Hear Sylvia Plath Read 18 Poems From Her Final Collection, Ariel, in a 1962 Recording

“Add to the avail­able accounts of Plath (there are so many) this, please: nobody brought a house to life the way she did.” So writes Dan Chi­as­son in a Feb­ru­ary New York­er piece com­mem­o­rat­ing the fifti­eth anniver­sary of Sylvia Plath’s death. Chiasson’s plea is made all the more poignant by his care­ful read­ings of the tenderness—amidst the pain and horror—in Plath’s final col­lec­tion, Ariel, which she left sit­ting on the kitchen table to be found along with her body. (The col­lec­tion has recent­ly been restored to cor­re­spond to Plath’s final wish­es).

Chiasson’s refo­cus­ing of Plath’s lega­cy feels nec­es­sary, giv­en that, as James Park­er writes in The Atlantic, “Her short life has been tram­pled and retram­pled under the biographer’s hoof, her opus viewed and skewed through every con­ceiv­able lens of inter­pre­ta­tion.” It is some­times dif­fi­cult to con­nect with work—even with that as stun­ning­ly accom­plished and res­o­nant as Plath’s—through this thick haze of sen­sa­tion­al­ism and cult fan­dom. Even if many of the poems in Ariel—most famous­ly “Lady Lazarus”—seem to request this kind of scruti­ny, many oth­ers, Chi­as­son writes, includ­ing the title poem, need to be approached afresh, with­out the mor­bid celebri­ty bag­gage Plath’s name car­ries.

Is this pos­si­ble? Per­haps one way to recon­nect with the poet­ry is to hear Plath her­self read­ing it. In these record­ings, you can hear her read fif­teen poems from Ariel, her New Eng­land Brah­min vow­els inflect­ing every line, draw­ing out inter­nal rhymes and asso­nance, then clip­ping at caesuras like a well-bred horse’s trot­ting hooves.

The title poem “Ariel”—which Chi­as­son eulo­gizes as “a per­fect poem, per­fect in its excess­es and stray blasphemies”—is, in fact, part­ly named after Plath’s favorite horse. Also enfold­ed in the title is the cap­tive sprite bound to per­form tricks for Shakespeare’s mage Pros­pero in The Tem­pest, and an Old Tes­ta­ment name giv­en to Jerusalem, mean­ing “lion of God” (the sec­ond stan­za begins “God’s lioness…”). Plath’s poet­ic self-under­stand­ing is as com­plex as this allu­sive lay­er­ing sug­gests, and the poem’s jar­ring ellipses demand very close atten­tion.

The read­ings here are from record­ings made on Octo­ber 20, 1962. Poems include: “The Rab­bit Catch­er,” “A Birth­day Present,” “A Secret,” “The Appli­cant,” “Dad­dy,” “Medusa,” “Stopped Dead,” “Fever 103°,” “Amne­si­ac,” “Cut,” “Ariel,” “Pop­pies In Octo­ber,” “Nick And The Can­dle­stick,” “Pur­dah,” and “Lady Lazarus.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

On 50th Anniver­sary of Sylvia Plath’s Death, Hear Her Read ‘Lady Lazarus’

For Sylvia Plath’s 80th Birth­day, Hear Her Read ‘A Birth­day Present’

The Art of Sylvia Plath: Revis­it Her Sketch­es, Self-Por­traits, Draw­ings & Illus­trat­ed Let­ters

525 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness