![\"annesexton\"](\"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/annesexton.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n\nWhen you read The Complete Poems<\/a> Robert Lowell’s thoughts on this are very interesting: <\/p>\n For a book or two, she grew more powerful. Then writing was too easy or too hard for her. She became meager and exaggerated. Many of her most embarrassing poems would have been fascinating if someone had put them in quotes, as the presentation of some character, not the author. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n Some of her late stuff sounds like a bad imitation of Jack Kerouac, a riff with no purpose, like this, from one of her last poems:<\/p>\n I love you the way the oboe plays. The voice of a sentimental undergraduate, not a celebrated prize-winning American poet. David Trinidad has some thoughts:<\/p>\n I jokingly refer to Sexton’s late period as “Bad Anne.” How else to reconcile such slipshod lines as “I flee. I flee. \/ I block my ears and eat salami” with her amazing early metaphors (“leaves . . . born in their own green blood \/ like the hands of mermaids”) and admissions (“Once I was beautiful. Now I am myself”)? It’s too painful to think of her simply as a brilliant poet who got bad. And too easy, somehow, to blame it on pills, alcohol, insanity, fame. Better, I recently decided, to think of her as a genius with demons, writing to beat the clock.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The regression in her work is palpable, even more so because her first poems are so undeniably spectacular<\/i> (it is Sylvia Plath in reverse). <\/p>\n \n Sexton was a housewife and mother, who did some modeling, who spent time in mental institutions. After the birth of her second child in 1955, Sexton was hospitalized due to another nervous breakdown (a term I prefer to other more “approved” phrases.) She tried to commit suicide while she was in the hospital. Dr. Martin Orne was the psychiatrist in charge of Anne in the hospital – and would continue to treat her for many years after. He recognized she was not using her intelligence at all, and also sensed she was gifted at writing. He suggested maybe she “should write” as a way to get through the darker moments. <\/p>\n “You, Dr. Martin” came directly out of that experience, as did so many of the poems in her first collection, To Bedlam and Part Way Back<\/i>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Here is “You, Dr. Martin.”. Keep in mind: This is her first poem.<\/p>\n You, Dr. Martin<\/big><\/p>\n You, Doctor Martin, walk of death. We stand in broken in school. There are no knives tomorrow. Of course, I love you; What large children we are like floods of life in frost. Whether or not you “like this sort of stuff” (the main complaint you hear about Sexton and the other “confessional” poets) is not the point. The point is that the VOICE we meet in “You, Dr. Martin” is confident, strong, and unselfconscious. It needed no coaxing to come out. We are meeting the poet herself, not a smokescreen of words and metaphors and literary devices. “You, Dr. Martin” is not clever<\/i>. Straight out of the gate, there was nothing between Anne Sexton and her expression of herself. Sylvia Plath’s early poems suffer from precocity, they are sometimes coy or wordy. (Ted Hughes describes Plath writing a poem with a Thesaurus balanced on her knee, and it’s evident in the early work.) It wouldn’t be until 1962, years into her career, when Plath would burst out with her original voice. Sexton STARTED at that point. Plath recognized this, writing in her journal in April of 1959, while editing her own book:<\/p>\n Have rejected the Electra poem from my book. Too forced and rhetorical. A leaf from Anne Sexton’s book would do here. She has none of my clenches and an ease of phrase, and an honesty. I have my 40 unattackable poems.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n “none of my clenches …” Plath was rigorously honest with herself.<\/p>\n Plath and Sexton took a poetry class together in 1959 with Robert Lowell, and they’d all go out for cocktails afterwards. (Where is my time machine?) Sylvia Plath wrote in her journal on March 20, 1959:<\/p>\n Criticism of 4 of my poems in Lowell’s class: criticism of rhetoric. He sets me up with Ann Sexton, an honor, I suppose. Well, about time. She has very good things, and they get better, though there is a lot of loose stuff.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The two poets had similar journeys, were from similar backgrounds, from the same state, both spent time in McLean’s (the mental institution known for its famous artistic clientele – Robert Lowell was hospitalized there as well). <\/p>\n Michael Schmidt, in his wonderful Lives of the Poets<\/a> What Sexton suggested to Plath was the force of simple rhyme and simple rhythm, the magic of nursery rhyme darkened by time, of fairy tale where the happy ending somehow doesn’t happen. Sexton showed Plath the way, and then Plath died first, stealing a march on her friend, which Sexton resented and envied. Four years Plath’s senior, Anne Sexton survived her by twelve years, committing suicide in 1974. But Plath keeps hold of the laurels. There are wonderful things in the Complete Poems<\/i> of Sexton, published in 1981, but many of them are things we associate, whatever their original source, with Plath, and Sexton’s work seems but a footnote to hers.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Sadly, this is true. It’s not fair, really. Sexton’s body of work is larger, but because of the dropoff in quality, the work doesn’t have the overall “oomph” of Plath’s, added to the fact that Plath went out in a blaze of genius, stopping at her highest point. <\/p>\n \n Sexton wrote a rather extraordinary poem when she heard of Sylvia Plath’s suicide. You can see here the fearlessness in self-presentation. <\/p>\n Sylvia’s Death<\/big> O Sylvia, Sylvia, with two children, two meteors with your mouth into the sheet, (Sylvia, Sylvia what did you stand by, Thief — crawl down alone the death we said we both outgrew, the one we talked of so often each time the death that talked of analysts and cures, the death we drank to, (In Boston O Sylvia, I remember the sleepy drummer how we wanted to let him come to do his job, and since that time he waited and I see now that we store him up and I know at the news of your death (And me, And I say only what is your death a mole that fell out (O friend, O tiny mother, \n \nSexton’s life was not easy. She made life hell for her husband, her kids, and anyone who loved her. Sexton said:<\/p>\n “All I wanted was a little piece of life, to be married, to have children…. I was trying my damnedest to lead a conventional life, for that was how I was brought up, and it was what my husband wanted of me. But one can’t build little white picket fences to keep the nightmares out.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n A mixture of drink, drugs, and a lifetime battle with mental illness took its toll on her relationships. But mental illness cannot explain or excuse all. She “acted out” in ways that detonated her life, her relationships. She sexually abused her daughter, who was also – eventually – the literary executor of her estate. Linda Sexton has written eloquently about all of this.<\/a> Anne Sexton had the charisma of a narcissist.<\/p>\n Illness like hers takes prisoners. It decimates. Her writing was the bulwark against her and “it.” She wrote about things that weren’t supposed to be included in poetry, “female” things. People didn’t know what to feel about it. She “held back nothing.” <\/p>\n Maxine Kumin wrote about Sexton’s fresh approach. Sexton had a high school education, but wasn’t groomed for anything great or accomplished (unlike, again, Plath). She was a simple girl who married young, and then, one day, discovered she was a poet. She didn’t know she should be scared or intimidated by those who came before. Here’s Kumin:<\/p>\n … above all else, she was attracted to the fairy tales of Andersen and Grimm, which her beloved Nana had read to her when she was a child. They were for her, perhaps, what Bible stories and Greek myths had been for other writers. At the same time that she was being entertained and drawn into closer contact with a kind of collective unconscious, she was searching the fairy tales for psychological parallels.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Erica Jong describes some advice that Sexton once gave to her:<\/p>\n Once, when I wrote to her about my terror of publishing a second book of poems, she answered: ‘Don’t dwell on the book’s reception. The point is to get on with it–you have a life’s work ahead of you–no point in dallying around waiting for approval. We all want it, I know, but the point is to reach out honestly–that’s the whole point. I keep feeling that there isn’t one poem being written by any of us–or a book or anything like that. The whole life of us writers, the whole product I guess I mean, is the one long poem–a community effort if you will. It’s all the same poem. It doesn’t belong to any one writer–it’s God’s poem perhaps. Or God’s people’s poem. You have the gift– and with it comes responsibility–you mustn’t neglect or be mean to that gift–you must let it do its work. It has more rights than the ego that wants approval.’<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Sexton’s most famous poem, perhaps, is “Her Kind”. <\/p>\n Even after endless readings of it, it still brings a chill to my spine. It’s one of those poems that put my own experience with madness – as early as middle school – into stark (and helpful) clarity. <\/p>\n Her Kind<\/big> I have gone out, a possessed witch, I have found the warm caves in the woods, I have ridden in your cart, driver, \n Many people found her poems distasteful. People really wondered “Is this poetry? What is it?” Women’s bodies, and womens’ bodily functions, are gross to men because men want their sexual fantasies to remain intact, they don’t want to hear about menstruation and menopause. Men’s bodily functions are seen as “universal”, while women’s are strictly “other” and better not talked about. Sexton ignored those assumptions. Do men only write about beautiful things? Of course not. Men write about “gross” and “ugly” things, too. It is the assumption that women should be more “ladylike” that keeps women out of the canon. Women have problems with Sexton’s work, too. It’s strong stuff. <\/p>\n \n Mona Van Duyn observed:<\/p>\n Her delineation of femaleness [is] so fanatical that it makes one wonder, even after many years of being one, what a woman is.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n My father went to see her read in Cambridge, Massachusetts when he was in college. A Sexton poetry reading was more like an underground rock show, with handmade posters, and an electric buzz of excitement running through the mostly-young crowd. Anne Sexton was gorgeous, and she would dress the part. When my dad saw her, she wore a bright red dress, and slinked her beautiful long legs around each other (so many photos of her show her twining her legs like this), and chain-smoked. <\/p>\n Here’s my favorite Anne Sexton:<\/p>\n \nLIVE<\/big> Well, death’s been here Even so, Is life something you play? Today life opened inside me like an egg Here, O dearest three, \n \n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Today is the birthday of poet Anne Sexton. When you read The Complete Poems, and you read her work in chronological order, you can feel her sliding off the rails at the end – not just mentally: I’m talking about … Continue reading
\nI love you the way skinny dipping makes my body feels.
\nI love you the way a ripe artichoke tastes.
\nYet I fear you,
\nas one in the desert fears the sun.
\nTrue.
\nTrue.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
\nfrom breakfast to madness. Late August,
\nI speed through the antiseptic tunnel
\nwhere the moving dead still talk
\nof pushing their bones against the thrust
\nof cure. And I am queen of this summer hotel
\nor the laughing bee on a stalk<\/p>\n
\nlines and wait while they unlock
\nthe doors and count us at the frozen gates
\nof dinner. The shibboleth is spoken
\nand we move to gravy in our smock
\nof smiles. We chew in rows, our plates
\nscratch and whine like chalk<\/p>\n
\nfor cutting your throat. I make
\nmoccasins all morning. At first my hands
\nkept empty, unraveled for the lives
\nthey used to work. Now I learn to take
\nthem back, each angry finger that demands
\nI mend what another will break<\/p>\n
\nyou lean above the plastic sky,
\ngod of our block, prince of all the foxes.
\nThe breaking crowns are new
\nthat Jack wore.
\nYour third eye
\nmoves among us and lights the separate boxes
\nwhere we sleep or cry.<\/p>\n
\nhere. All over I grow most tall
\nin the best ward. Your business is people,
\nyou call at the madhouse, an oracular
\neye in our nest. Out in the hall
\nthe intercom pages you. You twist in the pull
\nof the foxy children who fall<\/p>\n
\nAnd we are magic talking to itself,
\nnoisy and alone. I am queen of all my sins
\nforgotten. Am I still lost?
\nOnce I was beautiful. Now I am myself,
\ncounting this row and that row of moccasins
\nwaiting on the silent shelf.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
\nfor Sylvia Plath<\/i><\/p>\n
\nwith a dead box of stones and spoons,<\/p>\n
\nwandering loose in a tiny playroom,<\/p>\n
\ninto the roofbeam, into the dumb prayer,<\/p>\n
\nwhere did you go
\nafter you wrote me
\nfrom Devonshire
\nabout rasing potatoes
\nand keeping bees?)<\/p>\n
\njust how did you lie down into?<\/p>\n
\nhow did you crawl into,<\/p>\n
\ninto the death I wanted so badly and for so long,<\/p>\n
\nthe one we wore on our skinny breasts,<\/p>\n
\nwe downed three extra dry martinis in Boston,<\/p>\n
\nthe death that talked like brides with plots,<\/p>\n
\nthe motives and the quiet deed?<\/p>\n
\nthe dying
\nride in cabs,
\nyes death again,
\nthat ride home
\nwith our boy.)<\/p>\n
\nwho beat on our eyes with an old story,<\/p>\n
\nlike a sadist or a New York fairy<\/p>\n
\na necessity, a window in a wall or a crib,<\/p>\n
\nunder our heart, our cupboard,<\/p>\n
\nyear after year, old suicides<\/p>\n
\na terrible taste for it, like salt,<\/p>\n
\nme too.
\nAnd now, Sylvia,
\nyou again
\nwith death again,
\nthat ride home
\nwith our<\/i> boy.)<\/p>\n
\nwith my arms stretched out into that stone place,<\/p>\n
\nbut an old belonging,<\/p>\n
\nof one of your poems?<\/p>\n
\nwhile the moon’s bad,
\nand the king’s gone,
\nand the queen’s at her wit’s end
\nthe bar fly ought to sing!)<\/p>\n
\nyou too!
\nO funny duchess!
\nO blonde thing!<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
\nby Anne Sexton<\/i><\/p>\n
\nhaunting the black air, braver at night;
\ndreaming evil, I have done my hitch
\nover the plain houses, light by light:
\nlonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.
\nA woman like that is not a woman, quite.
\nI have been her kind.<\/p>\n
\nfilled them with skillets, carvings, shelves,
\nclosets, silks, innumerable goods;
\nfixed the suppers for the worms and the elves:
\nwhining, rearranging the disaligned.
\nA woman like that is misunderstood.
\nI have been her kind.<\/p>\n
\nwaved my nude arms at villages going by,
\nlearning the last bright routes, survivor
\nwhere your flames still bite my thigh
\nand my ribs crack where your wheels wind.
\nA woman like that is not ashamed to die.
\nI have been her kind.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>
\nAnne Sexton and W.S. Merwin<\/i><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
\nLive or die, but don’t poison everything…<\/i><\/p>\n
\nfor a long time —
\nit has a hell of a lot
\nto do with hell
\nand suspicion of the eye
\nand the religious objects
\nand how I mourned them
\nwhen they were made obscene
\nby my dwarf-heart’s doodle.
\nThe chief ingredient
\nis mutilation.
\nAnd mud, day after day,
\nmud like a ritual,
\nand the baby on the platter,
\ncooked but still human,
\ncooked also with little maggots,
\nsewn onto it maybe by somebody’s mother,
\nthe damn bitch!<\/p>\n
\nI kept right on going on,
\na sort of human statement,
\nlugging myself as if
\nI were a sawed-off body
\nin the trunk, the steamer trunk.
\nThis became perjury of the soul.
\nIt became an outright lie
\nand even though I dressed the body
\nit was still naked, still killed.
\nIt was caught
\nin the first place at birth,
\nlike a fish.
\nBut I play it, dressed it up,
\ndressed it up like somebody’s doll.<\/p>\n
\nAnd all the time wanting to get rid of it?
\nAnd further, everyone yelling at you
\nto shut up. And no wonder!
\nPeople don’t like to be told
\nthat you’re sick
\nand then be forced
\nto watch
\nyou
\ncome
\ndown with the hammer.<\/p>\n
\nand there inside
\nafter considerable digging
\nI found the answer.
\nWhat a bargain!
\nThere was the sun,
\nher yolk moving feverishly,
\ntumbling her prize —
\nand you realize she does this daily!
\nI’d known she was a purifier
\nbut I hadn’t thought
\nshe was solid,
\nhadn’t known she was an answer.
\nGod! It’s a dream,
\nlovers sprouting in the yard
\nlike celery stalks
\nand better,
\na husband straight as a redwood,
\ntwo daughters, two sea urchings,
\npicking roses off my hackles.
\nIf I’m on fire they dance around it
\nand cook marshmallows.
\nAnd if I’m ice
\nthey simply skate on me
\nin little ballet costumes.<\/p>\n
\nall along,
\nthinking I was a killer,
\nanointing myself daily
\nwith my little poisons.
\nBut no.
\nI’m an empress.
\nI wear an apron.
\nMy typewriter writes.
\nIt didn’t break the way it warned.
\nEven crazy, I’m as nice
\nas a chocolate bar.
\nEven with the witches’ gymnastics
\nthey trust my incalculable city,
\nmy corruptible bed.<\/p>\n
\nI make a soft reply.
\nThe witch comes on
\nand you paint her pink.
\nI come with kisses in my hood
\nand the sun, the smart one,
\nrolling in my arms.
\nSo I say Live<\/i>
\nand turn my shadow three times round
\nto feed our puppies as they come,
\nthe eight Dalmatians we didn’t drown,
\ndespite the warnings: The abort! The destroy!
\nDespite the pails of water that waited,
\nto drown them, to pull them down like stones,
\nthey came, each one headfirst, blowing bubbles the color of cataract-blue
\nand fumbling for the tiny tits.
\nJust last week, eight Dalmatians,
\n3\/4 of a lb., lined up like cord wood
\neach
\nlike a
\nbirch tree.
\nI promise to love more if they come,
\nbecause in spite of cruelty
\nand the stuffed railroad cars for the ovens,
\nI am not what I expected. Not an Eichmann.
\nThe poison just didn’t take.
\nSo I won’t hang around in my hospital shift,
\nrepeating The Black Mass and all of it.
\nI say Live, Live<\/i> because of the sun,
\nthe dream, the excitable gift.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n