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Ariel: The Restored Edition : A Facsimile of Plath's Manuscript, Reinstating Her Original Selection and Arrangement |
List Price: $24.95
Your Price: $16.47 |
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Product Info |
Reviews |
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Rating: Summary: Published as she Intended Review: After Sylvia Plath's suicide, her last book, Ariel and Other Poems received critical acclaim and brought her worldwide fame. This new edition, forty years later returns more closely to her original thoughts on how the book would be.
The original edition was changed somewhat by her husband, Ted Hughes who removed some poems and added others to protect some people who might have been harmed by the nature of the poems, and to better reflect some of her later work that was not included in her original thoughts.
The new edition has a foreword by her daughter, Frieda Hughes who can better explain her father's actions and at the same time revert to the original thoughts of her mother. In addition, there is a facsimile of Plath's original Manuscript, complete with the editing notes she was making before she took her own life. Finally there is a series of versions of the title poem, Ariel, written in Plath's own hand showing how she developed a poem.
This book is a destined to become a classic, the definitive collection of Sylvia Plath's Ariel.
Rating: Summary: don't get so excited Review: as the publisher's weekly blurb states, these are not new poems, so don't get swept up in the "what plath fans have all been waiting for...". all of the poems shown here were published in the 1981 edition of Plath's Collected Poems by the devilish Ted Hughes.
So, why this edition? It's interesting to see someone's own manuscripts -- but interesting to whom? Plath fans. people mildly interested in Plath or new to her may feel a strain in deciding which version to read much like a confused customer i helped at a book store once displayed when I tried to explain that there are multiple versions of Leaves of Grass...
But which one should a reader new to Plath read? her version or Hughes's version? A purist (like me) would argue that her version is what to read. But someone interested in Ariel in an academic setting would be best served picking up the Hughes' version.
It is important for readers (academic or not) to realize that editors have often been the unseen geniuses (and villains) behind great works. I'm not calling Hughes a genius -- I'm just suggesting that perhaps both versions can teach us something about Plath -- regardless of our interest level.
Rating: Summary: As Plath Intended Review: At last we can read Ariel the way Sylvia Plath it. This is now a fuller and more varied collection. Frieda Hughes's foreword is revealing and powerful. My only criticism (hence the docked star) is that fact that Plath's first collection 'The Collossus' is missing from the list of other works. Is it because the book was not published by Faber and Faber? Whatever the excuse, this is a grave mistake as we can learn a great deal about Plath's development toward what we now see as 'The Ariel Voice'. Still, I'm delighted to finally have the authentic Ariel in my personal library.
Rating: Summary: I've read better -- much better Review: First off, I think in order to be fair, I should give a little background information on myself to validate my opinions.
I am a 16 yeard old white female. I attend an Art's School for students who are gifted in music, dance, theatre, creative writing, or visual arts. The students selected are interviewed for about 30 minutes to 3 hours, depending on the core area. The odds of getting ito the school are about 1 out of 450. I attend the school for creative writing and not only do I have to write an abundant amount of work, I must also study both contemporary and classic literature. No, I am not trying to flatter myself or brag, but I think this information is necessary in order to understand my viewpoints on Plath's work.
Also, like Plath, I have been committed to psychiatric hospitals and had to stay at one for 3 full years. Though I have never known Plath's diagnosis, it is probable that it is the same as mine: manic-depressive psychosis due to her severe depression, rage, and the amount of work she created right before her suicide.
Reading the following information, it would seem I would be a perfect, die-hard, Plath fan. But, alas, I am not.
Plath's work, in my opinion, is definitely not a work of "genius." Some of her poems come close, but are still lacking in their astonishment that so many describe. The poems that touch on the border of "genius" are "Elm" ("I know the bottom, she says. I know it with my great tap root:/It is what you fear./I do not fear it: I have been there." and "I am terrified by this dark thing/That sleeps in me;/All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity."), "Widow" (Widow. The dead syllable, with its shadow/Of an echo, exposes the panel in the wall/Behind which the secret passages lies--stale air,/Fusty remembrances, the coiled-spring stair/That opens at the top onto nothing at all..../), "Poppies in July" ("Little poppies, little hell flames,/Do you do no harm?//You flicker. I cannot touch you./I put my hands among the flames. Nothing burns.//And it exhausts me to watch you/Flickering like that, wrinkly and clear red, like the skin of a mouth.//A mouth just bloodied."), "Crossing the Water" ("The spirit of blackness is in us, it is in the fishes./A snag is lifting a valedictory, pale hand;//Stars open among the lilies./Are you not blinded by such expressionless sirens?/This is the silence of astounded souls."), "Lady Lazarus" ("Dying/Is an art, like everything else./I do it exceptionally well."), and a few other lines from some other poems that I don't think are worth mentioning at this point.
Plath became famous because of her "suffering artist" personality that she displayed. Yes, she did stay in London with her young children in a freezing winter where she wrote her "Ariel" poems, but she wasn't the only one, and I'm sure much others had it worse.
But, the most obvious reason she became famous was because of her suicide. This is why whiny, depressed, angst-ridden teenagers are drawn to Plath. They do not love her because of her dazzling poetry, but because she chose to kill her herself. Many teenagers, especially females, model themselves after Plath. They attempt suicide to live more "deeply" and write horrible Plath-like poetry that isn't even near the realm of Plath's work. They feel that Plath created this poetry just for them and that they are the only ones who truly understand how Plath felt, and no one else in the world (or their school) feels this way. They don't bother to understand the poetry. Instead they read it a few times, over analyze it, and decide that they also feel the same way and that they should also write poetry and attempt suicide.
Die-hard, teenage Plath fans also tend to be incredibly close minded to any other poetry, expect for Plath and other suicidal poets (i.e. Anne Sexton). These people are just ignorant and think that they are "TRULY" unique, and that their poetry should be published so others can know that they suffer.
I have had to read poetry by these types of people, and I tell you, they are very inadequate to the writing they CAN do, because many of them are very talented, but are narrow minded and only write about their so-called "sufferings." I can tell by their thought processes that they have talent, but refuse to expand into different realms of poetry.
Of course, when you write about suffering, it isn't always pathetic. Just don't make it the topic of your whole book of poetry. There is more to life then death.
And, not just teenage Plath fans, but teenagers who write poetry in general usually don't edit and rewrite their work because they feel as though it takes the "soul" out of their work. They want to leave it "raw" and "unpolished." They want people to feel what they were feeling in that exact moment. And this is why much of their poetry horrible: they don't believe in editing their work.
Plath did edit her work. She was considered a professional. While standing in the bookstore and reading this book (I did not bother to purchase it) I read her original manuscripts. Obviously, the published ones were better. The most disappointing thing about this volume was that they only provided a few of her original manuscripts. What they should've done (or should do) instead is make a whole book dedicated to her original manuscripts so others can see her creative process and the value of editing and rewriting. Put the manuscripts first, and then the final poem. I think this would make out for a nice book....it might be worth $25.
Those who feel that this book is worth the money are either the die-hard Plath fans, or educators of some sort, who for some bizarre reason need to purchase this book.
Overall, I'm not a fan of Plath, so I cannot give a good rating to this book. The Collected Poems I would give 3 stars, only because you can see how much she progressed (for the better) in her poetry and it includes her all her published (and some previously unpublished) works.
If you want to read good poetry, I suggest Emily Dickinson, or, if you want to stick to more contemporary poetry, Louise Gluck ("The Wild Iris" won a Pulitzer), or find some good translations for Rainer Maria Rilke, Anna Akhmatova, and Marina Tseteyeva. Plath just doesn't live up to the hype. If you suffer for your art, at least make sure it's "good" art.
Rating: Summary: mediocre ripoff Review: In looking through this book, it was not what I thought it would be. While this review is not a crit against the greatness of Plath and her work, to have first the version of Ariel we all know, and then have it followed by her typed pages in her order just isn't worth the price. I guess I was misled into believing it would be all the poems she intended to go into Ariel, as well as those poem drafts. However, the only drafts in this mss are for "Ariel" the poem, and on of the bee poems. I enjoy reading the drafts of poets' work, simply to get the thought process of what went into it. But this book isn't worth the full price, nor does it provide any insight into her drafts, save two poems mentioned. And the intro by her daughter is a big so what? Anyone wanting to read Plath's version of Ariel need only read the poems listed in the back of her COLLECTED. Other than just the typed drafts with an occasional scribble here or there, I see little need for this book and only more opporutunity for publishers to cash in on her fame by the die-hard Plath fans.
Rating: Summary: "Love set you going," she wrote, "like a fat gold watch." Review: Now at long last, we get the "Ariel" we deserve. Plath's admirers have been waiting a long time, since at least the early 1980s when Ted Hughes first revealed that he had changed the order of the poems in his wife's final manuscript. He had added some poems--the final, freezingly depressing ones--and then re-arranaged the bulk of the book to leave an impression of a woman gone over the brink into a chilling fugue state. Now Frieda Hughes, Plath's daughter, 2 when her mother killed herself, has performed a ritual act of atonement to her mother's memory, and given us the original, "happy" (relatively speaking) ARIEL which we have never been able to see.
At $24,95, the book's a little expensive, but it feels as though money had been spent on its planning and execution, so you don't feel rooked. In one section, the gray paper on which the facsimile materials are printed is easy on the eyes, aiding the eye as it struggles with Plath's numerous emendations. We get the notes Plath wrote for her own use when she had to do that reading at the BBC towards the end, the more-British-than-thou reading we have grown to love and hate at the same time. Frieda Hughes contributes an interesting and contextualizing introduction in which she seeks to reconcile the differing viewpoints of her mother and father--a challenging task, but she's up to it. The book ends up with four of the bee-keeping poems--and another in the appendix, "The Swarm," which Sylvia kept changing her mind about including. Should she leave it in? Take it out? The title is in brackets. Thus the book ends with a hopeful note, with the freshness of Devon instead of the bleak London winter. It ends, pleasantly enough, with the words, "They taste the spring."
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