Anne Sexton

Anne Sexton was born in Newton, Massachusetts and raised in Weston.
The
daughter of a successful businessman, Sextons childhood was materially
comfortable but not happy. Her relationships with her parents were
difficult, perhaps even abusive. Sextons closest confidante was her
maiden great-aunt. She attended boarding school and after graduation
enrolled in Garland Junior College for one year. Sexton later described
Garland as a finishing school. At age 19, she married Alfred
Kayo Sexton II. While Kayo was serving in Korea, Anne became a
fashion model. In 1953, she gave birth to her first child and in 1955,
her second. Sexton suffered from post-partum depression, and after the
birth of her first daughter she suffered her first breakdown and was
admitted to a neuropsychiatric hospital. Other institutionalizations
followed. Sexton struggled with depression for the remainder of her
life. She committed suicide at age 46.
In treatment, her therapist encouraged her to write and in 1957 Sexton

joined writing groups in Boston that eventually led her to friendships
and relationships with the poets Maxine Kumin, Robert Lowell, George
Starbuck, and Sylvia Plath. As Sexton told Beatrice Berg, her writing
began, in fact, as therapy: My analyst told me to write between our
sessions about what I was feeling and thinking and dreaming. Her
analyst, impressed by her work, encouraged her to keep writing, and
then, she told Berg, she saw (on television) I. A. Richards [a poet
and literary critic] describing the form of a sonnet and I thought maybe
I could do that. Oh, I was turned on. I wrote two or three a day for
about a year. Eventually, Sextons poems about her psychiatric
struggles were gathered in her first book, To Bedlam and Part Way
Back(1960), which recounts, as James Dickey wrote, the experiences of
madness and near-madness, of the pathetic, well-meaning, necessarily
tentative and perilous attempts at cure, and of the patients slow
coming back into the human associations and responsibilities which the
old, previous self still demands.
Sextons work is usually grouped with other Confessional poets such as

Plath, Lowell, John Berryman, and W. D. Snodgrass . In an interview with
Patricia Marx, Sexton discussed Snodgrasss influence: If anything
influenced me it was W. D. Snodgrass Hearts Needle.... It so changed
me, and undoubtedly it must have influenced my poetry. At the same time
everyone said, You cant write this way. Its too personal; its
confessional; you cant write this, Anne, and everyone was
discouraging me. But then I saw Snodgrass doing what I was doing, and it
kind of gave me permission. Sextons books after To Bedlam and Part
Way Backincluded All my Pretty Ones(1962), Live or Die(1966), which won
the Pulitzer Prize, Love Poems(1969), the play Mercy Street(1969).
Transformations(1972), a series of retellings of Grimms fairy tales is
often described as her least overtly confessional and most feminist
work. Sextons last published collection was The Death Notebooks(1974);
posthumously published volumes included The Awful Rowing toward
God(1975), 45 Mercy Street(1976), and Words for Dr. Y: Uncollected
Poems with Three Stories(1978).
Sextons work was enormously popular during her lifetime and she was
the recipient of numerous honors and awards, including the Frost
Fellowship to the Bread Loaf Writers Conference, the Radcliffe
Institute Fellowship, the Levinson Prize, the American Academy of Arts
and Letters traveling fellowship, the Shelley Memorial Prize, and an
invitation to give the Morris Gray reading at Harvard. She also received
a Guggenheim Fellowship, grants from the Ford Foundation, honorary
degrees, and held professorships at Colgate University and Boston
University. Despite her many achievements, critical discussions of her
work tended to focus on the apparently autobiographical elements of her
verse. Dickeys admonishment of Sextons second book was somewhat
typical: Miss Sextons work seems to me very little more than a kind
of terribly serious and determinedly outspoken soap-opera. Yet
Sextons canniness about the power of fiction, the uses of fact and
imagination, and the poemor poetas essentially performance mean that
no simple equations between poet and poem, life and art, can be drawn.
In an early essay on both Bedlamand Pretty Ones, Beverly Fields argued
that Sextons poetry is mostly misread. She contended that the poems
are not as autobiographical as they seem, that they are poems, not
memoirs, and she went on to analyze many of them in depth in order to
show the recurrent symbolic themes and poetic techniques that she felt
make Sextons work impressive. Recent scholars such as Gillian White
have focused on Sextons manipulation of voice and audience to suggest
her work bears more, or different, scrutiny than it has previously
received.
One of Sextons earliest champions, Erica Jong, reviewing The Death

Notebooksassessed Sextons poetic significance and contended that her
artistry was seriously overlooked: She is an important poet not only
because of her courage in dealing with previously forbidden subjects,
but because she can make the language sing. Of what does [her] artistry
consist? Not just of her skill in writing traditional poems But by
artistry, I mean something more subtle than the ability to write formal
poems. I mean the artists sense of where her inspiration lies There
are many poets of great talent who never take that talent anywhere
They write poems which any number of people might have written. When
Anne Sexton is at the top of her form, she writes a poem which no one
else could have written.
Bibliography
POETRY
To Bedlam and Part Way Back, Houghton, 1960.
All My Pretty Ones(also see below), Houghton, 1962.
Selected Poems, Oxford University Press, 1964.
Live or Die(also see below), Houghton, 1966.
(With Thomas Kinsella and Douglas Livingstone) Poems, Oxford
University Press, 1968.
Love Poems(also see below), Houghton, 1969.
Transformations, Houghton, 1971.
The Book of Folly, Houghton, 1972.
O Ye Tongues, Rainbow Press, 1973.
The Death Notebooks, Houghton, 1974.
The Awful Rowing toward God, Houghton, 1975.
45 Mercy Street(published posthumously) 1976.
The Heart of Anne Sextons Poetry(contains All My Pretty Ones,
Live or Die, and Love Poems), three volumes, Houghton, 1977.
Words for Dr. Y: Uncollected Poems with Three Stories, edited by
L. G. Sexton, Houghton, 1978.
Complete Poems, 1981, Houghton, 1981.
Selected Poems of Anne Sexton, edited by Diane W. Middlebrook and
Diana H. George, Houghton, 1988.
Love Poems of Anne Sexton, introduction by Middlebrook, Houghton,
1989.
The Complete Poems,introduction by Maxine Kumin, Mariner Books,
1999.
OTHER
(With Maxine W. Kumin) Eggs of Things (juvenile), Putnam, 1963.

(With Kumin) More Eggs of Things (juvenile), Putnam, 1964.
Mercy Street(play; first produced Off-Broadway at American Place
Theatre, October 11, 1969)
(With Kumin) Joey and the Birthday Present (juvenile), McGraw,
1971.
(With Kumin) The Wizards Tears (juvenile), McGraw, 1975.
Anne Sexton: A Self Portrait in Letters(correspondence), edited by
L. G. Sexton and Lois Ames, Houghton, 1977; reprinted 2004.
No Evil Star: Selected Essays, Interviews, and Prose, edited by
Steven E. Colburn, University of Michigan Press, 1985.
Poems represented in numerous anthologies. Contributor to many

magazines, including Harpers, New Yorker, Partisan Review,
Saturday Review, and Nation.
Further Readings
BOOKS
Berry, S. L., Anne Sexton, Creative Education, 1997.
Concise Dictionary of American Literary Biography: The New
Consciousness, 1941-1968,Gale, 1987.
Contemporary Authors Bibliographical Series,Gale, Volume 2, 1986.
Contemporary Literary Criticism,Gale, Volume 2, 1974, Volume 4,
1975, Volume 6, 1976, Volume 8, 1978, Volume 10, 1979, Volume 15,
1980, Volume 53, 1989.
Dictionary of Literary Biography,Volume 5: American Poets since
World War II, Gale, 1980.
George, Diana Hume, Oedipus Anne: The Poetry of Anne Sexton,
University of Illinois Press, 1987.
Hungerford, Edward, editor, Poets in Progress, Northwestern
University, 1967.
McClatchy, J. D., editor, Anne Sexton: The Artist and Her
Critics, Indiana University Press, 1978.
Middlebrook, Diane Wood, Anne Sexton: A Biography, Houghton, 1991.
Northouse, Cameron and Thomas P. Walsh, Sylvia Plath and Anne
Sexton: A Reference Guide, G. K. Hall, 1974.
Phillips, Robert, The Confessional Poets, Southern Illinois
University Press, 1973.
Sexton, Linda Gray, Searching for Mercy Street: My Journey Back
to My Mother, Anne Sexton, Little, Brown, 1994.
PERIODICALS
Atlantic,November, 1962.
Centennial Review,spring, 1975.
Christian Science Monitor,September 1, 1960.
Commonweal,Volume 118, November 8, 1991, p. 635.
Concerning Poetry,spring, 1974.
English Journal,Volume 83, March 1994, pp. 92, 96.
Epoch,fall, 1960.
Harper's,September, 1963.
Hollins Critic,June, 1984.
Hudson Review,winter, 1965-66.
Los Angeles Times,May 3, 1986.
Moons and Lion Tailes,Volume 2, number 2, 1976.
Ms.,March, 1974.
Nation,February 23, 1963; September 14, 1974; November 21, 1981;
March 23, 1992, p. 385.
New Boston Review,spring, 1978.
New Republic,November 22, 1969; October 16, 1971; November 11,
1981; Volume 205, November 4, 1991, p. 32.
Newsday,March 23, 1975.
New Statesman,June 16, 1967; Volume 4, November 15, 1991, p. 46.
Newsweek, Volume 118, July 29, 1991, p. 54.
New Yorker,April 27, 1963.
New York Review of Books,June 6, 1968.
New York Times,March 8, 1969; October 28, 1969; November 2, 1969;
November 9, 1969; September 27, 1971; May 18, 1988.
New York Times Book Review,April 28, 1963; May 30, 1976; July 25,
1976; November 26, 1978; October 18, 1981; August 18, 1991, p. 20.
Observer Review,May 14, 1967.
Paris Review,spring, 1971.
Parnassus: Poetry in Review,Volumes 12-13, numbers 1-2, 1985.
Poetry,February, 1961, May, 1967.
Punch,July 5, 1967.
Reporter,January 3, 1963.
Saturday Review,December 31, 1966.
Shenandoah,summer, 1967.
Society,Volume 29, January-February 1992, pp. 9, 12.
Time,Volume 138, September 23, 1991, p. 76.
Times Literary Supplement,May 18, 1967.
Village Voice,November 6, 1969.
Virginia Quarterly Review,winter, 1967.
Washington Post Book World,November 22, 1981.
OBITUARIES:PERIODICALS
AB Bookman's Weekly,December 2, 1974.
New York Times,October 6, 1974.
Publishers Weekly,October 28, 1974.
Time,October 14, 1974.
Washington Post,October 6, 1974.

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Anne Sexton

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Anne Sexton was born in Newton, Massachusetts and raised in Weston.

In treatment, her therapist encouraged her to write and in 1957 Sexton

Sextons work is usually grouped with other Confessional poets such as

One of Sextons earliest champions, Erica Jong, reviewing The Death

(With Maxine W. Kumin) Eggs of Things (juvenile), Putnam, 1963.

Poems represented in numerous anthologies. Contributor to many

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