Winter Trees
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About this ebook
"Nearly all the poems here have the familiar Plath daring, the same feel of bits of frightened, vibrant, indignant consciousness translated instantly into words and images that blend close, experienced horror and icy, sardonic control." — New Statesman
"A book that anyone seriously interested in poetry now must have . . . Sylvia Plath’s immense gift is evident throughout."— Guardian
The poems in Winter Trees, published posthumously in 1972, form part of the collection from which the Ariel poems were chosen.
Beverly Barton
I'm a sixth generation Alabamian who writes mainstream romantic suspense for Kensington. I'm also a wife, mother and grandmother. People who know me well will tell you that my family is more important to me than anything in the world. I'm fortunate to have a cousin who is like a sister to me and am blessed with a handful of close friends, whom I refer to as my bosom buddies. I wouldn't know what to do without these great gals who give me encouragement, support, advice, love and lots of laughs. I was born in Alabama, where my parents lived on my paternal grandmother's ancestral home place, a farm that is still owned by a member of the family. My upbringing was divided between Tuscumbia & Barton, Alabama and Chattanooga, Tennessee. I graduated high school from Chattanooga Central and then attended college at the University of North Alabama. I married young and traveled briefly with my husband, who served in the navy in the mid-to-late sixties. After my husband decided against a military career, we settled back in our home state of Alabama and started a family. First a daughter and then a son. I was "in my element" as a stay-at-home mother and I can truthfully say that I've loved every moment of motherhood. I enjoyed my children as babies, as toddlers, grade-schoolers, teenagers and now as adults. Our children are both grown and out of college, with successful lives and good marriages. I always wanted four children and when my two kids married fabulous people, I finally got that second daughter and son. We have two young grandsons, who have brought tremendous joy into our growing-older world, and just this year, we were blessed with the birth of a beautiful granddaughter. I sold my fist book in 1989 and it was released as a July 1990 Silhouette Desire. Yankee Lover was set in my hometown of Tuscumbia, Alabama, during the annual Helen Keller Festival. Since that first sale, I've written over sixty books for Silhouette and Kensington. My first mainstream romantic suspense, After Dark, was released in December 2000 under the Zebra imprint for Kensington. In the past seventeen years, I've gone from being one of the "new kids on the block" to one of the "old pros."
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Reviews for Winter Trees
62 ratings2 reviews
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5I wanted to like this more than I did. There were snippets and sections I enjoyed, and a couple of poems stood out. But as a whole piece, it does seem like the leftovers were shoved together.
The poems were generally too abstract for my tastes, but that seems consistent with her illness.
After looking through some of her more famous poems, I wouldn't recommend starting with this collection. It wasn't bad, I just don't think it's her best work.
"There are the clothes of a fat woman I do not know.
There is my comb and brush. There is an emptiness.
I am so vulnerable suddenly.
I am a wound walking out of hospital.
I am a wound they are letting go.
I leave my health behind. I leave someone
Who would adhere to me: I undo her fingers like bandages: I go." - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Winter Trees is the last collection of Plath's poems, written in the last months of her life and while many were printed in various magazines previously, some were published here for the first time. Oddly enough, it's my first collection of Plath poetry -- I've read her prose before and some of her poems here and there but never a full collection before this one. I enjoyed that she doesn't use standard rhyme and meter here but is pretty much free form. Her poems are dark but also witty at times, and my favorite poems from this collection were "For a Fatherless Son" and "Child."Also published here is a radio play Three Women written for and produced by the BBC. It is Plath's first and only piece of dramatic writing. Billed as "a poem for three voices," this is a play more in the style of Dylan Thomas's Under Milk Wood than Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire (i.e., it is more about the flowery language and spoken word than about having a three- or five-act plot complete with climax, denouement, etc.). The play takes place in a maternity ward, with the first voice belonging to a happily pregnant woman going into labor, the second voice to a woman experiencing yet another miscarriage, and the third voice to an unhappily pregnant woman going into labor. The juxtaposition of the three scenarios is particularly effective, more emotive, I think, than if the three stories were told separately. I was particularly taken by the sorrow of the second voice, such as when she says:I am not ugly. I am even beautiful. The mirror gives back a woman without deformity.The nurses give back my clothes, and an identity.It is usual, they say, for such a thing to happen.It is usual in my life, and the lives of others.I am one in five, something like that. I am not hopeless.I am beautiful as a statistic. Here is my lipstick.I draw on the old mouth. The red mouth I put by with my identityA day ago, two days ago, three days ago. It was a Friday.I do not even need a holiday; I can go to work today.I can love my husband, who will understand.Who will love me through the blur of my deformityAs if I had lost an eye, a leg, a tongue....I am myself again. There are no loose ends.I am bled white as wax, I have no attachments. I am flat and virginal, which means nothing has happened,Nothing that cannot be erased, ripped up and scrapped, begun again.These little black twigs do not think to bud,Nor do these dry, dry gutters dream of rain....It it I. It is I --Tasting the bitterness between my teeth.The incalculable malice of the everyday.How haunting. And I absolutely love that final line, which seems so appropriate for any host of disappointments.All and all, this slim collection is a great primer of Plath’s works and I’d recommend for anyone with an interest in poetry.