Nick Mount on Sylvia Plath's Ariel

[juztinos]

amazing

[wordgirl1000]

I love this lecture, and agree with almost everything Nick Mount says, except that "Ariel" is _not_ so obvious as to be about the horse. It is, among other things, about the bombing of Hiroshima. Mount's earlier quote by Plath to Peter Orr even hints at this. He is almost at the truth in his own words, "the danger of the creator" in the 36th minute. I've done an extensive analysis on this and all the ARIEL poems which I'm hoping to publish soon. --Julia Gordon-Bramer

[Marialisa101]

This Professor changed my life.

[hilaryartilary]

best prof ive ever had

[happylilsunbeam]

Thank you for posting this. Fantastic lecture.

[EXPOSEtheHYPOCRITES]

almost accomplishes the impossible:

explaining poetry through prose

valiant effort shows what poets do

breaks through preconceptions

that poets and artists must somehow be mad

in order to achieve their vision

the next step is to accept that great poetry

can be written by absolutely normal people

who from the outside appear to be

living relatively typical lives

[EXPOSEtheHYPOCRITES]

but who on the inside travel

much further and live much longer

than the few poets whose meteoric

rise and fall we have mistakenly

accepted as a sign of unique genius

the trick for the poet is to control

the rate at which their wick burns

and leave volumes for others to read

rather than to set fire to oneself

and leave behind but one or two solitary pearls

[Alekseyyyyyy]

Absolutely brilliant. I felt like I was a part of an intellectual conversation that is bigger than myself. 

[Driging]

Inspiring. Truly inspiring.