Quotes from work
Ariel

Ariel

"Ariel" is a poem written by the American poet Sylvia Plath. It was written on her thirtieth birthday, October 27, 1962, and published posthumously in the collection Ariel in 1965, of which it is the namesake. Despite its ambiguity, it is literally understood to describe an early morning horse-ride towards the rising sun. Scholars and literary critics have applied various methods of interpretation to "Ariel".

“Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.

I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I've a call.”

Sylvia Plath Ariel

"Lady Lazarus" http://www.angelfire.com/tn/plath/lady.html <br class="br">Source: Ariel (1965)

“I am inhabited by a cry.
Nightly it flaps out
Looking, with its hooks, for something to love.”

Sylvia Plath Ariel

Source: Ariel

“I am terrified by this dark thing
That sleeps in me;
All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity.”

Sylvia Plath Ariel

"Elm" http://www.angelfire.com/tn/plath/elm.html <br class="br">Source: Ariel (1965) <br class="br">Context: p>I am inhabited by a cry.<br>Nightly it flaps out<br>Looking, with its hooks, for something to love.I am terrified by this dark thing<br>That sleeps in me;<br>All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity.</p

“At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do.”

Sylvia Plath Ariel

Source: Ariel

“They had to call and call
And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.

--From the poem "Lady Lazarus", written 23-29 October 1962”

Sylvia Plath Ariel

Source: Ariel

“The slime of all my yesterdays rots in the hollow of my skull.”

Sylvia Plath Ariel

Source: Ariel

“This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary.
The trees of the mind are black. The light is blue.”

Sylvia Plath Ariel

"The Moon and the Yew Tree" http://www.angelfire.com/tn/plath/yew.html <br class="br">Ariel (1965)

“I didn’t want any flowers, I only wanted
to lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty.
How free it is, you have no idea how free.”

Sylvia Plath Ariel

Source: Ariel

“You are the one. Solid the spaces lean on, envious. You are the baby in the barn.”

Sylvia Plath Ariel

Source: Ariel

“The blood jet is poetry,
There is no stopping it.”

Sylvia Plath Ariel

"Kindness" http://www.angelfire.com/tn/plath/kindness.html <br class="br">Source: Ariel (1965)

“I am learning peacefulness, lying by myself quietly, as the light lies on these white walls, this bed, these hands. I am nobody; I have nothing to do with explosions.”

Sylvia Plath Ariel

Source: Ariel

“Love is a shadow.
How you lie and cry after it”

Sylvia Plath Ariel

Source: Ariel

“What is so real as the cry of a child?
A rabbit's cry may be wilder
But it has no soul.”

Sylvia Plath Ariel

Source: Ariel

“And I a smiling woman. I am only thirty. And like the cat I have nine times to die.”

Sylvia Plath Ariel

Source: Ariel

“Clouds pass and disperse.
Are those the faces of love, those pale irretrievables?
Is it for such I agitate my heart?”

Sylvia Plath Ariel

Source: Ariel

“The frost makes a flower,
the dew makes a star.”

Sylvia Plath Ariel

Source: Ariel

“Stupid pupil, it has to take everything in.”

Sylvia Plath Ariel

Source: Ariel

“Is it the sea you hear in me,
Its dissatisfactions?
Or the voice of nothing, that was you madness?”

Sylvia Plath Ariel

Source: Ariel

“Darling, all night
I have been flickering, off, on, off, on.
The sheets grow heavy as a lecher's kiss.”

Sylvia Plath Ariel

"Fever 103" http://www.angelfire.com/tn/plath/103.html <br class="br">Ariel (1965)

“The woman is perfected
Her dead

Body wears the smile of accomplishment,
The illusion of a Greek necessity

Flows in the scrolls of her toga,
Her bare

Feet seem to be saying:
We have come so far, it is over.

Each dead child coiled, a white serpent,
One at each little

Pitcher of milk, now empty.
She has folded

Them back into her body as petals
Of a rose close when the garden

Stiffens and odors bleed
From the sweet, deep throats of the night flower.

The moon has nothing to be sad about,
Staring from her hood of bone.

She is used to this sort of thing.
Her blacks crackle and drag.”

Sylvia Plath Ariel

"Edge" http://www.angelfire.com/tn/plath/edge.html <br class="br">Ariel (1965)

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