Rating: 
Summary: Her outstanding window into her soul!
Review: One day, in the middle of my honors English class, I saw the cover of my friend's poetry book. I remembered to find this title in the library. I happened to be visiting it that day, and I also happened to be doing a poetry project. I searched the dusty shelves of the old building and finally found a grey-covered, but slightly glowing collection of poems by someone unknown to me at that point. When I opened it up, I could see her. I saw who and what Sylvia Plath was."Ariel" is my first Plath exposure. I am planning on reading her diary entries and, hopefully, the movie that is based on her life with her husband, Ted Hughes. I cannot wait. I am anxious for one reason: I have never been more affected by a collection of poems than this book. Every line was dripping in her emotion, in her feeling. I was shocked. I was blown away at her passionate hate towards one thing and complete adoration for another. It was beautiful, but sad at the same time. One poem that stood out to me was "Daddy." In this she expresses her anger towards her father, comparing him to the Nazis. "I thought every German was you." I could just sense her passionate dissapointment and dislike. She really showed us all through this work that she really is one of the classics of this century. Other poems that stood out to me include "Tuilips", "Death & Co." and "Poppies In July." Bottom Line: By far my favorite poet and this is of course my favorite collection of poetry in existance. (I give it an A+)
Rating:
Summary: Her outstanding window into her soul!
Review: One day, in the middle of my honors English class, I saw the cover of my friend's poetry book. I remembered to find this title in the library. I happened to be visiting it that day, and I also happened to be doing a poetry project. I searched the dusty shelves of the old building and finally found a grey-covered, but slightly glowing collection of poems by someone unknown to me at that point. When I opened it up, I could see her. I saw who and what Sylvia Plath was. "Ariel" is my first Plath exposure. I am planning on reading her diary entries and, hopefully, the movie that is based on her life with her husband, Ted Hughes. I cannot wait. I am anxious for one reason: I have never been more affected by a collection of poems than this book. Every line was dripping in her emotion, in her feeling. I was shocked. I was blown away at her passionate hate towards one thing and complete adoration for another. It was beautiful, but sad at the same time. One poem that stood out to me was "Daddy." In this she expresses her anger towards her father, comparing him to the Nazis. "I thought every German was you." I could just sense her passionate dissapointment and dislike. She really showed us all through this work that she really is one of the classics of this century. Other poems that stood out to me include "Tuilips", "Death & Co." and "Poppies In July." Bottom Line: By far my favorite poet and this is of course my favorite collection of poetry in existance. (I give it an A+)
Rating:
Summary: One of the best collections
Review: Plath wrote madly before committing suicide. The result is this book of poems. This is the first book I ever read by Plath. The ongoing theme throughout the book (translated to me was melancholy with little bouts of happiness) drew me in. Of all my books, this is the one I hold in the highest regard. Everything touches base in reality. My favourite poem is "Lesbos" because it's so spiteful. Some of the wording can get a bit muddled, but when you read it enough times to memorize it, it all makes sense. All clicking together. I highly recommend this book to not just fans of Plath but fans of original poetry as well.
Rating:
Summary: STRENGTH, FIRE, CRYSTAL CLEAR
Review: Some of the poems are difficult to understand the first time, others are like a window where you can watch life. But in the end, all of them come to an understanding of simple things, like a finger cut, and complex ones, like dying. The intensity that run free from the pages, the fire that try to burn your fingertips with every word, and the truth that pierce your hearth, is what it makes this book a jewel.
Rating:
Summary: The Volume to Own
Review: Sylvia Plath and Denise Lermontov were the two most powerful female American poets of the 20th century. When I was in my teens and a "would-be" poet, I had a copy of Ariel that I rarely let out of my sight. She is the queen of angst. I greedily drank the concoction she distilled out of her anger, disillusionment and loathing. I felt the same way towards my parents as she did towards hers. Those who try to soft-pedal these poems and claim they're somehow life-affirming are deluding themselves. These are poems of despair, anguish and hopelesness, probably the most evocative expressions of those sentiments ever recorded. They will not put you in a good mood. These come from the dark night of utter isolation, written by a young, beautiful wife and mother who will soon stick her head in an oven and turn on the gas. They are about as pretty as Auschwitz. If you are looking for poetry that is morally uplifting, look elsewhere. If the paintings of Bosch and Breughel hold some fascination for you and you don't flinch from visions of the damned, then this work will appeal to you. For some reason, I think of Sylvia Plath and Diane Arbus as artistic sisters. Both show us things we probably didn't really want to see, but it's impossible to look away when confronted with the images they depicted. Art is sometimes disturbing. This is one unsettling volume of poetry.
Rating:
Summary: The Volume to Own
Review: Sylvia Plath and Denise Lermontov were the two most powerful female American poets of the 20th century. When I was in my teens and a "would-be" poet, I had a copy of Ariel that I rarely let out of my sight. She is the queen of angst. I greedily drank the concoction she distilled out of her anger, disillusionment and loathing. I felt the same way towards my parents as she did towards hers. Those who try to soft-pedal these poems and claim they're somehow life-affirming are deluding themselves. These are poems of despair, anguish and hopelesness, probably the most evocative expressions of those sentiments ever recorded. They will not put you in a good mood. These come from the dark night of utter isolation, written by a young, beautiful wife and mother who will soon stick her head in an oven and turn on the gas. They are about as pretty as Auschwitz. If you are looking for poetry that is morally uplifting, look elsewhere. If the paintings of Bosch and Breughel hold some fascination for you and you don't flinch from visions of the damned, then this work will appeal to you. For some reason, I think of Sylvia Plath and Diane Arbus as artistic sisters. Both show us things we probably didn't really want to see, but it's impossible to look away when confronted with the images they depicted. Art is sometimes disturbing. This is one unsettling volume of poetry.
Rating:
Summary: Plath's warped, often whimsical tour of an inner hell
Review: Sylvia Plath is one of those poets who seems to loom large as an iconic figure in popular and literary culture. This may be as much due to the details of her life as to her work. But putting the "legend" of Plath aside, I found her book "Ariel" to be quite an intriguing collection of poems. There are many mentions of death in general and suicide in particular throughout "Ariel." The dark, cutting nature of many of the poems make them feel like glimpses of Plath's inner torment; also, a number of the poems seem to challenge conventions regarding traditional female roles in society. Structurally, many of the poems have an engaging musicality and demonstrate a witty use of rhyme and other effects. Many of the poems have a grimly playful quality. Plath uses a strange, unsettling constellation of images and allusions: "Mein Kampf," the Ku Klux Klan, rubber breasts, carbon monoxide, schizophrenia, the Vatican, etc. There are some really arresting turns of phrase. Some of the most striking poems include the following: "The Applicant," a disturbing satire of marriage; "Lady Lazarus," in which she writes "Dying / Is an art"; "Tulips," a horrific vision told by a hospitalized woman (this one is reminiscent of Charlotte Perkins Gilmans' classic story "The Yellow Wall-paper"); "Lesbos," a glimpse into the unfulfilling lives of two mothers; "Daddy," a frightening hate-letter from the speaker to her father; and "Balloons," a playful but edgy poem about balloons. In the poem "Kindness," Plath writes, "The blood jet is poetry, / There is no stopping it." So many decades after Plath's death, it appears there is no stopping her poetic voice.
Rating:
Summary: The Cauldron of Morning
Review: Sylvia Plath is, by far, one of my very favorite poets of the twentieth century. In "Ariel," Plath combines mythology, biblical stories and her own private demons in a rare concoction of an art that can never be emulated. One can read her poems at many levels and still find breakthrough significance in them. Many critics have recently disclosed that Plath may have suffered from enhanced symptoms of PMS, which would have caused her roller coaster mood swings so apparent in her poems. "Ariel" is especially interesting to read in correlation to "Letters Home." It is a great work.
Rating:
Summary: A Graceful Portrait of Pain
Review: The poems of Sylvia Plath cannot be taken lightly; they are of a sacred and secret dance within the mind. This collection of poems seethes with an unending restlessness, the sense of a woman soul-searching and confronting what lies buried within her mind. The poems form a shell that must be pared down layer by layer, revealing a quiet intensity underneath. Ariel serves as a dramatic discourse with the self for Plath, whose poems are as much about image as they are about personal history. Part eulogy and part celebration, this collection draws upon the strength of Plath's lush description and visual memoirs. A sample of her languid grasp of words is illustrated in the poem "Morning Song", where she writes," All night your moth-breath / Flickers among the flat pink roses. I wake to listen: / A far sea moves in my ear." Within poems like Lady Lazarus and the title poem Ariel, Plath paints herself into immaculate dramas of pain and passion, constantly discovering new feeling and associating herself with mythical fables. Sometimes her words seem to speak of madness, while in other moments the language shifts into the dreamiest of visions. She creates a sensation of terror alongside joy, and takes the reader into her delicate confessional world. Her words disturb while seeping a beauty that is a constant in Plath's poems. In "Elm" she speaks of the darkness within the soul, writing, "Clouds pass and disperse. / Are those faces of love, those pale irretrievables? / Is it for such that I agitate my heart?" The poems "Daddy" and "A Birthday Present" address lingering memories of the past that are potent and traumatic, as Plath blends the horror of her anger with elaborate imagery and detail. Plath's poems conjure angels and demons, and her words become reflections of the ways emotions sometimes disguise themselves as both. Ariel stands out as a remarkable visit into Plath's inner dreams and fears. It's not something you can read in one night, for the depth of her words will mesmerize and perplex. Ariel is not merely a collection of poems, for it reads like a haunting diary that unravels more as you read, and it takes time to understand its marvelous secrets.
Rating:
Summary: Sylvia's questions
Review: The poetry in Ariel is unavoidably sensual. Even when the reader experiences the poems without the image of "Mad Sylvia" as a kind of fog over the poems, they are immediate and fateful. The voice is in the process of fading, as if between spirit and flesh and she speaks from that perspective. Lines like, "At nightfall there is the beauty of drowned fields." And "Let us eat it like Plato's afterbirth,/ Let us eat it like Christ." are longing finger holds of the imagination on the worlds which she cannot choose between. Ariel is a small book, but a reader goes away feeling as if they spent time in a dense society and have developed muscles from the new gravity. Consider these poems as gifts.
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