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Anne Sexton

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“Perhaps I am no one. True, I have a body and I cannot escape from it. I would like to fly out of my head, but that is out of the question.”

― Anne Sexton

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An interpretive painting called "Rowing Towards God," a tribute to poet Anne Sexton by Don Hammontree

Notice the references in the painting to Sexton's poetry and personal life?

The license plate of the car "Mercy" reference to Sexton's poem "Mercy Street.

The car appears to be a red two-door Cougar...similar to the one Sexton committed suicide in.

The painting's title is similar to the title of Sexton's last complete book of poetry "That Awful Rowing Towards God". Published after her death.

The woman in the boat (Sexton) is wearing a red dress. A red dress is referenced in several of Sexton's poems, and she was known for wearing a red dress during her poetry readings.

The rowboat is headed towards an island, re Sexton's poem "The Rowing Endeth"

"at the dock of the island called God"

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I am the mother of the insane. Let me give you my children…

Anne Sexton, from Iron Hans (via themooncriedout)

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Anne Sexton 

November 9th, 1928 - October 4th, 1974

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Anne Sexton (November 9th, 1928 - October 4th, 1974)

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Anne Sexton’s death certificate

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It is in the small things we see it. The child’s first step, as awesome as an earthquake. The first time you rode a bike, wallowing up the sidewalk. The first spanking when your heart went on a journey all alone. When they called you crybaby or poor or fatty or crazy and made you into an alien, you drank their acid and concealed it. Later, if you faced the death of bombs and bullets you did not do it with a banner, you did it with only a hat to cover your heart. You did not fondle the weakness inside you though it was there. Your courage was a small coal that you kept swallowing. If your buddy saved you and died himself in so doing, then his courage was not courage, it was love; love as simple as shaving soap. Later, if you have endured a great despair, then you did it alone, getting a transfusion from the fire, picking the scabs off your heart, then wringing it out like a sock. Next, my kinsman, you powdered your sorrow, you gave it a back rub and then you covered it with a blanket and after it had slept a while it woke to the wings of the roses and was transformed. Later, when you face old age and its natural conclusion your courage will still be shown in the little ways, each spring will be a sword you’ll sharpen, those you love will live in a fever of love, and you’ll bargain with the calendar and at the last moment when death opens the back door you’ll put on your carpet slippers and stride out.

Courage

-Anne Sexton

(via jamaisjenepleure)

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Interviewer: In your poems, several family skeletons come out of the camphor balls--your father's alcoholic tendencies, your mother's inability to deal with your suicide attempt, your great-aunt in a straitjacket. Is there any rule you follow as to which skeletons you reveal and which you don't?

Sexton: I don't reveal skeletons that would hurt anyone. They may hurt the dead, but the dead belong to me. Only once in a while do they talk back. For instance, I don't write about my husband or his family, although there are some amazing stories there.

Interviewer: How about Holmes or the poets in your class, what did they say?

Sexton: During the years of that class, John Holmes saw me as something evil and warned Maxine to stay away from me. He told me I shouldn't write such personal poems about the madhouse. He said, "That isn't a fit subject for poetry." I knew no one who thought it was; even my doctor clammed up at that time. I was on my own. I tried to mind them. I tried to write the way the other, especially Maxine, wrote, but it didn't work. I always ended up sounding like myself.

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Interviewer: Louis Simpson criticized your poetry, saying, "A poem titled 'Menstruation at Forty' was the straw that broke this camel's back." Is it only male critics who balk at your use of the biological facts of womanhood?

Sexton: I haven't added up all the critics and put them on different teams. I haven't noticed the gender of the critic especially. I talk of the life-death cycle of the body. Well, women tell time by the body. They are like clocks. They are always fastened to the earth, listening for its small animal noises. Sexuality is one of the most normal parts of life. True, I get a little uptight when Norman Mailer writes that he screws a woman anally. I like Allen Ginsberg very much, and when he writes about the ugly vagina, I feel awful. That kind of thing doesn't appeal to me. So I have my limitations, too. Homosexuality is all right with me. Sappho was beautiful. But when someone hates another person's body and somehow violates it--that's the kind of thing I mind.

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Just Once by Anne Sexton

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“Watch out for intellect, because it knows so much it knows nothing and leaves you hanging upside down, mouthing knowledge as your heart falls out of your mouth.”  ― Anne Sexton, The Complete Poems”

  (image artist: unknown)

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Anne on Flickr.

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by Anne Sexton

Here, in the room of my life the objects keep changing. Ashtrays to cry into, the suffering brother of the wood walls, the forty-eight keys of the typewriter each an eyeball that is never shut, the books, each a contestant in a beauty contest, the black chair, a dog...

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8 Portraits of Anne Sexton by various artists