[Sylvia Plath's] last poems hit the reader with all the passion and pathos of a mind simultaneously fused with love and hate. They are often glorious, mostly sick, unbelievably irritating. They are the like of which have not been seen before, exclusively and tragically her final epitaphs. (p. 552)

Grief, a crazy, jig-saw humor, and destructive undertones comprise the basis of the poetry published since her first volume—though some of the features were apparently from the beginning. But the cadences of "Daddy" keep coming back, like dirge songs that are sung at the funeral of everyone…. (p. 556)

A rare random descent was to strike Sylvia Plath often in poems that were fastidious in their choice of words, perceptive in their handling of metaphor and simile. The wonder of it all was her ability to keep imagery working for the poem and not against it. Her poems resist line...