English: Digital image of Sylvia Plath’s signature (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
- Title: Ariel Poems by Sylvia Plath
- Author: Sylvia Plath
- Year Published: 1965 (HarperPerennial)
- Year Purchased: 1994
- Source: A bookstore in Tennessee.
- About: Sylvia was a born writer. She wrote like a lioness: fearless, protective, maternal, bold, ruthless, nurturing, unapologetic. Published a couple of years after her suicide, her estranged husband, Ted Hughes, changed the make-up of Ariel by switching out twelve poems for those of his choosing; it took 39 years for this to be righted. This is the altered edition. No matter, the poems are stunning. My favourites change with the seasons, my mood, my age. They are chameleons, different with each reading. They should, at that, be read aloud. Adding a voice tips the alchemical balance anew. If you haven’t read Plath’s poems in a while, try again. She isn’t just for moody teenage girls. I promise.
- Motivation: I was young, very young. I bought this slim volume on a road trip to Tennessee. It was autumn, the leaves were falling. I wore a lot of plaid dresses and flat shoes, good for twirling around in the crisp mountain air. The season was a perfect accompaniment for her fierce lamentations and burning clarity, a like-minded companion for the turmoil of my heart.
- Times Read: Multiple
- Random Excerpt/Page 57: “I cannot run, I am rooted, and the gorse hurts me/With its yellow purses, its spiky armoury./I could not run without having to run forever./The white hive is snug as a virgin,/Selling off her brood cells, her honey, and quietly humming.”
- Happiness Scale: 8
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