Ariel (book)

Ariel was the second book of Sylvia Plath's poetry to be published, and was originally published in 1965, two years after her death by suicide. The poems in the 1965 edition of Ariel, with their free flowing images and characteristically menacing psychic landscapes, marked a dramatic turn from Plath's earlier Colossus poems.^[1] The distinction often cited by critics between the two books is that there's something much swifter, more abrupt, and more sardonic about the latter.

In the 1965 edition of Ariel, Ted Hughes changed Plath's chosen selection and arrangement by dropping twelve poems, adding twelve composed a few months later, and shifting the poems' ordering, in addition to including an introduction by Robert Lowell.^[2] In 2004 a new edition of Ariel was published which for the first time restored the selection and arrangement of the poems as Plath had left them; the 2004 edition also features a foreword by Plath and Hughes' daughter Frieda Hughes.^[3]

Contents (1965 version)

Poems marked with an * were not in Plath's original manuscript, but were added by Ted Hughes. Most of them date from the last few weeks of Plath's life.

1. Morning Song
2. The Couriers
3. Sheep in Fog *
4. The Applicant
5. Lady Lazarus
6. Tulips
7. Cut
8. Elm
9. The Night Dances
10. Poppies in October
11. Berck-Plage
12. Ariel
13. Death & Co.
14. Lesbos - (This poem is censored in some conservative publications)
15. Nick and the Candlestick
16. Gulliver
17. Getting There
18. Medusa
19. The Moon and the Yew Tree
20. A Birthday Present
21. Mary's Song * (only in US version)
22. Letter in November
23. The Rival
24. Daddy
25. You're
26. Fever 103°
27. The Bee Meeting
28. The Arrival of the Bee Box
29. Stings
30. The Swarm * (only in US version)
31. Wintering
32. The Hanging Man *
33. Little Fugue *
34. Years *
35. The Munich Mannequins
36. Totem *
37. Paralytic *
38. Balloons *
39. Poppies in July *
40. Kindness *
41. Contusion *
42. Edge *
43. Words *

Additional poems in her manuscript

1. The Rabbit Catcher
2. Thalidomide
3. Barren Woman
4. A Secret
5. The Jailer
6. The Detective
7. Magi
8. The Other
9. Stopped Dead
10. The Courage of Shutting-Up
11. Purdah
12. Amnesiac
13. Wuthering Heights

References

External links

• Slate.com article about publication of restored Ariel
• collection of articles on the new edition
• After Ariel: Celebrating the poetry of the women's movement by Honor Moore in the Boston Review