“Ariel” by Sylvia Plath (1965)

The titular poem from Sylvia Plath’s second volume of poetry is one of her most famous. The book, edited by Ted Hughes, was posthumously published two years after Plath's suicide. It heralded Plath’s ascension onto the list of most important American writers of the 20th century. Plath’s later poems, beginning with “Ariel,” were written toward the end of her life, during her marriage to Hughes.

Contrasted with her earlier poetry, they are more confessional, or autobiographical, with no detail of her domestic life and grappling with mental illness spared. When Plath and Hughes lived in the Devon countryside, she had a beloved horse named Ariel. In the poem, written while Plath and Hughes were separated, the speaker rides the horse at dawn. As the day moves from darkness to the rising of the sun, the speaker becomes more transfigured, feeling as one with the animal. Colors and the natural world are at play here, as in Hughes’s poetry. Ultimately, the rider moves further and further toward freedom. Hughes included a poem in Birthday Letters titled “Night Ride on Ariel.”

“Hawk Roosting” by Ted Hughes (1960)

This poem, a dramatic monologue, showcases Hughes’s obsession with the natural world by presenting a narrative from the point of view of a bird of prey whose existence is directly tied to the killing it does to survive.