Flash poetry review: Ariel by Sylvia Plath

Ariel by Sylvia Plath
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Not a day ago I wrote a poem beginning with the phrase 'blue dew'. Then as I swam through Plath's so so alive end of young life poems in the Ariel collection I read the same phrase in her poem 'Stings' . Is this a case of plagiarism? Or just emergence of the viridian kynde? Maybe we will never know.
The fact I even dare to draw a line between my own handscrawled poetic monstrosities and the majesty of Plath is frankly ridiculous, but I have done it nonetheless. I committed to it and here we are. In awe of Sylvia.
If anybody reads this I would urge them to set aside as much as is humanly possible any knowledge of the Plath mythology and just read these poems blank slate like. As flawed as such an approach undoubtedly is, I went with it, and was not disappointed. These are mindblowing poems, full of pricks to enliven any numb ends. So of their time - of her type: cloistered, wrought, keen to please, wounded, diseased - and yet nothing like that at all. These poems rise above everything, were so clearly NEEDED to be written; by her, by us. And yet...


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