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Product Details
Paperback: 384 pages
Publisher: Harper Perennial Modern Classics; Reprint edition (September 2, 2008)
This book is the most complete collection of Sylvia Plath's poetry assembled in one volume. It is for this reason that it belongs almost as required reading, not just in American english programs, but in secondary schools everywhere. It's value lies in it's progression of a female poet and her journey towards finding her true voice. We see the early poems, methodically and skillfully written, shedding style after style of obvious influences through excercises of observation and perserverance. Through these verses, she explores and develops an intricate mythology; by the end, however, she has not lost us in her private world of symbolism and imagery, but enthralls us, heartbreakingly, through the mastery of her words. These last poems, that made up her final manuscript, are undisputedly some of the most moving and beautifully executed compositions of this past century. It is a wonderful book, one that forever changes the way the reader interprets art and the world around him that inspires it.
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35 of 40 people found the following review helpful
It doesn't matter what you think about Sylvia Plath; her suicides, dependence on Ted Hughes, the relationship she had with her mother, her poems about "Daddy, the very depth of the darkness she held inside. It doesn't matter a damn. What matters is the writing, the beauty of the words, the music in her voice. "The Collected Poems" won the Pulitzer. Some may disagree with this choice, but what do they know. Sylvia was a genius. The poems are from 1956-1963... "Southern Sunrise" 1956 SP uses the imagery of color- lemon,mango, peach, pinapple barked, green crescent of palms, quartz clear, blue drench, red watermelon sun. One can see she was happy when she wrote this poem. (Probably just met Ted)
"Fiesta Melons" 1956 Bright green and thumpable/Laced over With stripes/ Of turtle-dark green/Choose an egg shape/ a world shape/ Bowl one homeward to taste/ in the whitehot noon I find it interesting how much SP's poems reveal about her state of mind as she wrote them. One can observe the progression of depression, her troubled marriage and lonliness, especially in the later poems 1960-63... "Tulips" 1961 I am nobody/I have nothing to do with explosions. I didn't want any flowers/I only wanted/to lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty. "The Rival" 1961(About Ted??) I wake to a mausoleum; you are here/Ticking your fingers on the marble table/looking for cigarettes/Spiteful as a woman, but not so nervous/ And dying to say something unanswerable. The Moon and the Yew Tree" 1961 Separated from my house by a row of headstones/ I simply cannot see where there is to get to.Read more ›
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33 of 39 people found the following review helpful
Gosh, I love Sylvia Plath's prose and poetry. I could read and reread some of her poems again and again. This is a great collection of her poems. I keep this book loose on my bookshelf when I feel like getting shivers up my spine before I go to sleep. There are some poems that I can just read and reread over and over again that make me feel... oh, mysterious, anxious, happy, perplexed... and Sylvia Plath is one of the poets who has written multiple poems that give me those feelings. Most people who like poetry are familiar with Mirror or Daddy, but there are other poems that people don't know about. I loved the sonnet "To Time" and the poem "Mystic." It is interesting to read her poems knowing what she was going through... reading the poems that coincide with certain events in her life, like her marriage to Ted Hughes, and poems that she wrote about her attempted suicides. I suggest this collection to anyone who is interested in this woman... and I also recommend that you read The Bell Jar as you read her poems, or maybe a few of her journal entries. Sylvia Plath is one of those poets that writes about herself, and knowing background on her life is crucial in understanding these poems. Well, you can decide for yourself.
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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Perhaps one of the best collections of poetry ever assembled, Sylvia Plath's poems are a must read for Plath fans and poetry buffs alike. Listed in chronological order (as much as possible), readers should pay particular attention to the poems from the summer of 1962 until the last poems in 1963 to fully appreciate the groundbreaking, enigmatic verse that defines Sylvia Plath. In addition to fifty poems written during her years as an undergrad at Smith College, there is a very interesting selection of notes including the original order of poems in Plath's Ariel collection (the order of the posthumous collection was altered following her death). A wonderful gift for (literate) college students (and not just English majors).
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This is work of the highest potency and widest influence, even outside of poetic writing. Stephen King, Joyce Carol Oates, Toni Morrison, and even Madonna have all mentioned reading Plath's poems. As a Salon.com writer put it, "if we could bottle her verse, it would be the strongest brew in the bar."
Some of Plath's phrases stand in the lyrical company of Yeats, her imagery in the company of Rimbaud -- but the mournful obsessiveness, lit with fury, is hers alone. Her late work is a de Chirico landscape come to life. "The Moon and the Yew Tree" is like reading a Van Gogh.
Take the journey. Start off casually, flipping through to find the shorter poems. Then, find yourself addicted until you're scouring the dense early work and the juvenilia, fiending for just one more hit of the imagery and phrasing that goes off like a firecracker "through the black amnesias of heaven."
In this book, readers will confront the poet who wrote "where spilt lives congeal and stiffen to history." Plath is the most Disquieting Muse.
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