Poetry Lover in the Wilds: Ariel by Sylvia Plath
/Ariel - Poem by Sylvia Plath. Read by Bridget Holding.
Really, these summer days, I only want to be outdoors, reading transcendent poetry in awe inspiring places.
So this made me happy. It’s my favourite poem of the moment.
Recently, when I was mining the depths of cobwebbed shelves in a second-hand bookshop, I rediscovered the work of Sylvia Plath. I almost didn't open the book. She was the token female poet on our syllabus at school, and I considered her something of cliché: tortured young writer who took her own life.
I'm so glad I did open that book. Ariel is an extraordinary poem.
Sylvia Plath wrote Ariel on her birthday, in October 27th 1962. That was three months before her life ended by suicide. I like to think that it was the writing of this poem - describing a journey to freedom on her horse - that enabled another three months of life.
We unpeel those layers that have attached themselves over time, by finding word portals back to a freshness of thought and expression.