Sylvia Plath Poems Chosen by Carol Ann Duffy

Sylvia Plath

• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Year: 2012
• Topic: Literature
• eBook ISBN:
  9780571301478
• Subtopic: American Poetry
• Index: Literature

Sylvia Plath was, for both English and American poetry, one of the defining voices of twentieth-century, and one of the most appealing: few other poets have introduced as many new readers to poetry. Though she published just one collection in her lifetime, The Colossus, and a novel, The Bell Jar, it was following her death in 1963 that her work began to garner the wider audience that it deserved. The manuscript that she left behind, Ariel, was published in 1965 under the editorship of her former husband, Ted Hughes, as were two later volumes, Crossing the Water and Winter Trees in 1971, which helped to make Sylvia Plath a household name. Hughes's careful curation of Plath's work extended to a Collected Poems and a Selected Poems in the 1980s, which remain in print today and stand testimony to the 'profound respect' that Frieda Hughes said her father had for her mother's work. It was not until the publication of a 'restored' Ariel in 2004 that readers were able to appraise Plath's own selection and arrangement of her work.

This edition of the poems, chosen by the Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy, offers a fresh selection of Sylvia Plath's poetry to stand in parallel to the existing editions. Introduced with an inviting preface, the book is essential reading for those new to and already familiar with the work of this most extraordinary poet.

Table of contents

• Landing Page
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Acknowledgement
• Contents
• Preface by Carol Ann Duffy
• We shall by morning Inherit the earth. Our foot’s in the door …
• Ode for Ted
• Pursuit
• Fiesta Melons
• Departure
• November Graveyard
• The Everlasting Monday
• Hardcastle Crags
• The Other Two
• All the Dead Dears
• Memoirs of a Spinach-Picker
• Full Fathom Five
• Poems, Potatoes
• The Eye-mote
• Watercolor of Grantchester Meadows
• Metaphors
• Man in Black
• The Sleepers
• Medallion
• The Manor Garden
• Blue Moles
• The Colossus
• from Poem for a Birthday:
• The Net-Menders
• Mushrooms
• Let me have my copper cooking pots, let my rouge pots Bloom about me like night flowers, with a good smell …
• You’re
• The Hanging Man
• Stillborn
• Love Letter
• Magi
• Candles
• Parliament Hill Fields
• Zoo Keeper’s Wife
• Morning Song
• In Plaster
• Tulips
• I Am Vertical
• The Rival
• Wuthering Heights
• Blackberrying
• Last Words
• The Moon and the Yew Tree
• Mirror
• Little Fugue
• Crossing the Water
• Pheasant
• Elm
• The Rabbit Catcher
• Event
• Poppies in July
• Out of the ash I rise with my red hair And I eat men like air …
• For a Fatherless Son
• A Birthday Present
• The Bee Meeting
• The Arrival of the Bee Box
• Stings
• Wintering
• The Applicant
• Daddy
• Fever 103°
• Cut
• Ariel
• Poppies in October
• Nick and the Candlestick
• Lady Lazarus
• The Couriers
• Death & Co.
• Winter Trees
• Sheep in Fog
• The Munich Mannequins
• Kindness
• Words
• Contusion
• Balloons
• Edge
• Child
• About the Author
• About the Editor
• By the Same Author
• Copyright