All entries for March 2005
March 01, 2005
Reviews of Plath's Restored Edition
Follow-up to Ariel: The Restored Edition by Sylvia Plath from The Midnight Heart
It is interesting to compare my review of Plath with others online. Whatever one might think about Plath's life and work, it is certain that she was an influential figure and an important woman in the history of feminist writing. Her poetry is certainly difficult emotionally – the reader becomes a voyeur, a sadist, a necrophiliac – but I sense a lack of understanding in many critics and a lack of detail in the reading of her work. The persona of the suicidal woman poet is not desirable for male or female poets writing today, yet Plath's poetry did serve a purpose – a step towards exploring new modes of identity, new modes of being.
See this review Here She Comes Again by M.C. Caseley on the Stride website which I think misses the point entirely.