"In these poems...Sylvia Plath becomes herself, becomes something imaginary, newly, wildly and subtly created." -- Robert Lowell

"Sylvia Plath's last poems have impressed themselves on many readers with the force of myth. They are among the handful of writings by which future generations will seek to know us and give us a name." -- The Critical Quarterly

"One of the most marvelous volumes of poetry published for a very long time." -- Times Literary Supplement

"It is fair to say that no group of poems since Dylam Thomas's Deaths and Entrances has had as vivid and disturbing an impact on English critics and readers as has Ariel. Sylvia Plath's poems have already passed into legend as both representative of our present tone of emotional life and unique in their implacable, harsh brilliance...These poems take tremendous risks, extending Sylvia Plath's essentially austere manner to the very limit. They are a bitter triumph, proof of the capacity of poetry to give to reality the greater permanence of the imagined. She could not return from them." -- George Steiner, The Reporter