The poems in Sylvia Plath's Ariel, including many of her best-known such as 'Lady Lazarus', 'Daddy', 'Edge' and 'Paralytic', were all written between the publication in 1960 of Plath's first book, The Colossus, and her death in 1963.
'If the poems are despairing, vengeful and destructive, they are at the same time tender, open to things, and also unusually clever, sardonic, hardminded . . . They are works of great artistic purity and, despite all the nihilism, great generosity . . . the book is a major literary event.' A. Alvarez in the Observer
Disclaimer: poetry’s never really been my thing. Three stars for poetry is five from anyone else.
There were some good ones here, just knife-slicing sharp, escalating and dark. “Lady Lazarus,” for example, is exactly the chilling casualty I was expecting from Plath. But there were some gentle giants here too, which tended to be my favorites: “The Night Dances,” “Letter in November,” “Balloons,” the final graceful “Words.”
It was the opening line, though, that I never got over:
Love set you going like a fat gold watch.
Reading updates
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Started reading
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19 November, 2010:
Finished reading
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19 November, 2010:
Reviewed