in love with Sylvia Plath. The Bell Jar sank my heart, broke it in two, and revived it again. Her choice of words, even in prose, dance through your mind and are hard to forget.
This is especially true, though, of her poetry. Each poem has a beautiful life of its own, but together as an anthology, the poems show Plath's true heart, fickle, angry, passionate, uninhibited. From the more disturbing poems like "Daddy" to finding eloquent beauty is simple things like "Black Rook in Rainy Weather".
This collection is the best there is. While "Ariel" may be her most famous collection, this anthology includes so much more, compiling a collection of poems that span her writing career, from 1956-1963, as well as some of her early work. The book also contains a modest introduction from Plath's once-companion Ted Hughes. -
Having just completed Marina Tsvetaeva's fine "Moscow in the Plague Year: Poems" , before these "Collected Poems" I must say I could not be more disappointed in this 'Collection'.
Personally, I have accepted that Plath's 'cult worship' - no doubt - must be attributed to her certain brilliance and obvious 'gift' for language. But, please - as a poet - she stands in shadows. What does come through loud and clear... a disturbingly unhealthy rage that unravels her and eventually consumes wholly - her gift, her promise, her soul.
I could discover absolutely nothing in the 1st 1/3 of this collection to even begin to share (with the exception of the deepening furrows in my forehead) but fragments did began to emerge and speak more clearly in 1959.
1."By the roots of my hair some god got hold of me./
I sizzled in his blue volts like a desert prophet./
The nights snapped out of sight like a lizard's eyelid :/
A world of bald white days in a shadeless socket./
A vulturous boredom pinned me in this tree./
If he were I, he would do what I did. / "
........
2. "I do not trust the spirit. It escapes like steam/
In dreams, through mouth-hole or eye-hole. I can't stop it./
One day it won't come back. Things aren't like that./
They stay, their little particular lusters /
Warmed by much handling. They almost purr. /
When the soles of my feet grow cold,/
The blue eyes of my turquoise will comfort me./"
.........
3. "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./"
.....
4. "Now she is flying /
More terrible than she ever was, red /
Scar in the sky, red comet /
Over the engine that killed her --------/
The mausoleum, the wax house. /"
...........
5. "Ash, ash -----/
You poke and stir./
Flesh, bone, there is nothing there------/
...
"Out of the ash /
I rise with my red hair /
And I eat men like air./
............
My favorites:
"Point Shirley" , "Watercolor of Grantchester Meadows", "A Winter Ship, and "Electra on Azalea Path"
2.5⭐s rounded up to 3 -
Easily the best poetry I’ve ever read. Sylvia Plath had a rare gift with language that can be imitated but never recreated!
-
I have to start this review with a funny moment I experienced while reading this large collection of Sylvia Plath's poems. Like anything I read during the summer, I brought this thick yellow book to the beach with me two weekends in a row... and when asked what I was reading, I was told, "That's not a beach read!" Anyone who knows Sylvia Plath must think I'm crazy for bringing her dark material to read on a sunny beach day. Nevertheless, after reading The Bell Jar , Plath became an author of interest for me, so I'm hoping to explore her work more throughout the summer. This collection covers poems from 1956 to her death, thus contains all the big/famous poems she's written, including "Daddy" , "Lady Lazarus" , "Ariel" , "Fever 103°" , etc. plus 50 poems of juvenilia written pre-1956. There's a lot of good stuff here and I'm so happy I bought it-- I tabbed my favorite poems, or ones that stick out to me, and I also went back and forth between wanting to actually underline parts I loved or keep the text clean, but I eventually caved. My all time favorite of hers I think has to be "Two Lovers and a Beachcomber by the Real Sea" which is a beautiful poem of her juvenilia and explores the idea that reality doesn't alway live up to one's imagination and expectations (an idea clearly conveyed in the last stanza!). For anyone who has an interest in this unique author, I recommend The Collected Poems or any of her other collections, but just reading it for pleasure or mere recommendation? I say it's a lot if you're not a fan, so heed to the words I was told: "It's not a beach read!"
