Book Review on Sylvia Plath

For the Book Review assignment I chose to read "The Colossus and Other Poems" by Sylvia Plath. I don't know much about Sylvia Plath, only that she wrote "The Belljar", killed herself, and wrote one of my favorite poems, "Mad Girls' Love Song". I love this poem with a passion, so I decided to check out a book of hers and look into her other poetry.

"The Colossus and Other Poems" is a mix of different type of poems. Her poetry sometimes rhymes, sometimes doesn't, sometimes has a lot of enjambment, sometimes end-stops, sometimes her poems are short, and sometimes are long, etc… I found her poetry very enjoyable to read, albeit a little disturbing. She often writes of death, but even when that isn’t the main theme of the poem, I’ve noticed there’s always a hint of morbidity, pain, or sadness. All her poems also have a dream-like/surrealistic feel to them. The diction she uses is artful, and she has a lot of great phrase combinations, but at the same time, though the words sound good together, you’re not sure that you quite grip her meaning. The tone of the poem is more understandable, and after reading, you sort of think you know what she was talking about, but you’re not sure how to put it into words. For example, this excerpt is from her poem “Hardcastle Crags”:

Once past
The dream-peopled village, he eyes enter-
tained no dream,
And the sandman’s dust

Lost luster under her footsoles.
The long wind, paring her person down
To a pinch of flame, blew its burdened
whistle
In the whorl of her ear, and like a scooped-out
pumpkin crown
Her head cupped the babel.

Nature is also a theme in almost every single one of the poems in the book. She often has lots of descriptive images of animals, pastures, trees, the sea, etc. These images are sometimes beautiful and sometimes disturbing. All in all, “Colossus” is a short book of poetry that does make for an enjoyable read, but I’d recommend reading it when you’re feeling particularly angst-ridden or sad, only because that state of being might make Plath’s poem a bit more relatable and understandable.