[.ca] Ariel: The Restored Edition, a Facsimile of Plath's ... (ISBN 0060732601)

Haunting Poetry:
I first encountered one of Sylvia Plath's poems in my English course at college. I became engaged and decided to buy this book. I wasn't dissapointed. Although I don't like all of the poems, there are some that are really haunting. She always put forth what she though, which is really admirable. They are easy to read. My favorites are:"Daddy" and "Lady Lazarus".

A Mythos of Death:
It may seem like an exaggeration, but I think Ariel really is all about death and its various aspects: physical, emotional, spiritual. The poems are written in a broad, mythic sense that is larger than the author, as if she is speaking from a collective conciousness. They are also poems that can evolve with the reader; they can be outlets for angst or bitterness, they can be read for their viewpoints (such as the title poem, where the speaker seems to be a disembodied spirit) or a facinating and somewhat horrifying portrait of a woman on the brink of suicide. They show the beauty in the darkness of things, and, in my opinion, belong on every poet or poetry-lover's bookshelf.

Sylvia's most revealing work:
There is no doubt that "Ariel" is Plath's most celeberated work. The poems were written the last months of her life (Before she put her head into an oven) They seem to written with such urgency... as if she despertely wanted to get all of the darkness inside her on paper. I am terrifyed by this dark thing That sleeps inside me; All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity. ...ARIEL She wrote and wrote and wrote.... Sometimes three poems a day...But the devil inside continued to consume her... But it shimmers, it does not stop, and I think it wants me. ...ARIEL The reader feels her pain, her hopelessnes, her desperation, her burdened soul. A flower left out---Morning has been blackened---Starless and fatherless, a dark water---Plummet to their dark address---And the message of the yew tree is blackness, blackness and silence---If you only knew how these veils were killing me. ...ARIEL Plath's darkest hours are within these poems...the reader can feel her night breath on their skin, feel her quickening heart. Ted Hughes had left her for another woman, she was stuck in England with two small children, it was the coldest winter on record. Here's what she says about Ted.... If I've killed one man, I've killed two--- The vampire who said he was you And drank my blood for a year, Seven years, if you want to know. ..ARIEL Plath's verse is gorgeous. Nobody has compared to her imagery yet...or her use of metaphor. All night your moth -breath/ Flickers among the flat pink roses. I see myself, flat, ridiculous, a cut-paper shadow. Smiles catch on my skin/like smiling hooks. The beads of hot metal fly, and I,love,I am a pure accetylene. My head a moon Of Japanese paper, my gold beaten skin. ...ARIEL When she was only 30, Plath put towels under the doors where her children were sleeping, so they would not inhale the fumes... She then put her head into an oven. I often wonder why nobody could have helped her with her devil: not her mother, friends, husband, children, her tarot cards, not even her poetry. But finally she helped herself..... Dying Is an art, like everything else. I do it exceptionally well. I do it so it feels like hell. I do it so it feels real. I guess you could say I've a call ....ARIEL/1960

Plath's warped, often whimsical tour of an inner hell:
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.

An Insightful Depiction of a Human Condition:
Ariel is a collection of the last poems Sylvia Plath ever wrote. Furthermore, the poems were written during the last months of her life, which were very bleak months indeed. Plath's husband, Ted Hughes, had just left her for another woman, and she was left to watch over her two young children in the middle of a freezing cold winter in a small apartment that was not heated. Because of these circumstances, a lot of the poems included in "Ariel" are depressing; however, the poems are also strikingly beautiful. They show the human condition at its absolute lowest point: hopeless, stark, terrifying. Plath eventually ends her life by commiting suicide in a dramatic way: sticking her head in an oven and leaving it there. It was her third suicide attempt, and the other two were pretty dramatic as well. Plath addresses these suicide attempts, and how it felt to survive the other two, in one of her most famous poems from Ariel, "Lady Lazarus": "I have done it again./ One year in every ten/ I manage it-/ A sort of walking miracle/ my skin Bright as a Nazi lampshade.../ And I a smiling woman/ am only thirty./ And like the cat I have nine times to die./ This is Number Three./ What a trash/ To annihilate each decade.../ Dying Is an art,/ like everything else/I do it exceptionally well./ Herr God, Herr Lucifer Beware/ Beware./ Out of the ash/ I rise with my red hair/ And I eat men like air." The Nazi theme continues in Plath's poem "Daddy", in which she accuses her father of being similar to Hitler, and compares her husband to her father as well, writing about how they both had negative influences in her life. "I have always been sacred of you,/ With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo./ And your neat mustache/ And your Aryan eye, bright blue./ Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You-/ Not God but a swastika/ So black no sky could squeak through./ Every woman adores a Fascist,/ The boot in the face, the brute/ Brute heart of a brute like you..../ I was ten when they buried you./ At twenty I tried to die/ And get back, back, back to you./ I thought even the bones would do./ But they pulled me out of the sack, And they stuck me together with glue./ And then I knew what to do./ I made a model of you, A man in black with a Meinkampf look/ And a love of the rack and the screw./ And I said I do, I do./ So daddy, I'm finally through./ If I've killed one man, I've killed two-/ The vampire who said he was you/ And drank my blood for a year,/ Seven years, if you want to know./ Daddy, you can lie back now." These are two of the most well-known examples of the bleakness but truthfulness in Plath's poetry. They reach toward the human emotions everyone knows- pain, sorrow, bitterness, lonliness. However, Plath also wrote some humourous and sweet poems which are included in Ariel, including poems about her children and good memories. These poems add a lightness to the book which is otherwise dark and dreary. Although the reader is tempted to hate a book filled with such depressing poetry, no one can resist loving it. This book is, in my opinion, one of the best poetry volumes of Twentieth Century American Literature, and it will find a place in your heart. If you have not read Ariel, I greatly recommend it. Through the autobiographical poems found within it you will connect with Plath's disillusionment and also come to know a great deal about the poetic genius' troubled life and last days.