Key Insights & Memorable Quotes
Below are the most popular and impactful highlights and quotes from Ariel:
“Dying Is an art, like everything else.I do it exceptionally well.I do it so it feels like hell.I do it so it feels real.I guess you could say I have a call.”
“I didn’t want any flowers, I only wantedto lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty.How free it is, you have no idea how free.”
“People or starsRegard me sadly, I disappoint them.”
“I am terrified by this dark thingThat sleeps in me;All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity.”
“LADY LAZARUSI have done it again.One year in every tenI manage it--A sort of walking miracle, my skinBright as a Nazi lampshade,My right footA paperweight,My face a featureless, fineJew linen.Peel off the napkinO my enemy.Do I terrify?--The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?The sour breathWill vanish in a day.Soon, soon the fleshThe grave cave ate will beAt home on meAnd I a smiling woman.I am only thirty.And like the cat I have nine times to die.This is Number Three.What a trashTo annihilate each decade.What a million filaments.The peanut-crunching crowdShoves in to seeThem unwrap me hand and foot--The big strip tease.Gentlemen, ladiesThese are my handsMy knees.I may be skin and bone,Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.The first time it happened I was ten.It was an accident.The second time I meantTo last it out and not come back at all.I rocked shutAs a seashell.They had to call and callAnd pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.DyingIs an art, like everything else.I do it exceptionally well.I do it so it feels like hell.I do it so it feels real.I guess you could say I've a call.It's easy enough to do it in a cell.It's easy enough to do it and stay put.It's the theatricalComeback in broad dayTo the same place, the same face, the same bruteAmused shout:'A miracle!'That knocks me out.There is a chargeFor the eyeing of my scars, there is a chargeFor the hearing of my heart--It really goes.And there is a charge, a very large chargeFor a word or a touchOr a bit of bloodOr a piece of my hair or my clothes.So, so, Herr Doktor.So, Herr Enemy.I am your opus,I am your valuable,The pure gold babyThat melts to a shriek.I turn and burn.Do not think I underestimate your great concern.Ash, ash--You poke and stir.Flesh, bone, there is nothing there--A cake of soap, A wedding ring,A gold filling.Herr God, Herr LuciferBewareBeware.Out of the ashI rise with my red hairAnd I eat men like air.-- written 23-29 October 1962”
“I have suffered the atrocity of sunsets.--from "Elm", written 19 April 1962”
“At twenty I tried to dieAnd get back, back, back to you.I thought even the bones would do.--from "Daddy", written 12 October 1962”
“No day is safe from news of you.--from "The Rival", written July 1961”
“You do not do, you do not doAny more, black shoeIn which I have lived like a footFor thirty years, poor and white,Barely daring to breathe or Achoo. Daddy, I have had to kill you.You died before I had time
“And I a smiling woman.I am only thirty.And like the cat I have nine times to die.”
“And I am aware of my heart: it opens and closesIts bowl of red blooms out of sheer love of me.”
“I am inhabited by a cry. Nightly it flaps outLooking, with its hooks, for something to love.”
“Is it the sea you hear in me,Its dissatisfactions?Or the voice of nothing, that was you madness?--from "Elm", written 19 April 1962”
“The blood jet is poetry,There is no stopping it.--from "Kindness", written 1 February 1963”
“I know the bottom, she says. I know it with my great tap root:It is what you fear.I do not fear it: I have been there.--from "Elm", written 19 April 1962”
“I am learning peacefulness, lying by myself quietly, as the light lies on these white walls, this bed, these hands. I am nobody; I have nothing to do with explosions.”
“O love, how did you get here?--from "Nick and the Candlestick", written 29 October 1962”
“I didn’t want any flowers, I only wantedTo lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty.How free it is, you have no idea how free——The peacefulness is so big it dazes you,And it asks nothing, a name tag, a few trinkets.It is what the dead close on, finally; I imagine them Shutting their mouths on it, like a Communion tablet.--from "Tulips", written 18 March 1961”
“Love is a shadow. How you lie and cry after it--from "Elm", written 19 April 1962”
“If the moon smiled, she would resemble you.You leave the same impressionOf something beautiful, but annihilating.Both of you are great light borrowers.Her O-mouth grieves at the world; yours is unaffected,And your first gift is making stone out of everything.”
“The moon is my mother. She is not sweet like Mary.Her blue garments unloose small bats and owls.”
“What is so real as the cry of a child?A rabbit's cry may be wilderBut it has no soul.”
“They had to call and callAnd pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.--From the poem "Lady Lazarus", written 23-29 October 1962”
“Stupid pupil, it has to take everything in.”
“Clouds pass and disperse.Are those the faces of love, those pale irretrievables?Is it for such I agitate my heart?”
“You are the one. Solid the spaces lean on, envious. You are the baby in the barn.”
“I am inhabited by a cry.Nightly it flaps outLooking, with its hooks, for something to loveI am terrified by this dark thingThat sleeps in me;All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity.”
“The frost makes a flower, the dew makes a star--from "Death & Co.”
“Over your body the clouds goHigh, high and icilyAnd a little flat, as if theyFloated on a glass that was invisible.Unlike swans, Having no reflections;Unlike you, With no strings attached.All cool, all blue. Unlike youYou, there on your back,Eyes to the sky.”
“The moon is no door. It is a face in its own right,White as a knuckle and terribly upset.It drags the sea after it like a dark crime; it is quietWith the O-gape of complete despair. I live here.--from "The Moon and the Yew Tree", written 22 October 1961”
