Nick Mount on Sylvia Plath's Ariel

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Uploaded by on Nov 16, 2010

As part of the Literature for Our Time series, University of Toronto English Professor Nick Mount examines Ariel, Sylvia Plath's posthumously published collection of poems.

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  • amazing

  • 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

  • This Professor changed my life.

  • best prof ive ever had

  • Thank you for posting this. Fantastic lecture.

  • 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

  • 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

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

  • Inspiring. Truly inspiring.

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