Editors Reads Verdict
Ariel is one of the defining poetry collections of the twentieth century — raw in its emotional extremity yet formally disciplined in ways that distinguish it from mere expression, a book that changed what poetry was allowed to be. Its influence on subsequent generations of poets is incalculable.
What We Loved
- The technical command — the sound-work, the imagery, the line breaks — matches the emotional intensity without being overwhelmed by it
- The collection's central metaphors (rebirth, fire, bee-keeping, the body) achieve coherence across the individual poems
- The voice is utterly distinctive — no poem in Ariel could have been written by anyone else
Minor Drawbacks
- The biographical proximity to Plath's suicide shapes readings in ways that can prevent engagement with the poems on their own terms
- The Holocaust imagery in 'Daddy' and 'Lady Lazarus' has generated legitimate critical controversy
Key Takeaways
- → Poetry can contain extremity of feeling without losing formal control — the two reinforce rather than cancel each other
- → The female body and its experiences are a legitimate and inexhaustible subject for serious poetry
- → Anger, when rendered with sufficient precision and craft, achieves a kind of beauty
| Author | Sylvia Plath |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Harper Perennial Modern Classics |
| Pages | 86 |
| Published | January 1, 1965 |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Poetry, Confessional Poetry, American Literature |
Ariel Review
Ariel was published in 1965, two years after Sylvia Plath’s death at thirty years old. Ted Hughes, her estranged husband, made the editorial decisions about the collection — decisions that have been debated ever since, since Plath had arranged the poems differently, and the order Hughes chose ends with the bee poems rather than the final three poems Plath had placed at the collection’s close. The edition most commonly read today contains Hughes’s ordering. A restored edition published in 2004 presents Plath’s own arrangement.
None of this matters to the immediate experience of the poems, which is one of the most powerful available in twentieth-century literature. Ariel contains “Lady Lazarus,” “Daddy,” “Edge,” “Morning Song,” “Nick and the Candelstick,” and “Fever 103” — a run of poems that changed what English-language poetry could do with extreme psychological states. The question these poems pose is how to write about extremity without it becoming mere expression: how to render rage, despair, and the desire for transformation with sufficient formal control that the rendering becomes art rather than document.
Plath’s answer is technical mastery placed entirely in service of emotional truth. The sound-work in “Lady Lazarus” — the slant rhymes, the rhythm that accelerates toward the ending, the systematic violation of the reader’s comfort — is not ornamentation but the mechanism through which the poem achieves its effect. The famous final lines are inseparable from the sonic pattern that builds to them. To remove the technique would be to remove the poem.
The controversy over the Holocaust imagery in “Daddy” and “Lady Lazarus” — Plath’s use of Nazi metaphors to describe personal oppression — is legitimate and unresolved. Plath was not Jewish, and the metaphors represent a kind of appropriation that can be described as a failure of proportion even while acknowledging the poems’ extraordinary power. Both things are true. Ariel is a great book that contains real problems, and the best readings hold both simultaneously.
Our rating: 4.7/5
Frequently Asked Questions
What is "Ariel" about?
Plath's posthumous collection, written in the final months of her life, contains some of the twentieth century's most celebrated and disturbing poems — including 'Lady Lazarus,' 'Daddy,' and 'Edge' — a volcanic explosion of imagery, rage, and technical mastery.
What are the key takeaways from "Ariel"?
Poetry can contain extremity of feeling without losing formal control — the two reinforce rather than cancel each other The female body and its experiences are a legitimate and inexhaustible subject for serious poetry Anger, when rendered with sufficient precision and craft, achieves a kind of beauty
Is "Ariel" worth reading?
Ariel is one of the defining poetry collections of the twentieth century — raw in its emotional extremity yet formally disciplined in ways that distinguish it from mere expression, a book that changed what poetry was allowed to be. Its influence on subsequent generations of poets is incalculable.
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