Anne Sexton: “I burn the way money burns”

Today's poet is Confessional Poet Anne Sexton—housewife turned Pulitzer Prize-winning poet

In yesterday’s post, I wrote about the trailblazing poet Maxine Kumin, and about her friendship with another famous poet, Anne Sexton. Today is Sexton’s turn.

Sexton was a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet who won many awards in her short but meteoric career. The introduction to “Selected Poems of Anne Sexton” (1988) begins: “Anne Sexton is that rare creature in American culture, a popular poet.” ¹

Sexton was one of the American “Confessional Poets” of the 1960’s and 1970’s, similar to Sylvia Plath. (In fact, she knew Plath; they met at a poetry workshop and struck up a bit of a colleague-ship/friendship. At the time, Sexton’s career was farther along than Plath’s, and it is said that Sexton’s unique style helped Plath develop her own. )²

Like Maxine Kumin, Anne Sexton was a “1950’s housewife” when she began to write. But unlike Kumin, who had received an undergraduate and graduate degree from Radcliffe College, Sexton had dropped out of junior college after one year and eloped at the age of 19. It wasn’t until her late 20’s, when postpartum depression and other mental health issues led her to seek psychiatric treatment, that she began to write at the suggestion of her psychiatrist. That led her to seek out poetry workshops and classes, where she met and befriended Kumin.

Kumin describes seeing Sexton for the first time:

I remember her on our first meeting in the late winter of 1957, tall, blue-eyes, stunningly slim, her carefully coiffed dark hair, decorated with flowers, her face skillfully made up, looked every inch the fashion model. And indeed she briefly modeled for the Hart Agency in Boston. Earrings and bracelets, French perfume, high heels, matching lip and fingernail gloss bedecked her, all intimidating sophistications in the chalk-and-wet-overshoes atmosphere of the Boston Center for the Adult Education.” ³

Kumin’s description of Sexton almost has a movie star quality to it. Writer Sheila O’Malley shares a similar family memory on her blog—from a time that her father attended a reading of Sexton’s in Cambridge:

“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…. and chain-smoked.” ⁴

(In a podcast I just listened to, a biographer mentions lifting the lid of a box containing Sexton’s personal papers and belongings that have been stored at a literary archive for decades and getting a waft of the scent of cigarettes.) ⁵

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I read a lot of Anne Sexton when I was a teenager. The compressed vitality and pain in her poems, the physicality of her metaphors, and the breaking of taboo around female experience in poetry were all helpful to me.

I read her poems the way a boy my age might have blasted heavy metal, finding comfort in the intensity.

In “The Breast,” she captures this frenetic young-girl energy:

I am unbalanced--but I am not mad with snow.
I am mad the way young girls are mad,
with an offering, an offering... 

I burn the way money burns.

“The Breast” can be found in Love Poems (1969) and Selected Poems of Anne Sexton (1988).

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Later, just barely not a teenager anymore, I lost my mother to illness, and Sexton’s poetry helped me again. The powerful, compressed poem, “The Truth the Dead Know” was written after a double tragedy—Sexton’s parents died only a few months apart in 1959.

This poem is like a bento box for grief.

It begins:

Gone, I say and walk from church,   
refusing the stiff procession to the grave,   
letting the dead ride alone in the hearse.   
It is June. I am tired of being brave.

It continues—a whole blustery landscape of emotions jammed into its precise square stanzas:

We drive to the Cape. I cultivate
myself where the sun gutters from the sky,   
where the sea swings in like an iron gate
and we touch. In another country people die.

It is not exactly a comforting poem, and yet, there is a distillation of a specific kind of exhaustion here. She has captured an energy.

For me, it captured the way one can fall off an “emotional cliff” in “the after.”

What do I mean by “the after?” I mean that there is often an adrenalin-and-shock-fueled marathon that happens after a death. It can last a few days or weeks and goes something like this: the vigil—the death—the news—the funeral home—the decisions—the preparations—the communications—the arrivals—the church—the services—the goodbyes—the scattering of family and friends—the returning home—the deafening silence, the roaring in the ears—and home, home—what is home now?—home is strange objects in strange rooms—home is not home—home is: what do we do now?

It is a moment like falling off a cliff.

When I experienced it, I would have loved to have someone drive me to the sea, to feel the sun gutter, the wind blow, the sea swing in.

I would have loved to exit language and “enter touch.”

For me, it was October, not June. I was 20. I was tired of being brave.

Find the full poem here.

(Thank you, Anne.)

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More, please

Read more about Anne Sexton’s life and work, with a sampling of poems here. (The Poetry Foundation)

Another great source for Sexton’s life and work here. (Poets.org)

Two readings of “The Truth the Dead Know” by Sexton. The first is an earlier version and some lines are different from the final version. The second is the final version. It is interesting to hear the difference in vocal delivery, and to get a glimpse of the poem’s evolution:

A short podcast from Essential American Poets via The Poetry Foundation here or here:

Some archival fun: a type-written letter about coordinating plans for a poetry reading, in which Sexton mentions winning the Pulitzer Prize, but is too “exhausted” to “raise her eyebrows over it.”

Three-minute NPR clip about finding lost early works of Sexton’s by a pair of “Poetry Hunters” in 2018. (I didn’t know that “poetry hunting” was a thing! It is! I shall have to learn more about this ASAP.)

A great podcast interview with Gail Crowther, who wrote about Sexton and Plath, and their routine of going out for drinks together after attending poetry workshops. Her book Three-Martini Afternoons at the Ritz is on my list to read.

A great interview with Diane Wood Middlebrook on Fresh Air with Terry Gross. It is about her biography of Anne Sexton, ⁶ a superbly-researched book that took a decade to write and also ran into a few controversies (for ex., Middlebrook was given access to tape-recorded therapy sessions of Sexton’s, which is at odds with confidentiality norms around therapy. The explanation of the circumstances, however, is fascinating, and I found her exploration of the moral dilemma quite humane. Also, yes, she did have permission from Sexton’s literary executor, Linda Grey Sexton, the poet’s daughter.)

An article in The Marginalian about Sexton’s poem “Song for a Lady,” with animation by artist Ohara Hale. The final line is like an exhale at the end of a love scene:

“even a notary would notarize our bed
as you knead me and I rise like bread.”

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How about you? Have you heard of Anne Sexton? Do you have a favorite poem? Do you wish you could travel back in time and attend a reading in person?

See you tomorrow with another poet!

Jenny

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1. Source here.

2. Source here.

3. Source for this quote here.

4. Source here.

5. Source here.

6. I have enjoyed every single interview and presentation that I have heard Middlebrook give (I’ve listen to a handful now) and her biography of Sexton is also on my list to read soon—if I decide that I can handle some of the content. (Interestingly, Middlebrook talks about her own hesitation to research Anne’s life in the Fresh Air podcast, and her journey as an empathic witness to Anne’s pain, even when confronted with some of the more horrifying aspects. So I know that my hesitation puts me in good company.)