Zelanator reviewed The Colossus by Sylvia Plath
Review of 'The Colossus' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
This is a profound collection of early poetry by Sylvia Plath. One can definitely discern the shift in the tone and rhythm of her poetry between The Colossus and Ariel. In Ariel many of her poems possess an immediacy in the narrative voice that are not as foregrounded in The Colossus. The imagery and themes in Ariel are also darker, often expressing deep trauma, hopelessness, or fear. There are a healthier mix of poems here, many of which have an “outdoors” quality in the imagery and theme.
If I were to compare The Colossus to another body of work, I would argue that The Colossus for Sylvia Plath is similar to North of Boston by Robert Frost. Although Frost’s collection in North of Boston had more narrative prose, both Frost and Plath explore wildlife and imagery of the open field, woodland, or ocean.
There are a number of particular gems …
This is a profound collection of early poetry by Sylvia Plath. One can definitely discern the shift in the tone and rhythm of her poetry between The Colossus and Ariel. In Ariel many of her poems possess an immediacy in the narrative voice that are not as foregrounded in The Colossus. The imagery and themes in Ariel are also darker, often expressing deep trauma, hopelessness, or fear. There are a healthier mix of poems here, many of which have an “outdoors” quality in the imagery and theme.
If I were to compare The Colossus to another body of work, I would argue that The Colossus for Sylvia Plath is similar to North of Boston by Robert Frost. Although Frost’s collection in North of Boston had more narrative prose, both Frost and Plath explore wildlife and imagery of the open field, woodland, or ocean.
There are a number of particular gems in this collection: “The Beekeeper’s Daughter,” “The Ghost’s Leavetaking,” “The Bull of Bendylaw,” “Flute Notes from a Reedy Pond,” and “The Stones.”
An example of Plath’s verse from “The Ghost’s Leavetaking:”
“Incompatible modes of time, the raw material
Of our meat-and-potato thoughts assumes the nimbus
Of ambrosial revelation. And so departs.
Chair and bureau are the hieroglyphs
Of some godly utterance wakened heads ignore:
So these posed sheets, before they thin to nothing,
Speak in sign language of a lost otherworld,
A world we lose by merely waking up.”
Here we have a deep philosophical musing by Plath on the experience of dreaming and waking. She contrasts in this poem the transcendental experience of dreaming and the annihilation of the dream-scape upon awakening and entering into a more one-dimensional reality. She also reflects in this poem on the relationship between sleep, dreams, and death.
Each poem in this set is complex and chock full of meaning. I cannot say that my single reading has done any justice to an understanding of Plath’s body of work. Some poems resonated more immediately with me, while others have not opened up their meaning yet. To give an example of how deep Plath’s poetry is, one can find a ream-worth of analysis on almost any single poem in this collection of forty, with critics analyzing and debating the meaning of specific words, turns-of phrase, etc.
This is something that I will probably return to often in the future.