Crossing the Water and Winter Trees contain the poems written during the exceptionally creative period of the last years of Sylvia Plaths life. Published posthumously in 1971, they add a startling counterpoint to Ariel, the volume that made her reputation. Readers will recognise some of her most celebrated poems - Childless Woman, Mirror, Insomniac - while discovering those still overlooked, including her radio play Three Women. These two extraordinary volumes find their place alongside The Colossus and Ariel in the oeuvre of a singular talent.

Nearly all the poems here have the familiar Plath daring, the same feel of bits of frightened, vibrant, indignant consciousness translated ins