The Colossus: and Other PoemsWith this startling, exhilarating book of poems, which was first published in 1960, Sylvia Plath burst into literature with spectacular force. In such classics as "The Beekeeper's Daughter," "The Disquieting Muses," "I Want, I Want," and "Full Fathom Five," she writes about sows and skeletons, fathers and suicides, about the noisy imperatives of life and the chilly hunger for death. Graceful in their craftsmanship, wonderfully original in their imagery, and presenting layer after layer of meaning, the forty poems in The Colossus are early artifacts of genius that still possess the power to move, delight, and shock. |
Contents
Two Views of a Cadaver Room | |
Night Shift | |
Sow | |
The Eyemote | |
Hardcastle Crags | |
Faun | |
Departure | |
Full Fathom Five | |
Blue Moles | |
Strumpet Song | |
Man in Black | |
Snakecharmer | |
The Hermit at Outermost House | |
The Disquieting Muses | |
Medallion | |
The Colossus | |
Lorelei | |
Point Shirley | |
The Bull of Bendylaw | |
All the Dead Dears | |
Aftermath | |
The Thin People | |
Suicide Off Egg Rock | |
Mushrooms | |
I Want I Want | |
Watercolor of Grantchester Meadows | |
The Ghosts Leavetaking | |
A Winter Ship | |
The Companionable Ills | |
Moonrise | |
Spinster | |
Frog Autumn | |
Mussel Hunter at Rock Harbor | |
The Beekeepers Daughter | |
The Times Are Tidy | |
The Burntout Spa | |
Sculptor | |
Flute Notes from a Reedy Pond | |
The Stones | |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
beat Beekeeper’s Daughter belly Bendylaw blank Blue Moles blue Mussels bones bronze bull surged Burnt-out Spa Cattails Chair and bureau claws color Colossus Companionable Ills crabs dark dead death Disquieting Muses dreams Egg Rock eyes face father finger flesh Frog Autumn Full Fathom Five ghost Ghost’s Leavetaking gizzard glass God’s Grantchester Meadows grasses green waters gull hair hands Hardcastle Crags head Hermit at Outermost Hunter at Rock king’s ladies light litter moon moon’s moony mother mouth-hole move Mussel Hunter nimbus nod And nod orange otherworld Outermost House pared pipes Poems Ravel redden Reedy Pond Relic ride Rock Harbor root round Scrim sea’s shadow shrew skull plates sky’s Smith College Snakecharmer snakes spit stars stones struck Strumpet Song suck suede Suicide Off Egg Sun’s Sylvia Plath thin Thor is angry walk Watercolor of Grantchester waves wind Winter Ship Wither