The Colossus is the coldest collection of summer poetry you will ever read. I’m certain this paradox was intentional. Moles, maggots, cadavers, suicides, dead snakes, dead things in the surf, dead things on the shore, dead things out in the water, etc. There were times I was bit numbed out by all that dead stuff. For the first third of the collection, I initially felt the influence of Robert Lowell to be obvious in some of the poems (“Point Shirley,” “Hardcastle Crags”). Now I’m not [...]

Sylvia Plath has done to me twice in the last 48 hours what not many other writers has ever done before, that being keeping me up into the early hours. Having read the stunning collection of poetry in "Ariel" this was another body of work which shows off her masterful talent and already I crave for more. Troubled genius?, tortured soul?, probably true, but that doesn't bother me, just the greatness of whenever she put pen to paper.

Perhaps I shouldn't have tried to read The Colossus all at once. It's had, it's had an, it's made me. . . I'm sorry, I have to sit down and start again.Perhaps I shouldn't have tried to read The Colossus all at once. The poems are too rich, too sensual and filling. It was like trying to eat a plateful of prime rib, that's been covered in dark chocolate and deep fried. Delicious, but. And all the hard words! I don't mean hard like palustral is hard, as in hard to understand because I'd never befo [...]

Sylvia Plath's words are magical, haunting, beautiful, and forever burned into my brain. May you rest in peace, you tortured, gorgeous, sensitive soul you.

Poor Colossus. I've never given the collection much credit; like many, I was rather blinded by the incandescence of the Ariel poems, and tended to think of this book as a sort of worksheet preparing for those late poems. But that isn't an entirely fair assessment. Sure, some of the poems here feel like drafts for what would come later ("Man In Black" seems to predict "Medusa," "Moonrise" feels like the exercise that enabled her to write "Blackberrying"), and some seem a bit too stiflingly in the [...]

I discovered Sylvia Plath as an undergraduate freshman, introduced to The Bell Jar by my very good friend and drama student, Linda. Linda's perspective of life was that life was art. She would often model nude for drawing studies on campus and attempted, on several occasions, to induce me to do the same. I chatted with her one evening as she disrobed in front of me for the art class and I then watched, in a mix of awe and embarrassment, as the the class of about 20 sketched her in charcoal.The r [...]

2.5 stars. The Colossus was the first and only poetry collection by Sylvia Plath published in her lifetime, and unfortunately it was a bit of a mixed bag for me. From what I understand of the collection, the order in which the poems appear in the collection is generally chronological, and you are able to see Plath's poetry expand and her ability grow throughout the course of reading the book.I find Plath's poetry at times to be beautiful and arresting, but more often than not in this collection [...]

Have this book on your bedside table for those lonely, stormy nights when you want to hide underneath your covers and read something dark and meaningful. Sylvia's a beautiful writer - there's no denying I'm a fan. I like that we get to see inside her nightmares, and subsequently, our own. My copy of this collection is filled with annotations in the margins, creased pages, and wear and tear from constant use. Many of the poems are plain out disturbing and you're not going to get a 'feel good' exp [...]

4.5 stars. This was the first full collection of Plath's poem that I'd read and I absolutely loved it. The poems in this collection contained fresh images and there were no staleness nor redundancy. I fully ascertained the reason why Plath is regarded as one of the best poets.

I think it's a wonderful thing to slow down and read Plath's poetry. She's such a convincing, thorough writer. Her sense of humor is so unique and slow. I'm not sure the world will ever stop mourning her death. Everybody already knows Plath was a brilliant writer, so I won't spend too much time writing a review. Instead, here are a couple excerpts:From "Mushrooms":"We shall by morning Inherit the earth. Our foot's in the door." Funny, yes? Plus, she has a remarkable ability to write sensuously a [...]

I'm surprised I didn't care for the Colossus poems much. They felt really over-worked to me.

"The Colossus," from what I understand, was Plath's first published collection of poetry. During this early phase of Plath's career, she still treated the act of writing poetry as a laborious and painstaking process, often diligently looking up words in the thesaurus and then inserting many synonyms of one word into a single composition. This rather pedantic attitude toward poetry shows in these poems, many of which devoutly adhere to difficult rhyme schemes (albeit frequently using slant rhymes [...]

The ColossusI shall never get you put together entirely,Pieced, glued, and properly jointed. Mule-bray, pig-grunt and bawdy cackles Proceed from your great lips.It's worse than a barnyard. Perhaps you consider yourself an oracle,Mouthpiece of the dead, or of some god orother.Thirty years now I have laboredTo dredge the silt from your throat.I am none the wiser.Scaling little ladders with glue pots and pailsof lysolI crawl like an ant in mourningOver the weedy acres of your browTo mend the immens [...]

"Prime rib covered in dark chocolate"? "Comes from the darkest crevices of herself"? Shudder It's sentiments like these which contribute to our culture's overwhelming indifference (perhaps even resentment)towards poetry. Poetry isn't wussy, it's not some superfluous thing which can only be grasped by the suicidal-chic. Plath's poetry is frankly, a lot more than that. Yes, there's pain. There is some death. But there's also tranquility, poignancy,and, more times than not, a hell of a lot of humou [...]

Plath is a poet more to be admired than loved. At times she leaves a crack to look through, displays her vulnerability, but so much of what she writes feels overly academic, overly composed, overly self-conscious. Poetry seems a scholarly exercise, rather than an expression of feeling to her. That said, 'On the Difficulty of Conjuring up a Dryad' and 'Black Rook in Rainy Weather' are beautiful exceptions. "No doubt now in dream-propertied fall some moon-eyed,/ star-lucky sleight-of-hand man watc [...]

I did not find this collection particularly enjoyable, which was a massive shame as I'm entirely obsessed with Plath at the minute. I think it's massively less confessional than Ariel so I found it a bit uncomfortable in that sense, I kind of like when poets confess all their shit! But yeah, I'm not sure what it was it just didn't strike me in anyway, no poem in particular stood out as amazing, quite disappointed

dnf at 50% due to my lack of understanding of the poems, though they are no less beautiful than the credit that I gave

One or two poems are quite good,the others are utterly tedious!

Stunning and haunting collection. Surprisingly, I liked it more than Ariel.

Plath is a writer i knew very little about beforehand but reading her poetry and the brilliant way she puts words together she is the type of poet I prefer. Style, wordsmith poet over poets about social ,political content or those that write playing literary games of writing difficult poems that just put words together.This collection i impulse bought because of her reputation as a poet and didnt know it was her first published book of poems. Its truly shocking,freaky to me that she could have r [...]

The only way I could tell if Plath had ended a poem is when there was considerable blank space after the last line. And when a poem did indeed reach the last printable line on an odd-numbered page, it was only when I turned the page that I discovered if a poem had ended, or not. One can switch verses around, retitle them any ol' way, print everything backwards, whatever. As the "genius-with-word-and-song" Kurt Cobain famously begged, "Here we are now, entertain us." But to Plath, no doubt, he wa [...]

3.5I didn't really understand too many of the poems to be honest. I'm not good at analyzing stanzas and I mainly create my own interpretation once I read a poem.Overall, the poems I did understand, I reread them several times overRegardless, the writing was beautiful, and I certainly wouldn't know how to create poignant stories in limited phrases.

*cries in Spanish*

Poetry is difficult.

This is the first poetry book by Plath, and still her state of mental health is clear. This book is full of nature imagery soured - the imagery of two dead moles sticks with me. I believe Plath connects with nature most in life - there seems to be a peace which she expresses through writing about the earth.Plath is my favourite poet because every time I read her work I am reminded of how many words I need to learn and I know that, each time I go back to her poems, I will find new meanings each t [...]

C'est le premier recueil de poème publié par Sylvia Plath. . On comprend pas toujours le sens de ce qu'on lit mais on ressent toujours quelque chose.C'est très organique, vivant, sensoriel, on ressent la matière, l'humidité, l'eau, la puissance des vagues, le vent, la terre, les émotions. On voit les crabes marcher devant soi. Pas étonné qu'elle compte Emily Dickinson parmi ses références.

Hard to understand, and yet easy to feel.

Me podrían torturar hasta la muerte y yo seguiría gritándole al mundo, hasta exhalar mi último suspiro, que El coloso es mil veces mejor que Ariel. Esta Sylvia sí que me gusta. Me gusta y de verdad. ¿Y sabéis que me gusta también? su "A Ted" en la primera página. «Entre cipresesme siento y el acanto de tu peloy tus huesos estriados se penetrande su antigua anarquía hasta el bordedel horizonte. Crear tanta ruinarequiere más que un rayo. Por la nocheme agazapo en tu oreja, contra el vi [...]

I really appreciate and identify with Sylvia. Her poetry is filled with techniques which I particularly enjoy: alliteration, compound words, dense phrases that make the tongue feel thick and expressive. Sylvia had a great sense of rhythm. I think her personal philosophy comes across as fatalistic and phenomenological. She relies on nature to articulate her feelings and thoughts, and calls upon nothing more. Sylvia creates beauty out of the real and the ordinary, and sees things uncoiling into th [...]

I haven't read a book of poetry since perhaps high school. (And, I picked this book up to fulfill a requirement that I read a "Staff Pick" for my library's adult summer reading program.) I wasn't very impressed by Plath's work though I know she is quite famous in the world of poetry. I just didn't have the patience to delve into the meaning of the poetry. Her imagery, at times, was fascinating but I found the topics of the poems (nature, love, death, etc.) to be fairly dry. It will probably be a [...]