Collected Poems (Paperback)

Sylvia Plath

ISBN 10: 0571118380 / ISBN 13: 9780571118380

Published by Faber & Faber, London, 2002

About this Item

Paperback. This volume contains all Sylvia Plath's mature poetry written from 1956 up to her death in 1963.The text is preceded by an introduction by Ted Hughes and followed by notes and comments on individual poems. There is also an appendix containing fifty poems from Sylvia Plath's juvenilia.'For me, the most important literary event of 1981 has been the publication, eighteen years after her death, of Sylvia Plath's Collected Poems, confirming her as one of the most powerful and lavishly gifted poets of our time.' A. Alvarez in the Observer Contains all Sylvia Plath's mature poetry written from 1956 up to her death in 1963. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Seller Inventory # 9780571118380

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Collected Poems (Paperback)
• Publisher: Faber & Faber, London
• Publication Date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0571118380
• ISBN 13: 9780571118380
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: new

About this title

Synopsis

The aim of the present complete edition, which contains a numbered sequence of the 224 poems written after 1956 together with a further 50 poems chosen from her pre-1956 work, is to bring Sylvia Plath's poetry together in one volume, including the various uncollected and unpublished pieces, and to set everything in as true a chronological order as is possible, so that the whole progress and achievement of this unusual poet will become accessible to readers.

Review

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."