Sylvia Plath was, for both English and American poetry, one of the defining voices of twentieth-century, and one of the most appealing: few other poets have introduced as many new readers to poetry. Though she published just one collection in her lifetime, The Colossus, and a novel, The Bell Jar, it was following her death in 1963 that her work began to garner the wider audience that it deserved. The manuscript that she left behind, Ariel, was published in 1965 under the editorship of her former husband, Ted Hughes, as were two later volumes, Crossing the Water and Winter Trees in 1971, which helped to make Sylvia Plath a household name. Hughes's careful curation of Plath's work extended to a Collected Poems and a Selected Poems in the 1980s, which remain in print today and stand testimony to the 'profound respect' that Frieda Hughes said her father had for her mother's work. It was not until the publication of a 'restored' Ariel in 2004 that readers were able to appraise Plath's own selection and arrangement of her work. This edition of the poems, chosen by the Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy, offers a fresh selection of Sylvia Plath's poetry to stand in parallel to the existing editions. Introduced with an inviting preface, the book is essential reading for those new to and already familiar with the work of this most extraordinary poet.

A beautiful poetry collection chosen by the Poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy.

Mrs Midas, Queen Kong, Mrs Lazarus, the Kray sisters, and a huge cast of others startle with their wit, imagination, lyrical intuition and incisiveness.

Following the success of their anthology Poems That Make Grown Men Cry, father-and-son team Anthony and Ben Holden, working with Amnesty International, have asked the same revealing question of 100 remarkable women. What poem has moved you to tears? The poems chosen range from the eighth century to today, from Rumi and Shakespeare to Sylvia Plath, W.H. Auden to Carol Ann Duffy, Pablo Neruda and Derek Walcott to Imtiaz Dharker and Warsan Shire. Their themes range from love and loss, through mortality and mystery, war and peace, to the beauty and variety of nature. From Yoko Ono to Judi Dench, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie to Elena Ferrante, Carol Ann Duffy to Kaui Hart Hemmings, and Joan Baez to Nikki Giovanni, this unique collection delivers private insights into the minds of women whose writing, acting, and thinking are admired around the world.

The past contemporary poet gives an account in 88 poems in letter form of hisromance and the life spent with Sylvia Plath.

Publisher Description

In New Selected Poems 1984-2004, Carol Ann Duffy draws together key poems from her published work to date spanning twenty extraordinary years of definitive writingfrom Standing Female Nude (1985) to Feminine Gospels (2003). Always vital, original and poignant, Carol Ann Duffy has been called the representative poet of our times. Her distinctive style incorporates witty acts of ventriloquism and imagination thatfearlessly and with sparkling lucidityaddress timeless and universal themes in ways both personal and political. In doing so, she speaks to our collective memory and establishes herself as a modern classic.