When I was in high school, I wasn't much on poetry. The reasons for this are various, and I will not enumerate them here. What I can say is that one of the very few poets whose work appealed to me at that time, and whose work endures for me, is Sylvia Plath.
The first poem of Plath's that I can remember reading is "Mirror," which has since become one of my favorites. Years later, during my last semester of college, I had an independent study in Plath's works (mainly her poetry), and it was during that class that I spent a great deal of time reading The Collected Poems, the posthumous compendium of her poetry that won the Pulitzer Prize.
According to Ted Hughes, Plath's estranged husband and executor of her estate from the time of her death in 1963 to the time of his own in 1998, The Collected Poems includes every poem Plath wrote from 1956 until her death, as well as an appendix of selected poems written prior to 1956, defined by Hughes as Juvenilia; 1956 is the year designated as the first in Plath's "professional" life.
This assemblage, given in chronological order, is the ultimate culmination of Plath's career and beautifully shows her progression from a decent, if somewhat too careful, poet to the absolutely indomitable poetic force she was at the time of her death. While some of the earlier poems, presented--namely pieces like "Soliloquy of the Solipsist" (1956), "The Thin People" (1957), and "Lorelei" (1958)--are gems, the poems from 1959 and later are the real prizes.
Of course, everyone knows "Blackberrying" (1961), "Daddy, (1962), and "Lady Lazarus" (1962), and with good reason. But many other pieces--"Mushrooms" (1959), "Love Letter" (1960), "The Rival" (1961), "Years" (1962), and "Words" (1963), to name only five--deserve just as much attention and care. Perhaps the best thing about The Collected Poems is that the reader can constantly flip back and forth between poems to examine and compare them; Plath repeatedly employed several words and images, and it is interesting to view the different angles from which she sees those things.
I've never loved a single book of poetry more than my much-highlighted copy of The Collected Poems, and part of me hopes that I never do.
Buy through Barnes & Noble for $12.95.
-Cate-
The first poem of Plath's that I can remember reading is "Mirror," which has since become one of my favorites. Years later, during my last semester of college, I had an independent study in Plath's works (mainly her poetry), and it was during that class that I spent a great deal of time reading The Collected Poems, the posthumous compendium of her poetry that won the Pulitzer Prize.
According to Ted Hughes, Plath's estranged husband and executor of her estate from the time of her death in 1963 to the time of his own in 1998, The Collected Poems includes every poem Plath wrote from 1956 until her death, as well as an appendix of selected poems written prior to 1956, defined by Hughes as Juvenilia; 1956 is the year designated as the first in Plath's "professional" life.
This assemblage, given in chronological order, is the ultimate culmination of Plath's career and beautifully shows her progression from a decent, if somewhat too careful, poet to the absolutely indomitable poetic force she was at the time of her death. While some of the earlier poems, presented--namely pieces like "Soliloquy of the Solipsist" (1956), "The Thin People" (1957), and "Lorelei" (1958)--are gems, the poems from 1959 and later are the real prizes.
Of course, everyone knows "Blackberrying" (1961), "Daddy, (1962), and "Lady Lazarus" (1962), and with good reason. But many other pieces--"Mushrooms" (1959), "Love Letter" (1960), "The Rival" (1961), "Years" (1962), and "Words" (1963), to name only five--deserve just as much attention and care. Perhaps the best thing about The Collected Poems is that the reader can constantly flip back and forth between poems to examine and compare them; Plath repeatedly employed several words and images, and it is interesting to view the different angles from which she sees those things.
I've never loved a single book of poetry more than my much-highlighted copy of The Collected Poems, and part of me hopes that I never do.
Buy through Barnes & Noble for $12.95.
-Cate-
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