Sylvia Plath's rejected 'Ariel' titles

Sylvia Plath is known for her 'Ariel' poems, poems written mostly throughout the spring and fall of 1962. When she died, she left a more or less completed manuscript under the title of Ariel. I say more or less as Plath was a notorious reviser and re-arranger of her manuscripts.

The Mortimer Rare Book Room at Smith College holds the Ariel poems. Each poem and its drafts is housed in maroon clamshell boxes, custom-made for the archive. They are a must see for any research visitor to the special collection. Many of the poems are written on the verso of manuscript pages of The Bell Jar. In some instances, it is as though the poems are in conversation with the prose.

Occasionally rejected titles reappear later in Plath's work; for example, the poem "Words heard, by accident, over the phone", written on 11 July 1962, has the rejected title of "Words". In the winter of 1963, just days from her suicide, Plath titled another poem "Words". The same goes for "By Candlelight", written on 24 October, 1962, whose original rejected title became one of Plath's most tender, "Nick and the Candlestick" on 29 October 1962.

Lynda K. Bundtzen's The Other Ariel discusses Plath's original order of the poems in wonderful detail. Robin Peel, in Writing Back: Sylvia Plath and Cold War Politics, also gives some of these poems and their rejected titles some attention.

The actual poems appear below in alphabetical order. The rejected title, where a title was rejected, follows in parentheses.

Amnesiac (Amnesiac: The Man with Amnesia)
Among the Narcissi (Octogenarian & Narcissi in a high wind), (Percy Among the Narcissi), and (The Sea at the Door)
The Applicant
An Appearance (The Methodical Woman) and (Song)
Apprehensions (Walls)
Ariel (Lioness of God)
The Arrival of the Bee Box (The Beekeepers Daybook)
Balloons
Barren Woman
The Bee Meeting (The Beekeeper) and (The Meeting)
Berck-Plage
A Birthday Present
Brasilia
Burning the Letters
By Candlelight (Nick and the Candlestick) and (Winter by Candlelight)
Child (Paralytic Trap)
Childless Woman
Contusion
The Courage of Shutting-Up (The Courage of Quietness)
The Couriers
Crossing the Water (Night Country) and (Rock Lake at Night)
Cut
Daddy
Death & Co.
The Detective (The Millstones)
Eavesdropper
Edge (Nuns in Snow)
Elm (Catching Nothing but an Old Stocking in Winthrop Bay), (A Sea at the Door), (A Wind in the Great Elm), and (The Elm Speaks (published under this title in The New Yorker))
Event (Quarrel)
The Fearful
Fever 103°
For A Fatherless Son (To an Abandoned One)
Getting There
Gigolo
Gulliver (Gulliver in Lilliput)
The Hanging Man
The Jailer
Kindness
Lady Lazarus
Lesbos
Letter in November
Little Fugue (Fugue: Yew Tree and Clouds), (On Listening to Laura Riding), (Yew Alone), and (Yew Tree in March)
Lyonnesse
Magi
Mary's Song (Song of Mary) and (Sunday)
Medusa (Mum: Medusa)
The Moon and the Yew Tree
The Munich Mannequins (The Bald Mannequins)
Mystic
Nick and the Candlestick
The Night Dances
The Other (The Other One) and (Mannequin)
Paralytic
Pheasant (The Pheasant)
Poppies in July
Poppies in October
Purdah
The Rabbit Catcher (Snares)
Rival
A Secret
Sheep in Fog (Fog Sheep)
Stings (early version)
Stings
Stopped Dead
The Swarm (The Bees)
Thalidomide (Half-Moon)
Totem
The Tour
Tulips
Winter Trees (Trees) and (Trees in Winter)
Wintering
Words
Words heard, by accident, over the phone (Words)
Years
You're

Famous Quotes of Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath inspires us all in various and wonderful ways. She is in many respects a form of comfort to us, which is something that Esther Greenwood expresses in The Bell Jar , about a bath: "There must be quite a few things a hot bath won't cure, but I don't know many of them. Whenever I'm sad I'm going to die, or so nervous I can't sleep, or in love with somebody I won't be seeing for a week, I slump down just so far and then I say: 'I'll go take a hot bath.'" We read and remember Sylvia Plath for many reasons, many of them deeply personal and private. But we commemorate her, too, in very public ways, as Anna of the long-standing Tumblr Loving Sylvia Plath , has been tracking, in the form of tattoos. (Anna's on Instagram with it too, as SylviaPlathInk .) The above bath quote is among Sylvia Plath's most famous. It often appears here and there and it is stripped of its context. But I think most people will know it is from her nove...

Some final photographs of Sylvia Plath

Susan O'Neill-Roe took a series of photographs of Sylvia Plath and her children from October to late November (or maybe early December) 1962 while she was a day nanny/mother's help at Court Green. From nearby Belstone , it was a short drive to North Tawton and the aid she provided enabled Plath to complete the masterful October and November poems and also to make day or overnight trips to London for poetry business and other business. Some of O'Neill-Roe's photographs are well-known. However, a cache of photographs formed a part of the papers of failed biographer Harriet Rosenstein. They were sold separately from the rest of her papers that went to Emory. I was fortunate enough to see low resolution scans of them a while back so please note these are being posted today as mere reference quality images. There are two series here. The first of the children with Plath dressed in red and black. (This should be referred to in the future, please, as Plath's Stendhal-c...

Sylvia Plath's Gravestone Vandalized

The following news story appeared online this morning: HEPTONSTALL, ENGLAND (APFS) - The small village of Heptonstall is once again in the news because of the grave site of American poet Sylvia Plath. The headstone controversy rose to a fever pitch in 1989 when Plath's grave was left unmarked for a long period of time after vandals repeatedly chiseled her married surname Hughes off the stone marker. Author Nick Hornby commented, "I like Plath, but the controversy reaching its fever pitch in the 80s had nothing to do with my book title choice." Today, however, it was discovered that the grave was defaced but in quite an unlikely fashion. This time, Plath's headstone has had slashed-off her maiden name "Plath," so the stone now reads "Sylvia Hughes." A statement posted on Twitter from @masculinistsfortedhughes (Masculinists for Ted Hughes) has claimed responsibility saying that, "We did this because as Ted Hughes' first wife, Sylvia de...

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