The Collected Poems

By the time of her death on 11, February 1963, Sylvia Plath had written a large bulk of poetry. To my knowledge, she never scrapped any of her poetic efforts. With one or two exceptions, she brought every piece she worked on to some final form acceptable to her, rejecting at most the odd verse, or a false head or a false tail. Her attitude to her verse was artisan-like: if she couldn’t get a table out of the material, she was quite happy to get a chair, or even a toy. The end product for her was not so much a successful poem, as something that had temporarily exhausted her ingenuity. So this book contains not merely what verse she saved, but—after 1956—all she wrote. — Ted Hughes, from the Introduction

This Pulitzer Prize-winning collection presents the full arc of her mature work:

• The Complete Mature Works: Brings together all 224 poems Sylvia Plath wrote after 1956, chronologically arranged to reveal the startling evolution of her poetic power.
• A Ferocious Honesty: Witness the raw, unflinching voice that defined a new literary movement, exploring the depths of the self with meticulous and unforgettable craft.
• The Legendary Ariel Poems: Includes the brilliant, searing poems from her final manuscript, showcasing the work that cemented her as a major voice in literature.
• Introduced by Ted Hughes: Features the original introduction by her husband, Ted Hughes, providing an intimate, firsthand context for the creation and arrangement of these masterful poems.