Poems (Everyman's Library)

by Sylvia Plath, Diane Wood Middlebrook (Selected by)

Overview

A representative selection of verse by the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer who left in the wake of her personal tragedy a legacy of poems that combine terrifying intensity and dazzling artistry. With their brutally frank self-exposure and emotional immediacy, Plath's poems, from "Lady Lazarus" to "Daddy," have had an enduring influence on contemporary poetry.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780375404641
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	10/28/1998
Series:	Everyman's Library Pocket Poets Series
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	151,401
Product dimensions:	4.40(w) x 6.50(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Sylvia Plath was born in 1932 in Massachusetts. She began publishing poems and stories as a teenager and by the time she entered Smith College had won several poetry prizes.  She was a Fulbright Scholar in Cambridge, England, and married British poet Ted Hughes in London in 1956.  The young couple moved to the States, where Plath became an instructor at Smith College, and had two children.  Later, they moved back to England, where Plath continued writing poetry and wrote The Bell Jar, which was first published under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas in England in 1963.  On February 11, 1963, Plath committed suicide.  The Bell Jar was first published under her own name in the United States by Harper & Row in 1971, despite the protests of Plath's family.  Plath's Collected Poems, published posthumously in 1981, won the Pulitzer Prize.

Date of Birth:

October 27, 1932

Date of Death:

February 11, 1963

Place of Birth:

Boston, Massachusetts

Place of Death:

London, England

Education:

B.A., Smith College, 1955; Fulbright Scholar, Cambridge University

Table of Contents

	Jilted
	Bluebeard
	Trio of Love Songs
	Lament
	Two Lovers and a Beachcomber by the Real Sea
	Epitaph in Three Parts
	Channel Crossing
	Ode for Ted
	Song for a Summer's Day
	Two Sisters of Persephone
	Faun
	Letter to a Purist
	Alicante Lullaby
	Wreath for a Bridal
	Fiesta Melons
	Spider
	Spinster
	Black Rook in Rainy Weather
	Hardcastle Crags
	The Lady and the Earthenware Head
	All the Dead Dears
	The Disquieting Muses
	Ouija
	On the Decline of Oracles
	Snakecharmer
	Mussel Hunter at Rock Harbor
	The Bull of Bendylaw
	Suicide off Egg Rock
	Metaphors
	Electra on Azalea Path
	The Beekeeper's Daughter
	Man in Black
	The Colossus
	Poem for a Birthday
	Who
	Dark House
	Maenad
	The Beast
	Flute Notes from a Reedy Pond
	Witch Burning
	The Stones
	Mushrooms
	You're
	The Hanging Man
	Stillborn
	Candles
	Zoo Keeper's Wife
	Face Lift
	Morning Song
	Barren Woman
	Heavy Women
	In Plaster
	Tulips
	I Am Vertical
	Blackberrying
	The Moon and the Yew Tree
	Mirror
	Three Women: A Poem for Three Voices
	Little Fugue
	An Appearance
	Crossing the Water
	Among the Narcissi
	Pheasant
	Elm
	The Rabbit Catcher
	Event
	The Other
	Words heard, by accident, over the phone
	Poppies in July
	Burning the Letters
	For a Fatherless Son
	A Birthday Present
	The Detective
	The Courage of Shutting-Up
	The Bee Meeting
	The Arrival of the Bee Box
	Stings
	The Swarm
	Wintering
	The Applicant
	Daddy
	Medusa
	Fever 103[degree]
	Amnesiac
	Cut
	By Candlelight
	Ariel
	Poppies in October
	Nick and the Candlestick
	Lady Lazarus
	Death & Co.
	Winter Trees
	Childless Woman
	Sheep in Fog
	The Munich Mannequins
	Totem
	Child
	Paralytic
	Gigolo
	Mystic
	Kindness
	Words
	Contusion
	Balloons
	Edge
	Notes on Poems 1956-1963
	Index of Fist Lines

Editorial Reviews

"[Her poems] have that exquisite, heart-breaking quality about them that has made Sylvia Plath our acknowledged Queen of Sorrows, the spokeswoman for our most private, most helpless nightmares. . . . Her poetry is as deathly as it is impeccable; it enchants us almost as powerfully as it must have enchanted her." —Joyce Carol Oates, The New York Times

From the Publisher