Ariel Sylvia Plath Quotes

If the moon smiled, she would resemble you. You leave the same impression Of something beautiful, but annihilating.

Dying Is an art, like everything else. I do it exceptionally well. I do it so it feels like hell. I do it so it feels real. I guess you could say I have a call.

I didn’t want any flowers, I only wanted to lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty. How free it is, you have no idea how free.

Out of the ash I rise with my red hair and I eat men like air.

People or stars Regard me sadly, I disappoint them.

I am terrified by this dark thing That sleeps in me; All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity.

I have taken a pill to kill The thin Papery feeling. --from "Cut", written 24 October 1962

Is it the sea you hear in me? Its dissatisfactions? Or the voice of nothing, that was your madness? Love is a shadow. How you lie and cry after it. --from "Elm", written 19 April 1962

I have suffered the atrocity of sunsets. --from "Elm", written 19 April 1962

At twenty I tried to die And get back, back, back to you. I thought even the bones would do. --from "Daddy", written 12 October 1962

No day is safe from news of you. --from "The Rival", written July 1961

Now I am silent, hate Up to my neck, Thick, thick. I do not speak. --from "Lesbos", written 18 October 1962

And I a smiling woman. I am only thirty. And like the cat I have nine times to die.

I used to pray to recover you. --from "Daddy", written 12 October 1962

And I am aware of my heart: it opens and closes Its bowl of red blooms out of sheer love of me.

I am inhabited by a cry. Nightly it flaps out Looking, with its hooks, for something to love.

You smile. No, it is not fatal. --from "The Other", written 2 July 1962

Every woman adores a Fascist, The boot in the face, the brute Brute heart of a brute like you.

Is it the sea you hear in me, Its dissatisfactions? Or the voice of nothing, that was you madness? --from "Elm", written 19 April 1962

The blood jet is poetry, There is no stopping it. --from "Kindness", written 1 February 1963

I am still raw. I say I may be back. You know what lies are for. Even in your Zen heaven we shan't meet. --from "Lesbos", written 18 October 1962

You do not do, you do not do Any more, black shoe In which I have lived like a foot For thirty years, poor and white, Barely daring to breathe or Achoo. Daddy, I have had to kill you. You died before I had time― Marble-heavy, a bag full of God, Ghastly statue with one grey toe Big as a Frisco seal

I know the bottom, she says. I know it with my great tap root: It is what you fear. I do not fear it: I have been there.

I know the bottom, she says. I know it with my great tap root: It is what you fear. I do not fear it: I have been there. --from "Elm", written 19 April 1962

There is a charge For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge For the hearing of my heart - It really goes. And there is a charge, a very large charge, For a word or a touch Or a bit of blood Or a piece of my hair or my clothes. --from "Lady Lazarus", written 23-29 October 1962

O love, how did you get here? --from "Nick and the Candlestick", written 29 October 1962

I am learning peacefulness, lying by myself quietly, as the light lies on these white walls, this bed, these hands. I am nobody; I have nothing to do with explosions.

Love is a shadow. How you lie and cry after it --from "Elm", written 19 April 1962

Ash, ash —- You poke and stir. Flesh, bone, there is nothing there—— A cake of soap, A wedding ring, A gold filling. Herr God, Herr Lucifer Beware Beware. Out of the ash I rise with my red hair And I eat men like air.

A ring of gold with the sun in it? Lies. Lies and a grief.

I'm doped and thick from my last sleeping pill.

What is so real as the cry of a child? A rabbit's cry may be wilder But it has no soul.

The moon is my mother. She is not sweet like Mary. Her blue garments unloose small bats and owls.

The sun gives you ulcers, the wind gives you T.B. Once you were beautiful.

They had to call and call And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls. --From the poem "Lady Lazarus", written 23-29 October 1962

Stupid pupil, it has to take everything in.

Clouds pass and disperse. Are those the faces of love, those pale irretrievables? Is it for such I agitate my heart?

You are the one. Solid the spaces lean on, envious. You are the baby in the barn.

I didn’t want any flowers, I only wanted To lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty. How free it is, you have no idea how free—— The peacefulness is so big it dazes you, And it asks nothing, a name tag, a few trinkets. It is what the dead close on, finally; I imagine them Shutting their mouths on it, like a Communion tablet. --from "Tulips", written 18 March 1961

If the moon smiled, she would resemble you. You leave the same impression Of something beautiful, but annihilating. Both of you are great light borrowers. Her O-mouth grieves at the world; yours is unaffected, And your first gift is making stone out of everything.

LADY LAZARUS I have done it again. One year in every ten I manage it-- A sort of walking miracle, my skin Bright as a Nazi lampshade, My right foot A paperweight, My face a featureless, fine Jew linen. Peel off the napkin O my enemy. Do I terrify?-- The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth? The sour breath Will vanish in a day. Soon, soon the flesh The grave cave ate will be At home on me And I a smiling woman. I am only thirty. And like the cat I have nine times to die. This is Number Three. What a trash To annihilate each decade. What a million filaments. The peanut-crunching crowd Shoves in to see Them unwrap me hand and foot-- The big strip tease. Gentlemen, ladies These are my hands My knees. I may be skin and bone, Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman. The first time it happened I was ten. It was an accident. The second time I meant To last it out and not come back at all. I rocked shut As a seashell. They had to call and call And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls. Dying Is an art, like everything else. I do it exceptionally well. I do it so it feels like hell. I do it so it feels real. I guess you could say I've a call. It's easy enough to do it in a cell. It's easy enough to do it and stay put. It's the theatrical Comeback in broad day To the same place, the same face, the same brute Amused shout: 'A miracle!' That knocks me out. There is a charge For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge For the hearing of my heart-- It really goes. And there is a charge, a very large charge For a word or a touch Or a bit of blood Or a piece of my hair or my clothes. So, so, Herr Doktor. So, Herr Enemy. I am your opus, I am your valuable, The pure gold baby That melts to a shriek. I turn and burn. Do not think I underestimate your great concern. Ash, ash-- You poke and stir. Flesh, bone, there is nothing there-- A cake of soap, A wedding ring, A gold filling. Herr God, Herr Lucifer Beware Beware. Out of the ash I rise with my red hair And I eat men like air. -- written 23-29 October 1962

The frost makes a flower, the dew makes a star --from "Death & Co.

I am inhabited by a cry. Nightly it flaps out Looking, with its hooks, for something to love I am terrified by this dark thing That sleeps in me; All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity.

This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary.

My bones hold a stillness, the far Fields melt my heart.

I am the magician's girl who does not flinch.

Over your body the clouds go High, high and icily And a little flat, as if they Floated on a glass that was invisible. Unlike swans, Having no reflections; Unlike you, With no strings attached. All cool, all blue. Unlike you You, there on your back, Eyes to the sky.

The moon is no door. It is a face in its own right, White as a knuckle and terribly upset. It drags the sea after it like a dark crime; it is quiet With the O-gape of complete despair. I live here. --from "The Moon and the Yew Tree", written 22 October 1961

All night your moth-breath Flickers among the flat pink roses. I wake to listen. A far sea moves in my ear. --from "Morning Song", written 19 February 1961

I have let things slip, a thirty-year~old cargo boat Stubbornly hanging on to my name and address.

Love is a shadow. How you lie and cry after it.

And I, stepping from this skin Of old bandages, boredoms, old faces Step to you from the black car of Lethe, Pure as a baby.

Forget about the scant hours in her brief life when Sylvia Plath was able to produce the works in Ariel. Forget about that tiny bit of time and just remember the days that spanned into years when she could not move, couldn’t think straight, could only lie in wait in a hospital bed, hoping for the relief that electroconvulsive therapy would bring. Don’t think of the striking on-screen picture, the mental movie you create of the pretty young woman being wheeled on the gurney to get her shock treatments, and don’t think of the psychedelic, photonegative image of this sane woman at the moment she receives that bolt of electricity. Think, instead, of the girl herself, of the way she must have felt right then, of the way no amount of great poetry and fascination and fame could make the pain she felt at that moment worth suffering. Remember that when you’re at the point at which you’re doing something as desperate and violent as sticking your head in an oven, it is only because the life that preceded this act felt worse. Think about living in depression from moment to moment, and know it is not worth any of the great art that comes a its by-product.

This is what it is to be complete. It is horrible.

Stasis in darkness. Then the substanceless blue

I do not want much of a present, anyway, this year. After all I am alive only by accident.

They might ignore me immediately. In my moon suit and funeral veil. I am no source of honey So why should they turn on me? Tomorrow I will be sweet God, I will set them free.

Little poppies, little hell flames, Do you do no harm? You flicker. I cannot touch you. I put my hands among the flames. Nothing burns.

A living doll, everywhere you look. It can sew, it can cook, It can talk, talk, talk.   It works, there is nothing wrong with it. You have a hole, its a poultice. You have an eye, its an image. My boy, its your last resort. Will you marry it, marry it, marry it.

I am only thirty And like the cat I have nine times to die. This is Number Three. What a trash To annihilate each decade What a million filaments. The peanut-crunching crowd Shoves in to see

Its snaky acids kiss. It petrifies the will. These are the isolate, slow faults That kill, that kill, that kill.

She has folded Them back into her body as petals Of a rose close when the garden Stiffens and odours bleed From the sweet, deep throats of the night flower. The moon has nothing to be sad about, Staring from her hood of bone.

The moon, also, is merciless: she would drag me Cruelly, being barren. Her radiance scathes me. Or perhaps I have caught her.

The still waters Wrap my lips, Eyes, nose and ears, A clear Cellophane I cannot crack.

Every woman adores a fascist, The boot in the face, the brute Brute heart of a brute like you.

And we, too, had a relationship— Tight wires between us, Pegs too deep to uproot, and a mind like a ring Sliding shut on some quick thing, The constriction killing me also.

White Godiva, I unpeel -- Dead hands, dead stringencies.

The child's cry Melts in the wall. And I Am the arrow, The dew that flies Suicidal, at one with the drive Into the red Eye, the cauldron of morning.

All morning the Morning has been blackening, A flower left out. My bones hold a stillness, the far Fields melt my heart. They threaten To let me through to a heaven Starless and fatherless, a dark water.

And now you try Your handful of notes; The clear vowels rise like balloons.

I am too pure for you or anyone. Your body Hurts me as the world hurts God.

Dying Is an art, like everything else. I do it exceptionally well.   I do it so it feels like hell. I do it so it feels real. I guess you could say I’ve a call.

Nigger-eye Berries cast dark Hooks -- Black sweet blood mouthfuls, Shadows.

In that valley the train shrieks echo like souls on hooks.

Soon, soon the flesh The grave cave ate will be At home on me And I a smiling woman. I am only thirty. And like the cat I have nine times to die. This is Number Three. What a trash To annihilate each decade. --from "Lady Lazarus", written 23-29 October 1962

There was no absence of lips, there were two children, But their bones showed, and the moon smiled.

This is a case without a body. The body does not come into it at all.

All the gods know is destinations.

For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge

O love, O celibate. Nobody but me Walks the waist high wet. The irreplaceable Golds bleed and deepen, the mouths of Thermopylae.

Whose is that long white box in the grove, what have they accomplished, why am I cold.

I do not fear it: I have been there.

I am inhabited by a cry. Nightly it flaps out Looking, with its hooks, for something to love. I am terrified by this dark thing That sleeps in me; All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity. Clouds pass and disperse. Are those the faces of love, those pale irretrievables? Is it for such I agitate my heart?

She used every emotional experience as if it were a scrap of material that could be pieced together to make a wonderful dress; she wasted nothing of what she felt, and when in control of those tumultuous feelings she was able to focus and direct her incredible poetic energy to great effect.

I am inhabited by a cry. Nightly it flaps out Looking, with its hooks, for something to love.   I am terrified by this dark thing That sleeps in me; All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity.

Paralytic It happens. Will it go on? ---- My mind a rock, No fingers to grip, no tongue, My god the iron lung That loves me, pumps My two Dust bags in and out, Will not Let me relapse While the day outside glides by like ticker tape. The night brings violets, Tapestries of eyes, Lights, The soft anonymous Talkers: 'You all right?' The starched, inaccessible breast. Dead egg, I lie Whole On a whole world I cannot touch, At the white, tight Drum of my sleeping couch Photographs visit me ---- My wife, dead and flat, in 1920 furs, Mouth full of pearls, Two girls As flat as she, who whisper 'We're your daughters.' The still waters Wrap my lips, Eyes, nose and ears, A clear Cellophane I cannot crack. On my bare back I smile, a buddha, all Wants, desire Falling from me like rings Hugging their lights. The claw Of the magnolia, Drunk on its own scents, Asks nothing of life.

Love is a shadow. How you lie and cry after it Listen: these are its hooves: it has gone off, like a horse.

Dying Is an art, like everything else. I do it exceptionally well.

My ribs show. What have I eaten? Lies and smiles.

There is a green in the air, Soft, delectable. It cushions me lovingly.

The frost makes a flower, the dew makes a star.

After all, I am alive only by accident.

I Have a self to recover, a queen. Is she dead, is she sleeping? Where has she been, With her lion-red body, her wings of glass? Now she is flying More terrible than she ever was, red Scar in the sky, red comet Over the engine that killed her— The mausoleum, the wax house.

The Hanging Man By the roots of my hair some god got hold of me. I sizzled in his blue volts like a desert prophet. The nights snapped out of sight like a lizard's eyelid: A world of bald white days in a shadeless socket. A vulturous boredom pinned me in this tree. If he were I, he would do what I did.

THE MOON AND THE YEW TREE This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary. The trees of the mind are black. The light is blue. The grasses unload their griefs on my feet as if I were God, Prickling my ankles and murmuring of their humility. Fumy, spiritous mists inhabit this place Separated from my house by a row of headstones. I simply cannot see where there is to get to. The moon is no door. It is a face in its own right, White as a knuckle and terribly upset. It drags the sea after it like a dark crime; it is quiet With the O-gape of complete despair. I live here. Twice on Sunday, the bells startle the sky Eight great tongues affirming the Resurrection. At the end, they soberly bong out their names. The yew tree points up. It has a Gothic shape. The eyes lift after it and find the moon. The moon is my mother. She is not sweet like Mary. Her blue garments unloose small bats and owls. How I would like to believe in tenderness The face of the effigy, gentled by candles, Bending, on me in particular, its mild eyes. I have fallen a long way. Clouds are flowering Blue and mystical over the face of the stars. Inside the church, the saints will be all blue, Floating on their delicate feet over the cold pews, Their hands and faces stiff with holiness. The moon sees nothing of this. She is bald and wild. And the message of the yew tree is blackness -- blackness and silence. --written 22 October 1961

The tulips are too excitable; it is winter here Look at how white everything is, how quiet, how snowed in I am learning peacefulness, lying by myself quietly As light lies on these white walls, this bed, these hands I am nobody, I have nothing to do with explosions I have given my name and my dayclothes to the nurses, and my history to the anesthetist, and my body to the surgeons

Nick and the Candlestick I am a miner. The light burns blue. Waxy stalactites Drip and thicken, tears The earthen womb Exudes from its dead boredom. Black bat airs Wrap me, raggy shawls, Cold homicides. They weld to me like plums. Old cave of calcium Icicles, old echoer. Even the newts are white, Those holy Joes. And the fish, the fish ---- Christ! they are panes of ice, A vice of knives, A piranha Religion, drinking Its first communion out of my live toes. The candle Gulps and recovers its small altitude, Its yellows hearten. O love, how did you get here? O embryo Remembering, even in sleep, Your crossed position. The blood blooms clean In you, ruby. The pain You wake to is not yours. Love, love, I have hung our cave with roses, With soft rugs ---- The last of Victoriana. Let the stars Plummet to their dark address, Let the mercuric Atoms that cripple drip Into the terrible well, You are the one Solid the spaces lean on, envious. You are the baby in the barn.

The only big weapon anyone has against you is that you’re human. Fucked-up, a bit. Imperfect, yes. In this, you are like every great human who has ever lived, male and female alike. If you’re slutty, well, Mary Wollstonecraft was pretty slutty. If you’re needy, my God, Charlotte Brontë’s needs could devour a person alive. If you’re mean, or self-destructive, or crazy, I assure you, Billie Holiday managed to record ‘Strange Fruit’ while being spectacularly self-destructive, and Sylvia Plath wrote Ariel while being both crazy and very, very mean. The world is still better with those works in it. Humanity is still lucky that those particular women existed, and that, despite their deep flaws and abudance of raw humanity, they stood up and said what they had to say.

The Night Dances       A smile fell in the grass. Irretrievable!   And how will your night dances Lose themselves. In mathematics?   Such pure leaps and spirals—— Surely they travel   The world forever, I shall not entirely Sit emptied of beauties, the gift   Of your small breath, the drenched grass Smell of your sleeps, lilies, lilies.   Their flesh bears no relation. Cold folds of ego, the calla,   And the tiger, embellishing itself——

The tulips are too excitable, it is winter here. Look how white everything is, how quiet, how snowed-in. I am learning peacefulness, lying by myself quietly As the light lies on these white walls, this bed, these hands. I am nobody; I have nothing to do with explosions. I have given my name and my day-clothes up to the nurses And my history to the anesthetist and my body to surgeons. They have propped my head between the pillow and the sheet-cuff Like an eye between two white lids that will not shut. Stupid pupil, it has to take everything in. The nurses pass and pass, they are no trouble, They pass the way gulls pass inland in their white caps, Doing things with their hands, one just the same as another, So it is impossible to tell how many there are. My body is a pebble to them, they tend it as water Tends to the pebbles it must run over, smoothing them gently. They bring me numbness in their bright needles, they bring me sleep. Now I have lost myself I am sick of baggage—— My patent leather overnight case like a black pillbox, My husband and child smiling out of the family photo; Their smiles catch onto my skin, little smiling hooks. I have let things slip, a thirty-year-old cargo boat stubbornly hanging on to my name and address. They have swabbed me clear of my loving associations. Scared and bare on the green plastic-pillowed trolley I watched my teaset, my bureaus of linen, my books Sink out of sight, and the water went over my head. I am a nun now, I have never been so pure. I didn’t want any flowers, I only wanted To lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty. How free it is, you have no idea how free—— The peacefulness is so big it dazes you, And it asks nothing, a name tag, a few trinkets. It is what the dead close on, finally; I imagine them Shutting their mouths on it, like a Communion tablet. The tulips are too red in the first place, they hurt me. Even through the gift paper I could hear them breathe Lightly, through their white swaddlings, like an awful baby. Their redness talks to my wound, it corresponds. They are subtle : they seem to float, though they weigh me down, Upsetting me with their sudden tongues and their color, A dozen red lead sinkers round my neck. Nobody watched me before, now I am watched. The tulips turn to me, and the window behind me Where once a day the light slowly widens and slowly thins, And I see myself, flat, ridiculous, a cut-paper shadow Between the eye of the sun and the eyes of the tulips, And I have no face, I have wanted to efface myself. The vivid tulips eat my oxygen. Before they came the air was calm enough, Coming and going, breath by breath, without any fuss. Then the tulips filled it up like a loud noise. Now the air snags and eddies round them the way a river Snags and eddies round a sunken rust-red engine. They concentrate my attention, that was happy Playing and resting without committing itself. The walls, also, seem to be warming themselves. The tulips should be behind bars like dangerous animals; They are opening like the mouth of some great African cat, And I am aware of my heart: it opens and closes Its bowl of red blooms out of sheer love of me. The water I taste is warm and salt, like the sea, And comes from a country far away as health. --"Tulips", written 18 March 1961