This was a moving reflection of both Anne Sexton and the way her poems spoke to your own life. You captured how poems (and, for me, songs) can get one through and take one back to a feeling, a place, an era, a hope.
Thank you for reading, Melissa! And yes—oh, that connection was staring at me in the face, wasn’t it? That poems can help us time travel the way music does, can characterize a whole era of our lives… Thank you for catching that theme, connecting to it, and commenting on it!
I’m fascinated by the use of the word ‘compressed’ to talk about Sexton’s vitality and energy. It feels like an invitation to read more of her. And that line … “I burn the way money burns.”
Also, thank you for sharing your experience of the “after”, that beautiful paragraph taking us through the moments of moving through a new reality without a parent, and the thought: home, home, what is home now?…
Thank you for reading, Anne! Yes, the compression is real; her work needs a life-force-per-square-unit-of-verse type of measurement. :). And I appreciate the kind words about the personal connection.
This was a moving reflection of both Anne Sexton and the way her poems spoke to your own life. You captured how poems (and, for me, songs) can get one through and take one back to a feeling, a place, an era, a hope.
Thank you for reading, Melissa! And yes—oh, that connection was staring at me in the face, wasn’t it? That poems can help us time travel the way music does, can characterize a whole era of our lives… Thank you for catching that theme, connecting to it, and commenting on it!
I’m fascinated by the use of the word ‘compressed’ to talk about Sexton’s vitality and energy. It feels like an invitation to read more of her. And that line … “I burn the way money burns.”
Also, thank you for sharing your experience of the “after”, that beautiful paragraph taking us through the moments of moving through a new reality without a parent, and the thought: home, home, what is home now?…
Thank you for reading, Anne! Yes, the compression is real; her work needs a life-force-per-square-unit-of-verse type of measurement. :). And I appreciate the kind words about the personal connection.