Written in the months before Plath's suicide in the winter of 1962-63, Ariel is the most ferociously concentrated burst of poetic energy in American literary history. "Lady Lazarus," "Daddy," "Edge," "Tulips": they arrive like transmissions from a consciousness stripped of all protection, every poem a high-wire act between vision and annihilation. The collection is simultaneously feminist rage, psychological document, and pure formal brilliance.

The case for it, the case against, and the rest of the canon open with Pro.