Winter Trees

by Sylvia Plath

The poems in this collection were all written in the last nine months of Sylvia Plath's life, and form part of the group from which the 'Ariel' poems were chosen. Her radio play 'Three Women', also included here, was written slightly earlier, in the transitional period between 'The Colossus' and 'Ariel'.

Genres: Poetry, Classics, Feminism, 20th Century, Fiction, American, Mental Health

55 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1972

About the author

Sylvia Plath was an American poet, novelist, and short story writer, widely regarded as one of the most influential and emotionally powerful authors of the 20th century. Born in Boston, Massachusetts, she demonstrated literary talent from an early age, publishing her first poem at the age of eight. Her early life was shaped by the death of her father, Otto Plath, when she was eight years old, a trauma that would profoundly influence her later work.
Plath attended Smith College, where she excelled academically but also struggled privately with depression. In 1953, she survived a suicide attempt, an experience she later fictionalized in her semi-autobiographical novel The Bell Jar. After recovering, she earned a Fulbright Scholarship to study at Newnham College, Cambridge, in England. While there, she met and married English poet Ted Hughes in 1956. Their relationship was passionate but tumultuous, with tensions exacerbated by personal differences and Hughes's infidelities.
Throughout her life, Plath sought to balance her ambitions as a writer with the demands of marriage and motherhood. She had two children with Hughes, Frieda and Nicholas, and continued to write prolifically. In 1960, her first poetry collection, The Colossus and Other Poems, was published in the United Kingdom. Although it received modest critical attention at the time, it laid the foundation for her distinctive voice—intensely personal, often exploring themes of death, rebirth, and female identity.
Plath's marriage unraveled in 1962, leading to a period of intense emotional turmoil but also extraordinary creative output. Living with her two children in London, she wrote many of the poems that would posthumously form Ariel, the collection that would cement her literary legacy. These works, filled with striking imagery and raw emotional force, displayed her ability to turn personal suffering into powerful art. Poems like "Daddy" and "Lady Lazarus" remain among her most famous, celebrated for their fierce honesty and technical brilliance.
In early 1963, following a deepening depression, Plath died by suicide at the age of 30. Her death shocked the literary world and sparked a lasting fascination with her life and work. The posthumous publication of Ariel in 1965, edited by Hughes, introduced Plath's later poetry to a wide audience and established her as a major figure in modern literature. Her novel The Bell Jar was also published under her own name shortly after her death, having initially appeared under the pseudonym "Victoria Lucas."
Plath’s work is often classified within the genre of confessional poetry, a style that emphasizes personal and psychological experiences. Her fearless exploration of themes like mental illness, female oppression, and death has resonated with generations of readers and scholars. Over time, Plath has become a feminist icon, though her legacy is complex and occasionally controversial, especially in light of debates over Hughes's role in managing her literary estate and personal history.
Today, Sylvia Plath is remembered not only for her tragic personal story but also for her immense contributions to American and English literature. Her work continues to inspire writers, artists, and readers worldwide. Collections such as Ariel, Crossing the Water, and Winter Trees, as well as her journals and letters, offer deep insight into her creative mind. Sylvia Plath’s voice, marked by its intensity and emotional clarity, remains one of the most haunting and enduring in modern literature.

Reviews

[Steven Godin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A short collection of nineteen poems, which were all but one, written in the months leading up to Plath's untimely death. Most are darkly exquisite, and sit alongside some of her other collections in terms of quality. Only a couple were weak, but that's no big deal. Some poems had a disturbingly strong vibe, like that of those in both 'Collosus' & 'Ariel', whilst the title poem 'Winter Trees, is a fight between the dark and the light. 'Child' (featured below), make of it what you will, was a poem written about the birth of Plath’s second child, Nicholas, and sadly only two weeks before she committed suicide. It's a clear insight into her state of mind at the time, torn between the harsh reality of the world she lived in, and the beautiful and strange thoughts she held within.

Although all poems take a matter of minutes to get through, they leave a sizable impression. Plath knew how to write the most alluring and heartbreaking words, regardless of length.

Your clear eye is the one absolutely beautiful thing.
I want to fill it with color and ducks,
The zoo of the new

Whose names you meditate
April snowdrop, Indian pipe,
Little

Stalk without wrinkle,
Pool in which images
Should be grand and classical

Not this troublous
Wringing of hands, this dark
Ceiling without a star.

[Eliza · Rating 4 out of 5]

The imagery is fantastic! But the beginning half has better poems, in my opinion.

[Mariel · Rating 5 out of 5]

And so I stand, a little sightless. So I walk
Away on wheels, instead of legs, they serve as well.
And learn to speak with fingers, not a tongue.
The body is resourceful.
The body of a starfish can grow back its arms
And newts are prodigal in legs. And may I be
As prodigal in what lacks me.

The second voice is beautiful, not hopeless....
The third voice is a wound. She leaves behind, the white skin after a bandage. Hospital beds, pats on back. Self administered and administration. Ministrations of voices. They do not belong to them, they do not hold their own. A room that has been left. It doesn't count when you have to hold yourself. You are not different enough, believable. The only voice that will speak. It is safe once more, until it isn't. It is lifted up by bootstraps marks on the flesh walls. The shadows wait. There is a first voice before the second, the third. There is always a beginning and an end.

I read the initials and their arbitrarily chosen batch. These poems could have appeared in Ariel just as not have. I wordlessly absorbed the intent to be read aloud "Three Women: A Poem for Three Voices". I cannot tell the difference with strength. My voice remains silent, mutely appealing my inner ear. Self consciously I read again from the floor of my bathroom. No one could hear. My dogs persistently whine outside the door and I feel tongue knotted. Without words, with recognition. This is how I read poetry. I try to write about poetry as people beside me talk too loudly. My stuttering and staring. Lips moved without motion. Forgetting what time it is reading. I want to read poetry out loud and I cannot do it. There's a speaking in my head. I see shadows and waking up and you'll be back here again. How often have I told myself?

There is this white wall, above which the sky
creates itself-
Infinite, green, utterly untouchable.
Angels swim in it, and the stars, in indifference also.
They are my medium.
The sun dissolves on this wall, bleeding its lights.

Black wall, red wall, gray wall. Mind made of. Scratches and lights under. Shadows walk away. Dark thoughts and staircases that lead to the bottom to the top to bottom. I know this world.

ABC, her eyelids say.

When I'm not reading I am still reading her in my eyes. They say this is what it looks like. The images, the questions cared to ask. Is this what it looks like? Instead of sounds there are birds. Birds and birds on a solitary ceiling sky. No stars. I feel this fright that this is all there is and muted and lips won't move.

The wet dawn inks are doing their blue dissolve.
On their blotter of fog the trees
Seem a botanical drawing.
Memories of growing, ring on ring,
A series of weddings.

Knowing neither abortions nor bitchery,
Truer than women,
They seed so effortlessly!
Tasting the winds, that are footless,
Wait-deep in history.

Full of wings, otherworldliness.
In this, they are Ledas.
O mother of leaves and sweetness
Who are these pietas?
The shadows of ringdoves chanting, but easing nothing.

- Winter Trees

I do not know weddings. A wood is a lonely thicket thick with spaces. It does not horrify me. I feel a secondhand horror, maybe a from the heavens or below nothing about the abandoned womb in 'Childless Woman'. My red room doesn't open to that black room. It is a colorless room and only the sounds come in and I reassure myself that I don't have any children when I feel guilty that the sound of baby talk makes me want to vomit up my reproductive organs. I haven't cleaned and I wouldn't invite anyone over to see my bath tub. It is an unfit home. I don't mind this because I don't have to be fit for them. I am not fit for myself in these times. I can't tell between cracked linoleum, ceramic or porcelain. I read in my bathroom to escape the sounds of people. The library, once a safe refuge of bright lights and studied faces, is a torture gilded silence of keyboards clacking and mouses clicking. I want them to be mute then. No wide faces and no lights. I hope it doesn't last like this. My forest is a safe silent of images to hold onto. Something I recognize. Someone I know.

I don't like how I review poetry on goodreads. How do I tell that I see the Long nicotine-finger and the eavesdropper hears nothing at the door but ominous images behind?

[Amanda NEVER MANDY · Rating 3 out of 5]

This collection of poetry was published after Sylvia Plath’s death by Ted Hughes. He noted this at the beginning of the book:

“The poems in this volume are all out of the batch from which the Ariel poems were more less arbitrarily chosen and they were all composed in the last nine months of Sylvia Plath’s life.”

Most of the writing we know Plath for was produced during the final season of her life. I find this bit of information to be incredibly sad. I hate that she left the world without knowing the lasting impact she had on it. I hate that she had to experience all that dark for us to see her shine.

“Three Women, A Poem for Three Voices” was the only poem that stuck with me. Placing it at the end amplified its intensity and made it a poignant last thought. I am not sure if that was her desire or his choice.

Three stars to a collection that was almost, but not quite.

[Theresa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sylvia Plath's poems are so vivid, haunting, and absolutely gorgeous. *goosebumps*

[Mattea Gernentz · Rating 5 out of 5]

September 2024: "Once one has seen God, what is the remedy?"

Every time I encounter Plath, I recall anew why she was my beckoning into poetry.

Such precision! So many of these lines could stand alone, radiant and unapologetic ("New oysters / Shriek in the sea and I / Glitter like Fontainebleau"). Plath's verse is incantatory, and I think this collection of hers shows the least restraint. I mean, no one else could start a poem with "Viciousness in the kitchen!" and have me immediately riveted and rooted. I read. I marvelled. I cried.

I kept gravitating back to "Mystic" this time, and it was stunning reading a bilingual edition.

Also, on this reread, I realized that two songs I enjoy are actually referencing "Lesbos" by Plath: Jockstrap's "Acid" ("O vase of acid, / It is love you are full of. You know who you hate.") and Fox Academy's "i see yr cute decor" (from their iconic album waaay back in 2015). Plath is the center of artistic constellation upon constellation!

August 2021: "All night I carpenter / A space for the thing I am given, / A love" (31).

Even as I'm in the midst of dissertation burnout, reading Plath makes me fantasize about doing a whole other postgraduate degree in Women, Writing, and Gender so I can devote an entire dissertation to analyzing her work. 😭

There are so many fascinating interwoven motifs in Winter Trees on mirrors, eyes, maternity, and doubling. Written in the last nine months of her life, there's an element of underlying personal desperation that is palpable but also such fondness (mixed, of course, with fear) about her role as mother. I love that Plath's poems are enigmas to be carefully unravelled or chipped away at. So many lines of hers become lodged in my mind to ruminate on later, rubbed smooth like a pebble against waves of thought. I simultaneously believe she's overrated and misunderstood and a genius.

Plath's "As if a tenderness awoke / A tenderness that did not tire, something healing. / I wait and ache. I think I have been healing" has been such an anthem in my life over the last year or so.

[Best · Rating 3 out of 5]

I hold my fingers up, ten white pickets.
See, the darkness is leaking from the cracks.
I cannot contain it. I cannot contain my life.

[Nenúfares ☽ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mi tema de tesis💕

[Eve Kay · Rating 4 out of 5]

Many of these I had already come across somewhere and still love Plath dearly. Three Women, of course, is a work of a mastermind. I need to read all her work again at some point and I know I'll find new aspects, new opinions, new ideas. I'll learn something new again.

[Kirsty · Rating 5 out of 5]

2023 - an enduring favourite. Plath's language soars.

2018 - I have read Sylvia Plath's beautiful Winter Trees several times, and picked it up again over the Easter holidays. These poems were all written within the last nine months of her life. As always with poetry collections, I have collected together a few of my favourite excerpts or fragments from some of these stunning poems.

- From 'The Rabbit Catcher':
'I tasted the malignity of the gorse,
Its black spikes,
The extreme unction of its yellow candle-flowers.
They had an efficiency, a great beauty,
And were extravagant, like torture.'

- From 'By Candlelight':
'This is winter, this is night, small love -'

- From 'Lesbos':
'We should meet in another life, we should meet in air,
Me and you.'

- From 'Three Women':
'What did my fingers do before they held him?
What did my heart do, with its love?'

[June · Rating 5 out of 5]

Winter Trees is the last posthumous collection of Plath's poetry, many written during the last year of her life when the poems in Ariel were written. Although, these poems lack some of the clarity of craft as the poems in Ariel, likely being less edited and revised by Plath as they were disregarded for the manuscript. And, frankly, as someone well versed in the symbols Plath often uses in Ariel... I struggled with deciphering some of these poems.

I was entirely charmed by this collection however. It begins and ends incredibly strongly. I adored "Apprehensions" and "Mystic", the first two poems, that situate you solidly in her craft. One of the most painful Plath lines is in "Child" where she wishes her child to learn the names of plants and go to the zoo and see the world as "grand and classical" unlike herself: "Not this troublous / wringing of hands, this dark / Ceiling without a star." Wow. Ceiling without a star? The final poem in the collection "Winter Trees" contemplates the stoic and pure quality to winter trees, comparing them to pious women of classical times almost passing judgements upon modern women: "Memories growing, ring on ring / A series of weddings. / Knowing neither abortions nor bitchery / Truer than women / ... Who are these pietas?"

The final piece in this collection is "Three Women", a play of sorts written for radio on the BBC and set in a maternity ward, capturing the different perspectives and experiences with motherhood of the titular three women. I cried my way through almost all 18 pages of verse. I'm not sure if I'm just sensitive to topics around miscarriages and mothers giving up their children, but Plath was the right person to write it. I think it is one of the most powerful works of hers I've ever read, and I cannot believe it goes so unnoticed in her collection of work. So, if you don't plan to read this collection, I implore you to at least try "Three Women".

[Lex · Rating 3 out of 5]

50% of the poetry I read is read because I want inspiration for my own work (the other 50% is me desperately searching for anything that gives me the same feeling Sappho does) and this definitely gave me inspiration.

The main thing I had a problem with was the mention of the Holocaust in Mary's Song. I was shocked but not at all surprised because someone had warned me that she compared her experience to the Holocaust multiple times. If it weren't for that I would have given it a higher rating, but then again I would probably have given it 2 stars if I hadn't seen it coming, so I'm glad I got prior warning before going in.

[Hannah Young · Rating 4 out of 5]

i think this might be the first poetry collection i have read? i can’t see any others on my book shelf… it was beautiful, as to be expected. i especially loved three women which was the last poem, so potent and raw.

[Roxanne Fyfe · Rating 4 out of 5]

"L'arbre et la pierre scintillaient, ils n'avaient plus d'ombres.
Je me suis déployée, étincelante comme du verre.
J'ai commencé de bourgeonner, comme un rameau de mars:
Un bras et puis une jambe, un bras et encore une jambe.
De la pierre au nuage, ainsi je me suis élevée.
Maintenant je ressemble à une sorte de dieu
Je flotte à travers l'air, mon âme pour vêtement,
Aussi pure qu'un pain de glace. C'est un don."

[emmarps · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Crossing the waters" est pour moi la pièce maîtresse de ce recueil. Beaucoup de résonnances baudelairiennes et cette mer toujours qui vient dévorer, s'abattre et noyer. Absolument sublime.

[Casey]

I prefer her prose to her poems.

[pauline · Rating 4 out of 5]

d’une BEAUTÉ

[Nathalie (keepreadingbooks) · Rating 3 out of 5]

My go-to poet (and frankly, my spirit animal) is usually Mary Oliver. Her poetry is - in lack of words that convey the meaning but have more gravitas - simple and accessible. Sylvia Plath’s poetry is no such thing. It took me a couple of days to read the entire collection just because my mind had to work so hard at each poem. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but I think I prefer to understand poetry a little quicker than I did these. A nice middle ground is the collection The Wild Gods by Malene Engelund, which I continue to recommend to any- and everyone!

To return to Plath, I can be a little dense about poetry, but I sensed a lot of anger and embitterment in this collection. Something that seems to have built up over a long time and is longing to burst out into the open. I get an image of a woman who holds her head high during the day and then writes furiously about her feelings when she is alone, wanting nothing more than to throw it in a certain someone’s face. She writes a lot about motherhood, too, which seems to be a mix of not enough and too much love. It is powerful, for sure.

This collection is a selection of poems taken from the batch that the Ariel poems were chosen from, too. Perhaps it is easier to see these things because you know what happened to her, but I think the anger and embitterment is a large part of the batch of poems she wrote shortly before her death.

/NK

[Marilyne S. Veilleux · Rating 5 out of 5]

J’ai mis plusieurs mois à lire La Traversée et Arbres d’hiver et ce n’est pas pour rien: Sylvia Plath a une plume qui fait mal et ses excellents poèmes sont souvent assez perturbants. Sa façon de mélanger des thèmes plus ou moins légers et des rimes faciles à des sujets sombres et lourds (la trahison, le suicide, le regret d’avoir des enfants, la médiocrité de dieu et de la vie, etc.) rend la lecture… douloureuse. Des mois à alterner entre « aouch » et « wow ».

Je n’ai pas particulièrement apprécié la traduction de Françoise Morvan et Valérie Rouzeau, mais les notes qu’elles ont laissées en fin d’ouvrage permet de mieux comprendre la complexité que représente la traduction de Sylvia Plath. Dans un autre ordre d’idées, je trouve complètement débile le fait que les poèmes aient été assemblés et mélangés par l’ex-mari de Sylvia, celui que cette dernière décrit justement comme un gigolo dans un de ses poèmes. J’aimerais bien comprendre la pertinence de séparer des textes écrits par exemple pendant une même journée au lieu de les rassembler.

Une liste de poèmes que j’ai envie d’afficher dans ma chambre:
TWO CAMPERS IN CLOUD COUNTRY
MIRROR
WHITSUN
GIGOLO
CHILDLESS WOMAN
STOPPED DEAD
MYSTIC
BY CANDLELIGHT
LESBOS

[Hadsreads · Rating 5 out of 5]

"I have had my chances. I have tried and tried.
I have stitched life into me like a rare organ,
And walked carefully, precariously, like something rare.
I have tried not to think too hard. I have tried to be natural.
I have tried to be blind in love, like other women,
Blind in my bed, with my dear blind sweet one,
Not looking, through the thick dark, for the face of another.
I did not look. But still the face was there,
The face of the unborn one that loved its perfections,
The face of the dead one that could only be perfect
In its easy peace, could only keep holy so."

[Utskor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Where are you going
That you suck breath like mileage?

Sulphurous adulteries grieve in a dream
Cold glass, how you insert yourself

Between myself and myself.
I scratch like a cat.

The blood that runs is dark fruit-
An effect, a cosmetic.

You smile.
No, it is not fatal.

[Dina Rahajaharison · Rating 5 out of 5]

"It is more natural to me, lying down. / Then the sky and I are in open conversation, / And I shall be useful when I lie down finally: / Then the trees may touch me for once, and the flowers have time for me."

[lehnachos ✨ · Rating 5 out of 5]

she only confirms her place as my favorite writer every time.

[Robin Brown · Rating 5 out of 5]

Three Women, Child, Lesbos.

[Charlie Parkman · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book I will definitely read again, environment definitely plays a factor in a book’s digestion and reading this at work was a bad choice. However, definitely felt and appreciated its gut-punch impact. The imagery, my favourite aspect, was vividly stark, lashing and wrangling the reader through the text’s contrasting motifs; bright nature with mechanical/unnatural man-made woes, birth with abortion and infertility, the power of femininity and societal attacks on it, hope with despair and the soporific mundanity of everyday life with the simmer of rage and malice found within it. The objects are cold and harsh and the nature is often monstrous and bereft of greenery.

The culmination with ‘Three Women’ (a radio play that I believe was added to the collection posthumously by Ted Hughes) was a great way to end the collection

For a collection stitched together by someone who was not the author in my opinion I would say it flows remarkably well

[Helene Birkkjær · Rating 4 out of 5]

“How long can I be a wall, keeping the wind off?
How long can I be
Gentling the sun with the shade of my hand,
Intercepting the blue bolts of a cold moon?
The voices of loneliness, the voices of sorrow
Lap at my back ineluctably.
How shall it soften them, this little lullaby?

How long can I be a wall around my green property?
How long can my hands
Be a bandage to his hurt, and my words
Bright birds in the sky, consoling, consoling?
It is a terrible thing
To be so open: it is as if my heart
Put on a face and walked into the world.”

[Cecilia · Rating 4 out of 5]

3'5⭐
He leído los poemas en inglés, me ha ayudado tener la tradicción al lado porque había palabras que no entendía bien en el contexto.
Sin duda es un poemario del que haré una relectura más adelante.

[Arianna · Rating 5 out of 5]

És que bof sylvia plath vint-i-quatre set espero que li vagin bé les coses!!!!! Fuck el feo del ted hughes

[Timothée Wallut · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Then the sky and I are in open conversation, - And I shall be useful when I lie down finally : - Then the trees may touch me for once, and the flowers have time for me."
J'ai chialé.

[ayyluluu · Rating 4 out of 5]

So cold and aching.