Plath, Sylvia

The Bell Jar: A Novel (Perennial Classics)

Average customer rating:

Not good untill page 128...
What?
Stewing in sour air
Was This Really Meant to Be Published?
A fine balance

The Bell Jar: A Novel (Perennial Classics)
Sylvia Plath
Manufacturer: Harper Perennial Modern Classics
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
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ASIN: 0060930187

Amazon.com

Plath was an excellent poet but is known to many for this largely autobiographical novel. The Bell Jar tells the story of a gifted young woman's mental breakdown beginning during a summer internship as a junior editor at a magazine in New York City in the early 1950s. The real Plath committed suicide in 1963 and left behind this scathingly sad, honest and perfectly-written book, which remains one of the best-told tales of a woman's descent into insanity.

Book Description

The Bell Jar chronicles the crack-up of Esther Greenwood: brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, and successful, but slowly going under--maybe for the last time. Sylvia Plath masterfully draws the reader into Esther's breakdown with such intensity that Esther's insanity becomes completely real and even rational, as probable and accessible an experiece as going to the movies. Such deep penetration into the dark and harrowing corners of the psyche is an extraordinary accomplishment and has made The Bell Jar a haunting American classic.

Download Description

This first-person narrative of a young woman with an existential mental problem struggling toward adulthood is often seen as Ms. Plath'sautobiography.

The Bell Jar is a delicate plunge into the mind of someone losing sanity.

Customer Reviews:

Not good untill page 128..........2007-05-31

Ya know how an artist's work isn't worth much until he/she dies? Well this is what happened here. Now I see why it wasn't going to be published when she was alive. Because it is BORING!(The book was published 6 weeks after Sylvia Plath committed suicide. Things always sell better after they are dead.) The entire first half of the book is so monotoned I found myself putting the book down quite often. I kept thinking "when will she go insane and be interesting?" I have to say that her description of things was intelligently written it was just so BORING!

Let me sum the book up for you and save you the money....girl gets job in NY, girl meets boy, girl dumps boy, girl goes slightly insane, girl goes into a rehab/asylum, girl is up for getting out of the asylum, book ends......just like that! The worst ending ever!

I really am torn by giving authors a poor rating because I know how hard they work on their writing but this book was just arrrgghhh boring.

What?.......2007-05-28

This was so horrible I couldn't even finish it. It makes absolutely no sense and tends to ramble. How in the world people think this is fabulous and classic literature is beyond me. I want my money back for this piece of junk.

Stewing in sour air.......2007-05-24

Hey--- I stayed away from this novel through high school and college because, quite simply, it felt like an almost cliche read: something edgy women pick up to justify feeling miserable. But ignore Plath's cultural reputation as a tortured poetess and give this one a shot; I was so glad I did.

Well, I guess I should say half-ignore the miserable reputation. It'd be wrong to say that Esther's narrative isn't occasionally wrenching, and it would also be wrong to say that the tone isn't occasionally precious-- she is a closeted young woman obsessed with her academics, her career status, and having the right friends.

But Plath's Esther is also funny. When she's not swilling in her madness and has some distance on herself, she imagines herself melodramatically crying for help before a priest ("Oh Father, help me."), or marrying some hypothetical "virile" man living in Chicago and having tons of kids by him.

But all this is prelude to what we all should be focusing on when we read The Bell Jar, the language itself. All the amazon reviewers are right when they say Plath's talented with language. Esther's descriptions of shock therapy, of her skiing accident, and most of all, her obsession with purity and God, the unasked-for descent of the Bell Jar, are highly deliberate, intricate, and inventive. They're inspired and what shoot the book beyond the pressured container of plot.

If you'd like a book that seems to rewrite The Bell Jar in a kind of younger scenario, with a story that's more forgiving to its protagonist, try Curtis Sittenfeld's Prep. Sittenfeld has undoubtedly read her Plath and I think Sittenfeld wants to give her spirited Lee the "vigilance" to face her challenges, a vigilance that Esther has to grope for.

But back to The Bell Jar. I had wondered why so many people drew on Plath for inspiration, particularly female or feminine writers, and now I see why. Lurking at the edges of The Bell Jar is a sort of Da-Vinci-Code-ish sense that women geniuses, women artists, have all been silenced in some horrible way, but the chosen are the chosen and the words will come out. Plath flirted with the idea of straight-line connection to God in some of her poetry (check out the beautiful "Mystic" from her poems) and she does indeed seem to have visionary access to secrets of life in this novel, fashioning quotes you'll copy down and keep with you.

Was This Really Meant to Be Published?.......2007-04-21

Sylvia Plath was a mentally sick person who was encouraged by one of her psychiatrists to write. I have seen photographs of her and Ted Hughes, and Sylvia is in an appaling state. I can't even relate what Sylvia is doing in one of the photographs. It's sad. I hope that she found some comfort in writing, but honestly, was this meant to be published?

It's not a surprise that many readers find this repulsive. English teachers/professors should not require students to read this; it goes against every basic human tendency to be happy and not to be anti-life. I don't know how else to put this but the best writers aren't suicides. Don't read them. Their opus is one long goodbye note.

A fine balance.......2007-04-15

A story about a young girl who experiences a nervous breakdown, I saw so much truth in this book, that I was left thinking, but that's not so different from me, albeit a little more extreme. And believe me I am not even close to a nervous breakdown, but it demonstrted how fine that balance can be.
Excellent.

Average customer rating:

insightful
If you're literate, this is a must own.
Wonderful content: terrible editing
Incomplete Journals of a monomaniac.
An idiosyncratic pure beat and melodic force

The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath
Manufacturer: Anchor
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0385720254
Release Date: 2000-10-17

Amazon.com

In the decades that have followed Sylvia Plath's suicide in February 1963, much has been written and speculated about her life, most particularly about her marriage to fellow poet Ted Hughes and her last months spent writing the stark, confessional poems that were to become Ariel. And the myths surrounding Plath have only been intensified by the strong grip her estate--managed by Hughes and his sister, Olwyn--had over the release of her work. Yet Plath kept journals from the age of 11 until her death at 30. Previously only available in a severely bowdlerized edition, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath have now been scrupulously transcribed (with every spelling mistake and grammatical error left intact) and annotated by Karen V. Kukil, supervisor of the Plath collection at Smith College.

The journals show the breathless adolescent obsessed with her burgeoning sexuality, the serious university student competing for the highest grades while engaging in the human merry-go-round of 1950s dating, the graduate year spent at Cambridge University where Plath encountered Ted Hughes. Her version of their relationship (dating is definitely not the appropriate term) is a necessary, and deeply painful, complement to Birthday Letters. On March 10, 1956, Plath writes: <blockquote> Please let him come, and give me the resilience & guts to make him respect me, be interested, and not to throw myself at him with loudness or hysterical yelling; calmly, gently, easy baby easy. He is probably strutting the backs among crocuses now with seven Scandinavian mistresses. And I sit, spiderlike, waiting, here, home; Penelope weaving webs of Webster, turning spindles of Tourneur. Oh, he is here; my black marauder; oh hungry hungry. I am so hungry for a big smashing creative burgeoning burdened love: I am here; I wait; and he plays on the banks of the river Cam like a casual faun. </blockquote> Plath's documentation of the two years the couple spent in the U.S. teaching and writing explicitly highlights the dilemma of the late-1950s woman--still swaddled in expectations of domesticity, yet attempting to forge her own independent professional and personal life. This period also reveals in detail the therapy sessions in which Plath lets loose her antipathy for her mother and her grief at her father's death when she was 8--a contrast to the bright, all-American persona she presented to her mother in the correspondence that was published as Letters Home. The journals also feature some notable omissions. Plath understandably skirted over her breakdown and attempted suicide during the summer of 1953, though she was to anatomize the events minutely in her novel The Bell Jar.

Fragments of diaries exist after 1959, which saw the couple's return to England and rural retreat in Devon, the birth of their two children, and their separation in late 1962. An extended piece on the illness and death of an elderly neighbor during this period is particularly affecting and was later turned into the poem "Berck-Plage." Much has been made of the "lost diaries" that Plath kept until her suicide--one simply appears to have vanished, the other Hughes burned after her death. It would seem rapacious to wish for more details of her despair in her final days, however. It is crystallized in the poems that became Ariel, and this is what the voice of her journals ultimately send the reader back to. Sylvia Plath's life has for too long been obfuscated by anecdote, distorting her major contribution to 20th-century literature. As she wrote in "Kindness": "The blood jet is poetry. There is no stopping it." --Catherine Taylor

Book Description

First U.S. Publication

A major literary event--the complete, uncensored journals of Sylvia Plath, published in their entirety for the first time.

Sylvia Plath's journals were originally published in 1982 in a heavily abridged version authorized by Plath's husband, Ted Hughes. This new edition is an exact and complete transcription of the diaries Plath kept during the last twelve years of her life. Sixty percent of the book is material that has never before been made public, more fully revealing the intensity of the poet's personal and literary struggles, and providing fresh insight into both her frequent desperation and the bravery with which she faced down her demons. The complete Journals of Sylvia Plath is essential reading for all who have been moved and fascinated by Plath's life and work.

Customer Reviews:

insightful.......2007-05-30

i watched this thing on tv once about sylvia plath, & this college professor said that every single year she's taught, at least one out of a class full of girls studying sylvia plath will feel that she is sylvia plath reincarnated. and what's funny is that after reading this, i absolutely understand why! that in itself really explains what i'm trying to get across here. something about this really affected me - everything she says sounds just like something i've written, thought, or experienced in the past. this is most definitely worth your time & money.

If you're literate, this is a must own........2007-04-29

As a woman deeply affected by poetry and great literature, of course I would stumble across Plath. However, it wasn't in my studies that I came to know her work, but through the charming compliments of someone who felt I earned her poems as a description- I believe he was nuts- but the work, the words, no, no, THAT was brilliance! These journals are an archive of mid 20th century America and a veritable gold mine of insight into one of the world's premiere writers (female or no). The entries, although privately recorded and oft scandalized by the Ted Hughes/marriage fiasco, come off as less of a personal musing than a practice run for print. Plath does a darling job of explaining the mundane but the undercurrent of inferiority and rapture for writing come through like a beacon in her quest for talent in a sea of self-doubt. Plath is a prolific writer (the volume is a heap of dead weight paper) and not a page is wasted with her thoughts. For anyone looking to understand one woman's intelligent foray into her own psyche, collegiate literary yearnings, and the basis of her thoughts and feelings pre/antedating her marriage: BUY THIS! This is one set of pages that will alter your perception and it is made all the more poignant by her publicized suicide. Plath, thank you!

Wonderful content: terrible editing.......2007-03-19

Plath's journals are an excellent read. I gave it only 3 stars because the editing is terrible. I find myself constantly flipping to the back. Kukil included notes in the back instead of at the bottom of the pages where they would be more logical. She also included journal fragments in the appendix (there are 15). Plath's journals could have been edited much better.

Incomplete Journals of a monomaniac........2007-01-22

I wish I could have given this book 5 stars, the content is riveting, but I decided to give it four because of the editing by Karen V. Kukil.
The Journals of Sylvia Plath as we all know are incomplete, they were edited (sanitized) by her husband Ted Hughes. No doubt whatsoever that the material he 'lost' was detrimental to him. The only thing he allows in the book is her account of his dalliance with a student, after which she begins to see him in a different light. It leaves you at the end of the book feeling very sorry for this woman, and wanting to find out more. (Which one can't help feeling was a marketing ploy by Hughes, who sold the rights to her book the Bell Jar to the Americans after her death in spite of her mother's objections, so that he could raise the money to buy a third home).

Sylvia Plath was brilliant, sexy, vivacious and sociable. She was also completely obsessed with analyzing the working of her mind, her emotions and sensitivities. She was narcissistic, selfish and critical to the point of meanness. The rawness of her emotions is hard to take sometimes. What a normal person would consider to be a rough sea of life and cope accordingly, she turns into a force 10 hurricane. One cannot help feeling that the journals were written to be published, that the author KNEW someday they would be discovered and read by everyone. The writing is beautiful. The very first entry July 1950 is a delight:-

"I may never be happy, but tonight I am content. Nothing more than an empty house, the warm hazy weariness from a day spent setting strawberry runners in the sun, a glass of cool sweet milk, and a shallow dish of blueberries bathed in cream......"

Once started, it is hard to put the book down.

A word now about the editing. I think the book could have been better organized for the general reader, it is formatted like a text book. All the cross-referencing! I had to use two bookmarks all the way through the reading of the book. The 'Notes' could have been at the bottom of each page instead of hidden at the back of the book. The Appendices could have been Notes at the end of each appertaining journal section, and the Index could have been better arranged. The section on Sylvia Plath (which takes up 5 1/2 pages of the index) should have been separated from the rest, to make it less confusing.

An idiosyncratic pure beat and melodic force.......2006-08-28

Whether you read The Journals of Sylvia Plath as a writer's notebook, as scenes from a marriage, as social history, or as daily bulletins from one of the most star-crossed love stories of all time, the journal's words help to keep alive the writer who has been called "the literary girl's Elvis" while also bringing us news of how she thought, how she taught, what she read, how she wrote, along with the most primal news of her legendary marriage, a marriage that so often seemed golden, closer than close, but whose ardent claustrophobia was more precious to Sylvia than it was to Ted, and whose tragic aftermath also turned out to be notorious, horrible, with Assia Wevill (the woman Hughes left Plath for) killing herself in a copycat suicide, and also killing their little daughter, and with even Hughes's final wife (the non-writer and therefore the one who was supposed to be stable) threatening to kill herself when she discovered, not long before Ted's death, that he not only had a mistress, he had also over the years been the lover of a fair (no, make that unfair) number of others.

Plath also had to suffer the pain of seeing less gifted writers beat her out for literary prizes: "All I need now is to hear that GS (George Starbuck) or MK (Maxine Kumin) has won the Yale and get a rejection of my children's book..." And what reader (writer or not) will not empathize with "Must not be accusing, although I feel like it..."

As it turned out, George Starbuck did win the Yale and, reading this, I found myself wanting to say to Plath, "Listen, Sylvia, when we here in the twenty-first century hear the word `Starbuck,' we think of coffee, we don't ever think of George," and then not long after thinking this I discovered her similar wish to offer writerly comfort to Henry James ("I long to make known to him his posthumous reputation").

And how can you not to love a writer who, in notes to herself about a story she wants to write (in this case about George Starbuck and his mistress, the poet Anne Sexton) begins her notes this way: "The story about George, Anne and the children. An insufferable woman (myself of course) gets involved..."

The Journals also bring to vivid life many of the great (and also some of the less great) poets of the twentieth century: W. H. Auden ("his coarse, tweedy brown jacket and burlap-textured voice"); Ralph Rogers, with "his slick, nervous smile, his jittery huckster hand jiggling money in his pants pocket"; Adrienne Rich ("round and stumpy, all vibrant short hair" under a tulip-red umbrella).

As for the poems Hughes wrote to Plath in Birthday Letters, although they often seem clumsily self-justifying and garishly homespun, they do also contain moments that feel incredibly emotional, hacked out of real feeling. Plath's poems, on the other hand, are of a more stunning order, even the notoriously grandstanding poems like "Daddy," but this is even more true of the absolutely incandescent and astounding poems--"Sheep in Fog," "Letter in November," "The Rabbit Catcher," "Poppies in July," "Tulips," "Poppies in October," among many others--poems that move far beyond craft to the most startling and idiosyncratic pure beat and melodic force.

www.elisabeth-harvor.com

Ariel: The Restored Edition: A Facsimile of Plath's Manuscript, Reinstating Her Original Selection and Arrangement (P.S.)

Average customer rating:

A 'Just Right' edition.
Totally Awesome a must have
Not the Little Mermaid, please...don't do that.
Pages cut off / poor binding...
Plath and motherhood

Ariel: The Restored Edition: A Facsimile of Plath's Manuscript, Reinstating Her Original Selection and Arrangement (P.S.)
Sylvia Plath
Manufacturer: Harper Perennial Modern Classics
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0060732601
Release Date: 2005-10-25

Amazon.com

Sylvia Plath churned out her final poems at the remarkable rate of two or three a day, and Robert Lowell describes them as written by "hardly a person at all ... but one of those super-real, hypnotic, great classical heroines." Even more remarkable, she wrote them during one of the coldest, snowiest winters (1962-63) Londoners have ever known. Snowbound, without central heating, she and her two children spent much of their time sniffling, coughing, or running temperatures (In "Fever 103°" she writes, "I have been flickering, off, on, off on. / The sheets grow heavy as a lecher's kiss."). Pipes froze, lights failed, and candles were unobtainable.

As if these physical privations weren't enough, Plath was out in the cold in another sense--her husband, Ted Hughes, had left her for another woman earlier that year. Despite all this (or perhaps because of it), the Ariel poems dazzle with their lyricism, their surprising and vivid imagery, and their wit. Rather than confining herself to her bleak surroundings, Plath draws from a wide array of experience. In "Berck-Plage," for instance, clouds are "electrifyingly-coloured sherbets, scooped from the freeze." In "The Night Dances," the poet stands crib-side, reveling in her son's own brand of do-si-do: "Such pure leaps and spirals--Surely they travel / The world forever, I shall not entirely / Sit emptied of beauties, the gift / Of your small breath..."

Though at times they present the reader with hopelessness laid bare, these poems also teem with the brightest shards of a life, confounding those who merely look for the words of a gloomy, dispassionate suicide. Plath rose each morning in the final months of her life to "that still blue, almost eternal hour before the baby's cry" and left us these words like "axes/After whose stroke the wood rings..."

Book Description

Sylvia Plath's famous collection, as she intended it.</p>

When Sylvia Plath died, she not only left behind a prolific life but also her unpublished literary masterpiece, Ariel. When her husband, Ted Hughes, first brought this collection to life, it garnered worldwide acclaim, though it wasn't the draft Sylvia had wanted her readers to see. This facsimile edition restores, for the first time, Plath's original manuscript -- including handwritten notes -- and her own selection and arrangement of poems. This edition also includes in facsimile the complete working drafts of her poem "Ariel," which provide a rare glimpse into the creative process of a beloved writer. This publication introduces a truer version of Plath's works, and will no doubt alter her legacy forever.</p>

This P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading, and more.

Customer Reviews:

A 'Just Right' edition........2007-06-18

I'm not going to review Ariel.
If you've come this far, you've already read the poems, either on-line, or in a paperback edition. There is nothing I could say about one of the greatest poetic works of the 20th century.
I will review this edition, however. It's just right. Not to fancy (Ariel somehow wouldn't work in a gilded leather bound edition), certainly not cheap. It's well bound, well put together, and the original manuscript works are here, in an easy to read format.
It's over twenty bucks, and that's a lot of money for such a small book--but you'll keep it forever.

Totally Awesome a must have.......2007-05-20

So dark yet beautiful, a must have for every women. I was left speechless with it's intensity and shocked by the passion.
I ordered Ted Hughes, Birthday Letters, at the same time and read it after reading Ariel. Then I started reading them together one of his and then one of hers. I was moved to tears and spent an evening in near exhaustation, I'm left speechless.
Call me silly, but I can't help but see a very tragic modern day Romeo and Juliet with these two books. The expression of pain, hurt and love in these two poets is beyond comparsion and seldom seen. They touched the soul and will be remembered.
Thank you Sylvia and Thank you Ted.

Not the Little Mermaid, please...don't do that........2007-05-19

This is the much heralded Plath collection that everyone should read if you're into poetry, Plath, or heck, even good work. At a time of internal angst and turmoil, Mrs. Hughes cranked this out in a distinct voice and the greatest poems of her work are here: Lady Lazarus, Daddy, etc etc...It's a genuine treasure of poetry. If you can, get the voice recordings of Sylvia reading her own work. She has a soulful, determined, almost English (huh, wonder WHERE she got that from) intonation that makes you want to kiss her red mouth (that she was known for) and bless her for this beautiful, painful, stubbornly gorgeous poetry. Bravo, Plath!

Pages cut off / poor binding..........2007-05-12

I bought my copy of this Harper Perennial edition of Ariel at Barnes & Noble for $12 (plus tax). I wish I had flipped through it before doing so because several of the pages seemed to have been folded in with the binding. Because of this, some of the poems were unreadable due to lines being cut off.

Plath and motherhood.......2006-11-03

It seems every morbid well read teenage girl would carry a Sylvia Plath book around school, and I was one of them (I can't speak for the current Extreme Makeover, American Idol, online porn generation) Although I struck the Plath pose in high school, in all honesty I didn't really understand and appreciate her until my late thirties after I was married and had children. As a stay at home mother I know all too well the feeling of inadaquacy I must endure from those that deem me unworthy of anything too serious or intellectual. When I read Ariel and The Bell Jar years later it was more poignant. As a 39 year old mother of a small child I now understand what chauvanism and gender condecension really is, and it has allowed to read Plath with more empathy.

Average customer rating:

"Her dead body wears the smile of accomplishment..."
Treasure Discovered!
Collection Tracks the Course of a Genius's Rise and Fall
Most poems fall short
The Best of the Best!

Collected Poems
Sylvia Plath , and Ted Hughes
Manufacturer: Buccaneer Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

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Similar Items:

The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
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ASIN: 1568497032

Amazon.com

Sylvia Plath died in 1963, and even now her outsize persona threatens to bury her poetry--the numerous biographies and studies often drawing the reader toward anecdote and away from the work. It's a relief to turn to the poems themselves and once more be jolted by their strange beauty, hard-wrought originality, and acetylene anger. "It is a heart, / This holocaust I walk in, / O golden child the world will kill and eat." While the juvenilia and poems written before 1960 that Ted Hughes has included here prefigure Plath's later obsessions, they also enable us to witness her turn from thesaurus-heavy verse to stripped-down art as they gather power through raw simplicity. "The blood jet is poetry. / There is no stopping it," she declares in "Kindness."

Book Description

Containing everything that celebrated poet Sylvia Plath wrote after 1956, this is one of the most comprehensive collections of her work. Edited, annotated, and with an introduction by Ted Hughes.

Customer Reviews:

"Her dead body wears the smile of accomplishment...".......2006-05-06

Sylvia Plath - The Collected Poems has to be the best book of poetry in the world. I love Sylvia Plath, she was a genius. Her poetry moves me, everything she has ever written is gold. The first poem I ever read by Plath was Metaphors, "I've eaten a bag of green apples, boarded the train there's no getting off." Something about that line just struck a cord with me, from that moment on I was determined to read all her poems. Another poems I love include: Soliloquy of the Solipsist, I am Vertical, The Other, The Rival, You're, The Rabbit Catcher, Lady Lazaurus, Stillborn, For A Fatherless Son, Leaving Early, Morning Song, Cut, A Birthday Present, Fever 103, Gigolo, Daddy, and The Disquieting Muses. She writes about her father a lot, he died when she was nine and his death left her with depression for the rest of her life, from The Colossus, "Counting the red stars and those of plum-color. The sun rises under the pillar of your tongue. My hours are married to shadow." The Jailer is a poem I just adore, "My sleeping capsule, my red and blue zeppelin drops me from a terrible altitude." The poem, Poem for a Birthday- Witch Burning is gorgeous and frightening real, "I inhabit the wax image of myself, a doll's body. Sickness begins here: I am a dartboard for witches. Only the devil can eat the devil out." Plath left a legacy of timeless poems, short stories, and a novel, The Bell Jar. I have enjoyed reading The Collected Poems and so will you, Enjoy!

Treasure Discovered!.......2005-07-21

I originally bought this book seeking one special poem. What I have got now is a the key to the richest of treasure chests!

Collection Tracks the Course of a Genius's Rise and Fall.......2004-03-26

Anyone who has not discovered Plath's poetry-- distinctly superior to her prose-- would be greatly served to seek out a slim volume called "Crossing the Water." This haunting collection features most of her greatest poems from what I think to be her most creative years: 1957-1959. If these don't grab you, then give up on her altogether. However, the Collected Poems are the inevitable place to continue since they include her early promising works, as well as those dark pithy gems that characterize her bitterly twisted slide into the furthest reaches of her capacity for cynicism and despair.

A superb collection.

Most poems fall short.......2003-07-19

I first came across Sylvia Plath in an anthology of modern poetry. Her poems "Daddy" and "Lady Lazarus" blew me away. The former may well be, in my opinion, the best poem ever written by a woman, and one of the five best written by anyone in the last two centuries. Buying this book, I expected more of the same. Unfortunately, I found most of her early work to be dissapointingly typical. The reason Plath is so controversial is that her greatness is linked inextricably to her darkness. Before the latter manifested during her divorce and subsequent depression, there just wasn't that much to her. In other words, much of her early poetry is that of a reasonably intelligent woman- entertaining, even a little intriguing, but lacking the fury of "Lady Lazarus", the darkness of "A Birthday Present", or the fatalistic beauty of "Ariel". And while there are some glimmers of the genius that is to come (The Colossus, I Am Vertical), they aren't many. My advice to any prospective reader is to save some time and money and pick up her collection "Ariel", which contains 90% of her essential work.

The Best of the Best!.......2003-03-28

I love poetry, and this every poetry lover's fantasy. Having a volume of one of the best poet's ever almost complete collection. This is a book that I treasure, all the poems are masterpieces, and so beautiful. No one will ever write or think like Sylvia Plath again. This is a must-have for all of her fans. I own many poetry volumes--and this has to be my favorite. I would definitely recommend this--it was well deserving of 5 stars, and even people who aren't big fans of poetry have no choice but to love "The Collected Poems" by Sylvia Plath.

Average customer rating:

I loved it!
Not my type of read
A disturbing, yet light, read

The Bell Jar
Sylvia Plath
Manufacturer: Bantam
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: B000B5H6WY

Customer Reviews:

I loved it!.......2007-06-08

Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar is a window into the psyche of a mentally unstable woman in the 1950s; it shows an interesting point of view of being in a mental institution. There are not many books that are about or have this perspective of a mentally unstable person losing their mind for the first time and going to a mental institution. There aren't many good books about that, at least. I found that this book was incredibly hard to put down, it keeps you on the edge of your seat a lot, I found myself reading for hours without even realizing it. It is written so well and seems like something a lot of people, myself included, can relate to on several different levels. The way she describes what is going on and what is happening to her it almost seems logical. We can see it from her point of view, the way she thinks and goes about doing everything. It is like a window into her brain, the reader can see what is going on inside her head and the logic behind things she does.
One thing that really interested me was the constant referral to a bell jar, like the title, which symbolizes her madness. It is so intriguing the way she describes it as her being inside a bell jar that drops on her, distorting her perception on the world. And then towards the end when it is lifted off of her but still hovers, she knows she is not well but is getting better. It left me wondering what would happen to her next, when the bell jar will fall on her again and what will happen next time it does.

Not my type of read.......2007-05-06

This was not my type of book. After reading "An Unquiet Mind" and "Girl Interrupted" , I should have realized this is not a book that was going to keep my interest. The writing is very choppy. The time and place changes through out the book and it is difficult to follow at times. I do think the story of Sylvia Plath is very interesting. And sad. I would probably be more interested in reading a book about her written by someone else.

A disturbing, yet light, read.......2006-07-29

Removed, unemotional, disturbing. That's Sylvia Plath's excellent book. Starting with her successes as a young adult, The Bell Jar is a fictionalized autobiography, in which she gives herself a different name. It chronicles her life through her mental breakdown, including electroshock therapy, and her fellow patients. Accuratly discribing the stresses of a girl in the 1950's, including whether to be a good little housewife or to follow her dreams. What should she choose?
The book is easy to read and quick.
This book, written a few years before Plath's suicide, makes subsequent accounts of insane asylums seem inconsequential, dull, and whiney.
You'll never look at mental institution fiction the same again.

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Sylvia Plath Reads
Wonderful to Hear The Real Plath Reading Her Work
A Voice from the Grave: Hearing Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath Reads--Early Work
A special experience...

Sylvia Plath Reads
Sylvia Plath
Manufacturer: Caedmon
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Audio Cassette

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Letters Home

ASIN: 0694522465

Amazon.com Audiobook Review

The charged imagery of Sylvia Plath's carefully crafted poetry strikes even deeper when heard from the voice of the author. Remastered using contemporary digital technology, these historic recordings were made between 1958 and 1962, when Plath was at the height of her tragically shortened career. They capture the striking clarity of her writing and the studied pronunciations of her voice, while illuminating her subtle, yet profoundly moving vocal inflections. Plath carries the listener into a dreamscape that mixes memories of beautiful lightness with the secret pain of dark and disturbing insight. (Running time: 50 minutes, 1 cassette) --George Laney

Book Description

<BLOCKQUOTE>" . . . a young woman who . . . rose from the dead to become, in ten driven years, the best - the most exciting and influential, the most ruthlessly original poet of her generation." <DIV align=right>-- John Updike</DIV></BLOCKQUOTE>

Of the many American poets who reached her zenith in the last few decades, perhaps none looms so large as the legendary Sylvia Plath. Consummately crafted, Plath's poetry is stormy but luminous, sharp but poignant. This unique, compelling and intriguing recording has been heralded as "a significant tribute to and record of the lyric art that Sylvia Plath left to the literary heritage of America." (<EM>Booklist</EM>)

Contents:</B>

<UL type=disc><LI>The Ghost's Leavetaking <LI>November Graveyard <LI>On the Plethora of Dryads <LI>The Moon Was a Fat Woman Once <LI>Nocturne <LI>Child's Park Stones <LI>The Earthenware Head <LI>On the Difficulty of Conjuring up a Dryad <LI>Green Rock--Winthrop Bay <LI>On the Decline of Oracles <LI>The Goring <LI>Ouija <LI>The Beggars of Benidorm Market <LI>Sculptor <LI>The Disquieting Muses <LI>Spinster <LI>Parliament Hill Fields <LI>The Stones <LI>Candles <LI>Mushrooms <LI>Berck-plage <LI>The Surgeon at 2 A.M.</LI></UL>

Customer Reviews:

Sylvia Plath Reads.......2007-02-09
What more can be said? She reads emphatically, and there can be no better translation to her work, than by her reading it, herself. Each time i hear any of these poems, my heart goes out to her and i FEEL what she reads deep in my soul. For anyone who resonates w/her writing and even anyone who is remotely "into" Sylvia Plath, i cannot recommend this audiotape higher. The only so-called negative that i can think of, is that there aren't more readings on the tape.
Wonderful to Hear The Real Plath Reading Her Work.......2006-07-02
The only reasons I gave this audiobook 4 stars is that it lacks any introduction to each poem - does not even give a title. I know Plath generally announced something about her poetry when she read for BBC.

It would have been helpful to include a small booklet of the poems read simiar to Anne Sexton's Audiobook.

I wish more poems had been included. The actual audiobook is pretty sparse.

I was delighted to hear her mature beyond her years voice reading one poem from the original "Ariel" -- about the death of her neighbor Perce, entitled "Berek-Plage".

Her voice is powerful, full of anger and anguish that builds in such intensity it is though she is in the room with you.

A Voice from the Grave: Hearing Sylvia Plath.......2005-10-23
A rare treasure. Hearing Sylvia Plath read her own material is a necessity for any Plath fan. Some fine moments throughout. Would like to have heard selections from "Ariel". Still, a rewarding purchase.
Sylvia Plath Reads--Early Work.......2005-07-12
"Sylvia Plath Reads" is an asset to any Plath fan or scholar's collection. However, keep in mind that this 50 minute cassette tape focuses primarily on her early work, and not the infamous Ariel poems which epitomize Plath's legacy and that made her name. Taken in this light, these poems are luminous, haunting, and executed with her characteristic immaculate craftsmanship. At times, they can be quite thesaurus-driven and artificed. Several excellent poems represented include the following: "Berck-plage" (the only Ariel poem on the recording), "Mushrooms," "November Graveyard," and "The Stones" (from "Poem for a Birthday").
A special experience..........2000-06-27
...to actually hear Sylvia Plath read her own work. The poems here are wonderful(the selections are taken from radio broadcasts, I think)and not surprisingly, the author's voice adds much more to their enjoyment. And it is an interesting voice: deep, with a slightly stilted, "unplaceable" accent, and a throaty emotional quality. I only wish there was more-more poems, and perhaps even one of her interviews that are sometimes excerpted in documentaries. Nevertheless, a must for Plath readers.

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Autobiographical Stories

Published for the sake of publication

a great poet with heart and soul

Not Her Poetry / Not The Bell Jar

only for the way obsessed

Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams: Short Stories, Prose, and Diary Excerpts
Sylvia Plath
Manufacturer: Harper Perennial
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Letters Home

Collected Poems

Crossing the Water

ASIN: 0060955295

Book Description
<BLOCKQUOTE>"What I fear most, I think, is the death of the imagination.... If I sit still and don't do anything, the world goes on beating like a slack drum, without meaning. We must be moving, working, making dreams to run toward; the poverty of life without dreams is too horrible to imagine."</BLOCKQUOTE><DIV ALIGN=RIGHT>-- Sylvia Plath, from Notebooks, February 1956</DIV>
Renowned for her poetry, Sylvia Plath was also a brilliant writer of prose. This collection of short stories, essays, and diary excerpts highlights her fierce concentration on craft, the vitality of her intelligence, and the yearnings of her imaginaton. Featuring an introduction by Plath's husband, the late British poet Ted Hughes, these writings also reflect themes and images she would fully realize in her poetry. Jonny Panic and the Bible of Dreams truly showcases the talent and genius of Sylvia Plath.</p>
Customer Reviews:

Autobiographical Stories.......2006-01-27
I enjoyed this book very much as a fan of Sylvia Plath but wonder whether a regular reader (not a fan) would enjoy it as much.
It has been suggested that the stories are autobiographical which I agree with and it was fascinating because as I read I could hear Plath voicing her opinions through the characters and she really spat her attitude all over the book.
The book is divided into three parts:
The more successful short stories and prose pieces
Other stories
Excerpts from notebooks.
If anyone wants to pick up this book and read a fascinating story (fan or not) then I suggest:
The Wishing Box, which explores the birth of marriage and the death to creativity
Mothers, which explores alienation and a greatly desperate attempt to fit in
And Ocean 1212-W, which is purely autobiographical and explores the loss of childhood innocence.
My favourite story was Snow Blitz. I think this is autobiographical too as it deals with a single Mother (American) living in a small flat in London with two children trying to deal with a bitter cold English winter.
I found this story rather amusing because I'm from the South East of England and snow is rather exciting and magical to us but when it starts to melt and freeze over we, in typical Brit style, start to complain.
If you only read this book for one thing then read the Introduction written by Ted Hughes. He supplies the reader with a great deal of information about the writing of these short stories as well as a lot of information about Plath herself; I certainly learnt a thing or two.
Published for the sake of publication.......2003-12-23
I imagine that it's fairly hard to make a diary interesting and most of the diary excerpts found in this book seem to be published just for the sake of publication rather than for the actually content. I've read other diary entries by Plath outside of this book that were very interesting, so keep looking if you want to know about Plath (Wagner-Martin wrote a wonderful biography, however). The stories weren't interesting. I couldn't get into any of them.
a great poet with heart and soul.......2003-04-13
After falling in love with Sylvia Plath's works back in my high school days, I have read everything I can find on her or her work. She is inspiring and deep... keeping the imagery alive in every word she has written. I recommend Sylvia VERY highly, even her works for children are not to be missed.
Not Her Poetry / Not The Bell Jar.......2001-06-20
I wasn't disappointed, per se, as much as surprised that this collection didn't live up to the standards I had set for her after reading the collected poems and The Bell Jar. This fault, I assume, lies more with me than Plath's work here. I consider myself a true fan, but I would suggest this only to those of you firmly interested in taking "all" her work into account. For most readers, though, the collected poems and The Bell Jar should suffice.
only for the way obsessed.......2001-06-02
I love Sylvia Plath. I think she was a brilliant, insightful writer with an incredible sense of craft. I adore The Bell Jar, her poetry is amazing, and I have read biographies on her as well as her letters home, and I am now reading her unabridged journals.
BUT... I found Johnny Panic to be tedious. The stories seemed to be lacking Plath's biting humor, and the journal excerpts were edited, and felt stilted read out of context.
I was dissappointed.

Average customer rating:

Poetry combined with pranks

please, bring this book back!

Not just an ordinary book

My son's most favorite book.

The Bed Book will be Available in September!

The Bed Book
Sylvia Plath , and Emily Arnold McCully
Manufacturer: HarperCollins Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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A Family of Poems: My Favorite Poetry for Children

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ASIN: 0064431843

Customer Reviews:

Poetry combined with pranks.......2005-01-23
Un petit livre destiné à la jeunesse, "L'histoire qu'on lit au bord du lit" est écrite en vers et, en quelques pages, tourne autour du thème du lit : le lit tel qu'on l'aime, c'est-à-dire douillet, voyageur, pliant, casse-croûte, sous-marin ou tremplin. Chaque thème est travaillé de façon amusante, autour de paraboles et d'images hautes en couleur ! Les illustrations sont comiques, signées par Rotraut Susanne Berner, les vers sont traduits par Beatrice Vierne. Ce qui est particulièrement enrichissant, et s'adressant ainsi à un lectorat plus avisé, c'est que l'édition est bilingue : la page de gauche est en édition originale, celle de droite en français. Ainsi de lire les deux versions et de s'extasier sur la plume talentueuse de Sylvia Plath - auteur prometteuse trop tôt disparue !
please, bring this book back!.......2002-02-10
Embark on a gentle, fantastic trip into a magical world that lies between reality and dream. Your child's imagination (and your own) will drift into sleep with images of acrobats, submarines, elephant beds, and so much more!
That this book should be out of print is a complete mystery to me, not enough violence in it, I imagine. As for the used price above, I can just imagine snuggling in bed with my child and an antique book... Books like this are meant to be read again and again, not placed in a gilded cage on a pedestal.
Not just an ordinary book.......2000-04-16
"Not just a white little, tucked in tight little, nighty night little, turn out the light little, Bed."
And this is not just an ordinary book. I came accross it one day and decided to give it a go, having read other Plath works. This book is incredible, te utter childishness of it, every time I think of it, it brings a smile to my face. This book is a must-read.
My son's most favorite book........1999-10-08
My son and I read this book for years at bed-time - It was our absolutle favorite. Somehow we have lost the book and I have been searching for another copy for ages. Can the DC reviewer provide me with the name of the British publisher that is going to re-release this book - or any other details that might lead me to a copy? I would be very appreciative!
The Bed Book will be Available in September!.......1999-05-21
After years of searching for a copy (new or used) of Plath's "The Bed Book", which I used to read to my son when he was a toddler, I discovered that a publisher in the U.K. is going to re-release the book in September, 1999. I hope Amazon.com will make it available. . . this is a smashingly creative book, with page after page of beautiful watercolor illustrations.

Average customer rating:

Truly transitional poems

Crossing the Water
Sylvia Plath
Manufacturer: Harper Perennial
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams: Short Stories, Prose, and Diary Excerpts

ASIN: 0060907894

Customer Reviews:

Truly transitional poems.......2000-06-17
This is probably my favorite collection of Plath poetry, although some of my favorite poems aren't in here (Morning Song is my very favorite). From the time I looked at the cover (dark waves at night, what could be better for the writer who crossed the Atlantic to die by her own hand?) to the last poem in the book, I felt that I was seeing Plath's vision at its most clearly expressed. You can feel the dark weight of her impending collapse, but her head is still above water, so to speak. I also think that it's the book with the least amount of self-pity; she's strongest as a poet and as a person in this collection. This is not to discount Ariel, which contain some of her best poems, but they're like flashes of lightning in a grey sky of self-pity. In Crossing the Water, on the other hand, we get to see the loneliness of the long distance swimmer, sure and strong, who knows she's heading into danger.

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Unacknowledged Classic

not for inexperienced readers

Good But Falls Short

A Great Collection of Poetry!!!!

Achieving Harmony through Conflict: Plath's Word-Sculptures

The Colossus and Other Poems
Sylvia Plath
Manufacturer: Vintage
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams: Short Stories, Prose, and Diary Excerpts

ASIN: 0375704469
Release Date: 1998-05-19

Book Description
With this startling, exhilarating book of poems, which was first published in 1960, Sylvia Plath burst into literature with spectacular force. In such classics as "The Beekeeper's Daughter," "The Disquieting Muses," "I Want, I Want," and "Full Fathom Five," she writes about sows and skeletons, fathers and suicides, about the noisy imperatives of life and the chilly hunger for death. Graceful in their craftsmanship, wonderfully original in their imagery, and presenting layer after layer of meaning, the forty poems in The Colossus are early artifacts of genius that still possess the power to move, delight, and shock.
Customer Reviews:

Unacknowledged Classic.......2006-03-04
Not Plaths's most famous book, obviously, but quite arguably her best, Colossus is cool and totally controlled. Here Plath finally refines what she had started doing from teenhood -- please consult the juvenelia in Collected Poems to confirm this. Images of distant objectivity are chosen as pivots for the most intimate meditations, physical and personal. The "I" is often seen as if under a microscope, to a degree beyond what was earlier achieved by her tutor confessional poets such as Robert Lowell. Indeed this may eventually be seen as her lasting poetic achievement -- carrying the confessional theory quickly to its absolute brink -- and this book is where it finally breaks the surface of the water successfully.

Painfully, Plath -- an almost merciless keeper of diaries, journals, and notes -- records here the exact incident of her transformation -- in "The Eye Mote." Perhaps lacking the drama of later poems, it is all the more revealing, heavily sad, doubtless true. And the incident (perhaps half-imagined, half real) has nothing of the cultural or personal overlays one finds in 95% of the Plath literature, pro and con. It has a lot more to do with the theory and practice of confessional poetry itself -- its breath-taking possibilities and vast opportunities for a dreadful slip from its tightrope act.
not for inexperienced readers.......2005-03-14
I was quite angered by the comment that Daddy is a long babble of a poem and that The Colossus misses the mark. Daddy is one of the most moving creative poems written by Plath. There is a beauty in a poets first book. She was writing for herself. I would like to inform the readers properly on this one and say it's a must have for any Plath fan or fan of poetry. I myself dabble in the writing of it, and at that I would not call myself an expert. I do however believe myself to be well read and this is at the top of her repertoire.
Good But Falls Short.......2004-07-12
Sylvia Plath was born in Boston in 1932. Her first book of poems was The Colossus. Though Sylvia Plath was a talented writer, The Colossus misses as often as it hits. The work is passionate but hectic, traveling the length and depth of feelings but not staying in one place long enough to make an impact. The poems manage to offer up emotion, but it is largely emotion unpolished and reads, in places, like a high school angst diary rather then the work of the talented poet.
The result is a few diamonds of amazing caliber and lot of rock thrown in. And the diamonds are truly worth reading. Works such as Full Fathom Five are extremely powerful while others miss the mark entirely, such as Daddy which is a long discombobulated babble of a poem. It is unfortunate that so much of the work in this volume follows those lines. This is a book of a poet still searching for her voice, as so many first books are.
At the end of the day this is a great book if you have already like Plath and want to read more of her work, even if it is second rate. However, if you haven't ever read her before, I suggest Ariel or Crossing the Water, both far more powerful works. There graphic images and unabashedly confessional nature, make much better poems.
A Great Collection of Poetry!!!!.......2004-03-09
A Great Books for frans of poetry and Sylvia Plath. Best Poems are ones at the beggining and end of her literary career. This is the beggining and one of the best. If you like this, Also look at her last collection of poems, "Ariel" Thanx for your time!!!!!!
Achieving Harmony through Conflict: Plath's Word-Sculptures.......2001-01-22
Sylvia Plath's initial volume of poetry is very much in the formalistic style that was prevalent in the 1950s, but she brings to verse-making a "diction that is galvanized against inertia" (to quote Marianne Moore in a different context), a heavily alliterative, percussive idiom in which we discern kinship to Dylan Thomas and Gerard Manley Hopkins.
In "Hardcastle Crags," we have an analogue for a woman's heels against the pavement: "Flintlike, her feet struck / Such a racket of echoes." We have the slovenly slush of the tide at Point Shirley, where the poet's grandmother "kept house / Against what the sluttish, rutted sea could do." We have in other slant-rhymed terza-rima, and intricate stanza shapes reminiscent of Richard Wilbur and his lyric called "Beasts."
And has anyone captured the somnolent wakefulness of "the chilly no-man's-land of five o'clock in the morning" better than Sylvia Plath in "The Ghost's Leavetaking"?
There are poems about mushrooms, moles, and men in black. There is a homage to the artist Leonard Baskin, renowned as a maker of woodcuts. A keen visual sense in these poems leads us not to be surprised when we learn that Plath worked well as a painter of watercolours.
Her second pre-posthumous volume, "Ariel," is perhaps more famous for its unselfsparing chronicle of a crashing marriage and of suicidal depression. Its fiercely unfettered cadences and controversial images attracted immediate attention, praise and opprobrium. But this reviewer feels that the poems of "Colossus" represent the superior achievement, possessing a technique and a sonic command surpassed by precious few poets of our age.
Authors:

Plato

Platt, Randall

Plautus

Plimpton, George

Pliny The Younger

Plotinus

Plumly, Stanley

Plutarch

Poe, Edgar Allan

Polidori, John William

Authors
Authors