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The Colossus
Kindle Edition
Published November 25, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
August 27, 2023
the changing of the seasons calls for a slyvia plath induced melancholy
December 31, 2024
“I shall never get you put together entirely,
Pieced, glued, and properly jointed…
Perhaps you consider yourself an oracle,
Mouthpiece of the dead, or of some god or other.
Thirty years now I have labored
To dredge the silt from your throat”
Po przeczytaniu „Daddy” z Ariel, mega banger!
Pieced, glued, and properly jointed…
Perhaps you consider yourself an oracle,
Mouthpiece of the dead, or of some god or other.
Thirty years now I have labored
To dredge the silt from your throat”
Po przeczytaniu „Daddy” z Ariel, mega banger!
February 17, 2025
- blind to what will be and what was, i dream that i am Oedipus.
- what i want back is what i was, before the bed, before the knife, before the brooch-pin and the salve
- tireless, tied, as a moon-bound sea
- i shall never get you put together entirely, pierced, glued, and properly jointed.
- thirty years now i have labored to dredge the slit from the throat - i am none the wiser.
- they sing of a world more full and clear than can be.
- a labor of love, and that labor lost
- that lady here’s no kin of mine, yet kin she is; she’ll suck blood and whistle my marrow clean to prove it.
- enter the chilly no-man’s land of about five o’clock in the morning. which seemed, when dreamed, to mean so profoundly much.
- so these posed sheets, before they thin to nothing, speak in sign language of a lost otherworld, a world we lose by merely waking up.
- boarded the train there’s no getting off.
- miracles occur, if you care to call these spasmodic tricks of radiance miracles. the wait’s begun again, the long wait for the angel, for that rare, random descent.
- all obscurity starts with a danger; your dangers are many. i cannot look much but your form suffers some strange injury and seems to die.
- father, this thick air is murderous. i would breathe water.
- what happens between us happens in darkness, vanishes easy and often as each breath.
- i learned, i learned, i learned elsewhere. from muses unhired by you, dear mother.
- berries redden. a body of whiteness rots and smells of rot under its headstone though the body walk out in clean linen.
- perform their shambling waltzes and return, losing themselves bit by bit.
- a fruit thats death to taste
- the stream that hustles us neither nourishes nor heals.
- if only the wind would leave my lungs alone.
- i said: i must remember this, being small.
- for weeks i can remember nothing at all.
- time unwinds from the great umbilicus of the sun, its endless glitter. i must swallow it all.
- down here the sky is always falling.
- this is not death, it is something safer.
- i am lost, i am lost in the robes of all this light.
- what i want back is what i was, before the bed, before the knife, before the brooch-pin and the salve
- tireless, tied, as a moon-bound sea
- i shall never get you put together entirely, pierced, glued, and properly jointed.
- thirty years now i have labored to dredge the slit from the throat - i am none the wiser.
- they sing of a world more full and clear than can be.
- a labor of love, and that labor lost
- that lady here’s no kin of mine, yet kin she is; she’ll suck blood and whistle my marrow clean to prove it.
- enter the chilly no-man’s land of about five o’clock in the morning. which seemed, when dreamed, to mean so profoundly much.
- so these posed sheets, before they thin to nothing, speak in sign language of a lost otherworld, a world we lose by merely waking up.
- boarded the train there’s no getting off.
- miracles occur, if you care to call these spasmodic tricks of radiance miracles. the wait’s begun again, the long wait for the angel, for that rare, random descent.
- all obscurity starts with a danger; your dangers are many. i cannot look much but your form suffers some strange injury and seems to die.
- father, this thick air is murderous. i would breathe water.
- what happens between us happens in darkness, vanishes easy and often as each breath.
- i learned, i learned, i learned elsewhere. from muses unhired by you, dear mother.
- berries redden. a body of whiteness rots and smells of rot under its headstone though the body walk out in clean linen.
- perform their shambling waltzes and return, losing themselves bit by bit.
- a fruit thats death to taste
- the stream that hustles us neither nourishes nor heals.
- if only the wind would leave my lungs alone.
- i said: i must remember this, being small.
- for weeks i can remember nothing at all.
- time unwinds from the great umbilicus of the sun, its endless glitter. i must swallow it all.
- down here the sky is always falling.
- this is not death, it is something safer.
- i am lost, i am lost in the robes of all this light.
August 31, 2023
‘No pit of shadow to crawl into,
And his blood beating the old tattoo
I am, I am, I am.’
Sylvia plaths first published poetry book, I didn’t enjoy this one as much as I usually do for Plaths work, but there are still so many remarkable lines and it’s still just effortlessly good poetry.
This felt a little more chaotic and unfinished, but still precise and incredibly thought provoking. These are poems I felt I had to read multiple times and still had to keep flipping back with a sudden understanding of the meaning.
‘I learned, I learned, I learned elsewhere,
From muses unhired by you, dear mother.’
She doesn’t waste words in any attempt to make her work pretty, enticing or feminine, just lays all of her struggles, pain and anger into the page with a strength and seriousness that would be impressive today, let alone in the 60s.
‘What I want back is what I was
Before the bed, before the knife,
Before the brooch-pin and the salve
Fixed me in this parenthesis;
Horses fluent in the wind,
A place, a time gone out of mind.’
And his blood beating the old tattoo
I am, I am, I am.’
Sylvia plaths first published poetry book, I didn’t enjoy this one as much as I usually do for Plaths work, but there are still so many remarkable lines and it’s still just effortlessly good poetry.
This felt a little more chaotic and unfinished, but still precise and incredibly thought provoking. These are poems I felt I had to read multiple times and still had to keep flipping back with a sudden understanding of the meaning.
‘I learned, I learned, I learned elsewhere,
From muses unhired by you, dear mother.’
She doesn’t waste words in any attempt to make her work pretty, enticing or feminine, just lays all of her struggles, pain and anger into the page with a strength and seriousness that would be impressive today, let alone in the 60s.
‘What I want back is what I was
Before the bed, before the knife,
Before the brooch-pin and the salve
Fixed me in this parenthesis;
Horses fluent in the wind,
A place, a time gone out of mind.’
December 9, 2023
The more I get into Sylvia plath, the more I love her work.
“Lorelei” was by far my favorite poem, and was one I kept going back to while reading the entire collection. She perfectly encapsulates grief and the temptation to give into the loneliness.
“The disquieting Muses” was another favorite of mine. Sylvia based it off the painting by Giorgio de Chirico, and uses it to explain the non-communicative relationship with her mother and how the “negative muses” follow her throughout her childhood.
AND “The Colossus” is up there with my favorites as well. It revolves around her father who passed when she was eight, and she realizes she won’t ever get to know who he completely was.
overall I can’t stress how much I connect with her
writing
“Lorelei” was by far my favorite poem, and was one I kept going back to while reading the entire collection. She perfectly encapsulates grief and the temptation to give into the loneliness.
“The disquieting Muses” was another favorite of mine. Sylvia based it off the painting by Giorgio de Chirico, and uses it to explain the non-communicative relationship with her mother and how the “negative muses” follow her throughout her childhood.
AND “The Colossus” is up there with my favorites as well. It revolves around her father who passed when she was eight, and she realizes she won’t ever get to know who he completely was.
overall I can’t stress how much I connect with her
writing
January 16, 2026
Sylvia Plath was an American poet and author widely regarded as one of history's strongest confessional poets. While she is often viewed today as one of the most brilliant figures of her time, Plath intensely struggled with her mental and emotional health, leading her to commit suicide in 1963. Her poems often explore her conflicts with society’s ever-growing expectations, her husband, her parents, and most prominently, herself. When reading her poems, the anguish she felt at the time of writing is translated through her strong opening lines and storytelling in a sad yet beautiful way onto the paper, as though the ink she wrote flowed through her soul and wept into your own.
I drew a lot of parallels between The Colossus and Frankenstein: The 1818 Text by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. In The Colossus, Plath describes her experience of feeling outcast from society through the eyes of a critic describing something akin to Frankenstein’s monster. She illustrates how society, through the voice of the critic, was unable to “fix” the wretch perfectly, having the critic say “I shall never get you put together entirely” (1), and later having the critic mention “It would take more than a lightning-stroke / to create such a ruin” (22-23). The choice of replacing “lightning strike” with “lightning stroke,” as well as mentioning the action of creating, creates the imagery of painting with a paintbrush, and how people who don’t conform to societal expectations are mistakes, ruined by their own making and unfixable.
There are a lot of similar messages between The Colossus and The Applicant, another one of Plath's poems.
I drew a lot of parallels between The Colossus and Frankenstein: The 1818 Text by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. In The Colossus, Plath describes her experience of feeling outcast from society through the eyes of a critic describing something akin to Frankenstein’s monster. She illustrates how society, through the voice of the critic, was unable to “fix” the wretch perfectly, having the critic say “I shall never get you put together entirely” (1), and later having the critic mention “It would take more than a lightning-stroke / to create such a ruin” (22-23). The choice of replacing “lightning strike” with “lightning stroke,” as well as mentioning the action of creating, creates the imagery of painting with a paintbrush, and how people who don’t conform to societal expectations are mistakes, ruined by their own making and unfixable.
There are a lot of similar messages between The Colossus and The Applicant, another one of Plath's poems.
May 8, 2024
I am always fascinated and intrigued by the words of Sylvia Plath. This is the first collection of poems I have read by her after being mesmerized by The Bell Jar.
Although I was expecting more from these poems, I still really enjoyed this collection. I find it interesting how she connections biblical references and well as greek mythology into her work. I love knowing or being able to read myself what an authors inspiration is. I can’t wait to keep reading more of her poems.
My two favourite poems are: the ghost’s leavetaking and the disquieting muses.
“This is the kingdom of the fading apparition
The oracular ghost who dwindles on pin-legs
To a knot of laundry, with a classic bunch of sheets
Upraised, as a hand, emblematic of farewell.
At this joint between two worlds and two entirely
Incompatible modes of time, the raw material
Of our meat-and-potato thoughts assumes the nimbus
Of ambrosial revelation. And so departs.
Chair and bureau are the hieroglyphs
Of some godly utterance wakened heads ignore;
So these posed sheets; before they thin to nothing
Speak in sign language of a lost otherworld
A world we lose by merely waking up”
Although I was expecting more from these poems, I still really enjoyed this collection. I find it interesting how she connections biblical references and well as greek mythology into her work. I love knowing or being able to read myself what an authors inspiration is. I can’t wait to keep reading more of her poems.
My two favourite poems are: the ghost’s leavetaking and the disquieting muses.
“This is the kingdom of the fading apparition
The oracular ghost who dwindles on pin-legs
To a knot of laundry, with a classic bunch of sheets
Upraised, as a hand, emblematic of farewell.
At this joint between two worlds and two entirely
Incompatible modes of time, the raw material
Of our meat-and-potato thoughts assumes the nimbus
Of ambrosial revelation. And so departs.
Chair and bureau are the hieroglyphs
Of some godly utterance wakened heads ignore;
So these posed sheets; before they thin to nothing
Speak in sign language of a lost otherworld
A world we lose by merely waking up”
January 7, 2025
Took me a fucking minute to get through but worth the wait. Nobody makes you sit with a poem like Sylvia.
I absolutely adored Lorelai, Point Shirley, Sow, Suicide Off Egg Rock and Poem for a Birthday. Am probably forgetting a couple but I don’t have the book with me at the moment.
I absolutely adored Lorelai, Point Shirley, Sow, Suicide Off Egg Rock and Poem for a Birthday. Am probably forgetting a couple but I don’t have the book with me at the moment.
November 26, 2025
Love Sylvia Plath’s poetry this selection was the beautiful descriptions of motherhood , places and femininity. Didn’t quite connect as fully as I have with her previous poetry however I still love this
November 20, 2022
Very thought provoking
December 15, 2023
RIP sylvia plath vc teria amado neonazis do twitter e o enjoei
September 24, 2024
Mi favoritismo de Sylvia hasta ahora
November 27, 2024
I'll never forget what it felt like to read through "Poem for a Birthday" for the first time.
January 16, 2024
sylvia werked it out
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews