Anne Sexton was an American poet, known for her highly personal, confessional verse. She won the
Pulitzer PrizeThe Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
for poetry in 1967. Themes of her poetry include her suicidal tendencies, long battle against depression and various intimate details from her private life, including her relationships with her husband and children.
Early life and family
Anne Sexton was born Anne Gray Harvey in
Newton, MassachusettsNewton is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States bordered to the east by Boston. According to the 2010 U.S. Census, the population of Newton was 85,146, making it the eleventh largest city in the state.-Villages:...
to Mary Gray Staples and Ralph Harvey. She spent most of her childhood in
BostonBoston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
. In 1945 she enrolled at Rogers Hall boarding school,
Lowell, MassachusettsLowell is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, USA. According to the 2010 census, the city's population was 106,519. It is the fourth largest city in the state. Lowell and Cambridge are the county seats of Middlesex County...
, later spending a year at
Garland SchoolGarland Junior College was a liberal arts women's college in Boston, Massachusetts. Mary Garland established the Garland Kindergarten Training School in 1872 on Chestnut Street in Boston's Beacon Hill. By 1903, the school had expanded its curriculum to include home economics, and was renamed the...
. For a time she
modeledA model , sometimes called a mannequin, is a person who is employed to display, advertise and promote commercial products or to serve as a subject of works of art....
for Boston's Hart Agency. On August 16, 1948, she married Alfred Sexton and they remained together until 1973. She had two children named Linda Gray and Joyce Ladd.
Poetry
Sexton suffered from severe
mental illnessA mental disorder or mental illness is a psychological or behavioral pattern generally associated with subjective distress or disability that occurs in an individual, and which is not a part of normal development or culture. Such a disorder may consist of a combination of affective, behavioural,...
for much of her life, her first manic episode taking place in 1954. After a second breakdown in 1955 she met
Dr Martin OrneMartin Theodore Orne, M.D., Ph.D., emeritus professor of psychiatry and psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, died February 11, 2000 at the age of 72. He was a professor in the School of Medicine for 32 years before becoming emeritus professor in 1996. Born in Vienna, Austria in 1927, Dr....
, who became her long-term therapist at the Glenside Hospital, and encouraged her to take up poetry.
The first poetry workshop she attended was led by
John HolmesJohn Holmes , born John Albert Holmes Jr., was a poet and critic. He was born in Somerville, Massachusetts, and both attended and taught at Tufts University where he was a professor of literature and modern poetry for 28 years. He wrote several volumes of poetry and the lyrics to several Unitarian...
. Sexton felt great trepidation about registering for the class, asking a friend to make the phone call and accompany her to the first session. She found early acclaim with her poetry; a number were accepted by
The New YorkerThe New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
,
Harper's MagazineHarper's Magazine is a monthly magazine of literature, politics, culture, finance, and the arts, with a generally left-wing perspective. It is the second-oldest continuously published monthly magazine in the U.S. . The current editor is Ellen Rosenbush, who replaced Roger Hodge in January 2010...
and the
Saturday Review. Sexton later studied with Robert Lowell at
Boston UniversityBoston University is a private research university located in Boston, Massachusetts. With more than 4,000 faculty members and more than 31,000 students, Boston University is one of the largest private universities in the United States and one of Boston's largest employers...
alongside distinguished poets
Sylvia PlathSylvia Plath was an American poet, novelist and short story writer. Born in Massachusetts, she studied at Smith College and Newnham College, Cambridge before receiving acclaim as a professional poet and writer...
and
George StarbuckGeorge Edwin Starbuck was an American poet of the neo-formalist school.-Life:...
.
Sexton's poetic career was encouraged by her mentor W.D. Snodgrass, whom she met at the Antioch Writer's Conference in 1957. His poem "Heart's Needle" proved inspirational for her in its theme of separation from his three-year-old daughter. She first read the poem at a time when her own young daughter was living with Sexton's mother-in-law. She, in turn, wrote "The Double Image", a poem which explores the multi-generational relationship between mother and daughter. Sexton began writing letters to Snodgrass and they became friends.
While working with
John HolmesJohn Holmes , born John Albert Holmes Jr., was a poet and critic. He was born in Somerville, Massachusetts, and both attended and taught at Tufts University where he was a professor of literature and modern poetry for 28 years. He wrote several volumes of poetry and the lyrics to several Unitarian...
, Sexton encountered
Maxine KuminMaxine Kumin is an American poet and author. She was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1981-1982.-Early years:...
. They became good friends and remained so for the rest of Sexton's life. Kumin and Sexton rigorously critiqued each other's work and wrote four children's books together. In the late 1960s the manic elements of Sexton's illness began to affect her career, though she still wrote and published work and gave readings of her poetry. She also collaborated with musicians, forming a jazz-rock group called "Her Kind" that added music to her poetry. Her play "Mercy Street" was produced in 1969 after several years of revisions.
Within twelve years of writing her first sonnet, she was one of the most honored poets in America: a
Pulitzer PrizeThe Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
winner, a fellow of the
Royal Society of LiteratureThe Royal Society of Literature is the "senior literary organisation in Britain". It was founded in 1820 by George IV, in order to "reward literary merit and excite literary talent". The Society's first president was Thomas Burgess, who later became the Bishop of Salisbury...
and the first female member of the Harvard chapter of Phi Beta Kappa.
Death
On October 4, 1974, Sexton had lunch with poet
Maxine KuminMaxine Kumin is an American poet and author. She was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1981-1982.-Early years:...
to revise galleys for Sexton's manuscript of
The Awful Rowing Toward God, scheduled for publication in March 1975 (Middlebrook 396). On returning home she put on her mother's old fur coat, removed all her rings, poured herself a glass of vodka, locked herself in her garage, and started the engine of her car, committing suicide by
carbon monoxide poisoningCarbon monoxide poisoning occurs after enough inhalation of carbon monoxide . Carbon monoxide is a toxic gas, but, being colorless, odorless, tasteless, and initially non-irritating, it is very difficult for people to detect...
.
In an interview over a year before her death, she explained she had written the first drafts of
The Awful Rowing Toward God in twenty days with "two days out for despair and three days out in a
mental hospitalMental hospital may refer to:*Psychiatric hospital*hospital in Nepal named Mental Hospital...
." She went on to say that she would not allow the poems to be published before her death. She is buried at
Forest Hills Cemetery & CrematoryForest Hills Cemetery is a historic cemetery, greenspace, arboretum and sculpture garden located in the Forest Hills section of the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts. The cemetery was designed in 1848.-Overview:...
in Jamaica Plain, Boston, Massachusetts.
Content and themes of work
Sexton is seen as the modern model of the confessional poet. Aside from her standard themes of depression, isolation, suicide, and despair, her work also encompasses issues specific to women, such as menstruation and abortion — and more broadly,
masturbationMasturbation refers to sexual stimulation of a person's own genitals, usually to the point of orgasm. The stimulation can be performed manually, by use of objects or tools, or by some combination of these methods. Masturbation is a common form of autoeroticism...
and adultery — before such subjects were commonly addressed in poetic discourse.
Her work towards the end of the sixties has been criticized as "preening, lazy and flip" by otherwise respectful critics. Some critics regard her dependence on alcohol as compromising her last work. However, other critics see Sexton as a poet whose writing matured over time. "Starting as a relatively conventional writer, she learned to roughen up her line [...] to use as an instrument against the
politesse of language, politics, religion [and] sex [...]."
Her eighth collection of poetry is entitled
The Awful Rowing Toward God. The title came from her meeting with a Roman Catholic priest who, although unwilling to administer
last ritesThe Last Rites are the very last prayers and ministrations given to many Christians before death. The last rites go by various names and include different practices in different Christian traditions...
, told her "God is in your typewriter." This gave the poet the desire and willpower to continue living and writing.
The Awful Rowing Toward God and
The Death Notebooks are among her final works, and both center on the theme of dying.
Her work started out as being about herself, however as her career progressed she made periodic attempts to reach outside the realm of her own life for poetic themes.
Transformations (1971), which is a re-telling of
Grimm's Fairy TalesChildren's and Household Tales is a collection of German origin fairy tales first published in 1812 by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, the Brothers Grimm. The collection is commonly known today as Grimms' Fairy Tales .-Composition:...
, is one such book. (
Transformations was used as the
librettoA libretto is the text used in an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata, or musical. The term "libretto" is also sometimes used to refer to the text of major liturgical works, such as mass, requiem, and sacred cantata, or even the story line of a...
for the 1973
opera of the same nameTransformations is a chamber opera in two acts by the American composer Conrad Susa with a libretto of ten poems by Anne Sexton from her 1971 book Transformations, a collection of confessional poetry based on stories by the Brothers Grimm...
by American composer
Conrad SusaConrad Stephen Susa is an American composer, particularly known for his operas. His 1973 chamber opera, Transformations, set to texts from the poems of Anne Sexton, is one of the most frequently performed operas by an American composer and was one of the featured operas of the 2006 Wexford Opera...
.) Later she used
Christopher SmartChristopher Smart , also known as "Kit Smart", "Kitty Smart", and "Jack Smart", was an English poet. He was a major contributor to two popular magazines and a friend to influential cultural icons like Samuel Johnson and Henry Fielding. Smart, a high church Anglican, was widely known throughout...
's
Jubilate Agno and the
BibleThe Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
as the basis for some of her work.
Much has been made of the tangled threads of her writing, her life and her depression, much in the same way as with
Sylvia PlathSylvia Plath was an American poet, novelist and short story writer. Born in Massachusetts, she studied at Smith College and Newnham College, Cambridge before receiving acclaim as a professional poet and writer...
's suicide in 1963.
John BerrymanJohn Allyn Berryman was an American poet and scholar, born in McAlester, Oklahoma. He was a major figure in American poetry in the second half of the 20th century and was considered a key figure in the Confessional school of poetry...
,
Robert LowellRobert Traill Spence Lowell IV was an American poet, considered the founder of the confessional poetry movement. He was appointed the sixth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress where he served from 1947 until 1948...
,
Adrienne RichAdrienne Cecile Rich is an American poet, essayist and feminist. She has been called "one of the most widely read and influential poets of the second half of the 20th century."-Early life:...
and
Denise Levertov-Early life and influences:Levertov was born and grew up in Ilford, Essex.Couzyn, Jeni Contemporary Women Poets. Bloodaxe, p74 Her mother, Beatrice Spooner-Jones Levertoff, came from a small mining village in North Wales...
commented in separate obituaries on the role of creativity in Sexton's death. Levertov says, "we who are alive must make clear, as she could not, the distinction between creativity and self-destruction."
Subsequent controversy
Following one of many suicide attempts and breakdowns, Sexton worked with therapist Dr. Martin Orne. He diagnosed her with what is now described as
bipolar disorderBipolar disorder or bipolar affective disorder, historically known as manic–depressive disorder, is a psychiatric diagnosis that describes a category of mood disorders defined by the presence of one or more episodes of abnormally elevated energy levels, cognition, and mood with or without one or...
, but his competence to do so is called into question by his early use of allegedly unsound psychotherapeutic techniques. During sessions with Anne Sexton he used
hypnosisHypnosis is "a trance state characterized by extreme suggestibility, relaxation and heightened imagination."It is a mental state or imaginative role-enactment . It is usually induced by a procedure known as a hypnotic induction, which is commonly composed of a long series of preliminary...
and
sodium pentothalSodium thiopental, better known as Sodium Pentothal , thiopental, thiopentone sodium, or Trapanal , is a rapid-onset short-acting barbiturate general anaesthetic...
to recover supposedly
repressed memoriesRepressed memory is a hypothetical concept used to describe a significant memory, usually of a traumatic nature, that has become unavailable for recall; also called motivated forgetting in which a subject blocks out painful or traumatic times in one's life...
. During this process, he allegedly used
suggestion to uncover memoriesA false allegation of child sexual abuse is an accusation that a person committed one or more acts of child sexual abuse when in reality there was no perpetration of abuse by the accused person as alleged. Such accusations can be brought by the alleged victim , or by another person on the alleged...
of inflicting childhood sexual abuse. This abuse was refuted in interviews with her mother and other relatives. Dr. Orne wrote that hypnosis in an adult frequently does not present accurate memories of childhood; instead, "adults under hypnosis are not literally reliving their early childhoods but presenting them through the prisms of adulthood". According to Dr. Orne, Anne Sexton was extremely suggestible and would mimic the symptoms of the patients around her in the mental hospitals to which she was committed. The Middlebrook biography states that a separate personality named Elizabeth emerged in Sexton while under hypnosis. Dr. Orne did not encourage this development and subsequently this "alternate personality" disappeared. Dr. Orne eventually concluded that Anne Sexton was suffering from hysteria. During the writing of the Middlebrook biography,
Linda Gray SextonLinda Gray Sexton is an American writer. She was born in Newton, Massachusetts, the elder daughter of poet Anne Sexton and Alfred Muller "Kayo" Sexton. In 1994, she wrote her memoirs of growing up with her mother, Searching for Mercy Street: My Journey Back to My Mother, Anne Sexton...
stated that she had been sexually assaulted by her mother. In 1994, Linda Gray Sexton published her autobiography,
Searching for Mercy Street: My Journey Back to My Mother, Anne Sexton, which includes her own accounts of the abuse.
Middlebrook published her controversial biography of Anne Sexton with the approval of Linda Gray Sexton, Anne's literary executor. For use in the biography, Dr. Orne had given Diane Middlebrook most of the tapes recording the therapy sessions between Orne and Anne Sexton. The use of these tapes was met with, as the New York Times put it, "thunderous condemnation". Middlebrook received the tapes after she had written a substantial amount of the first draft of Sexton's biography, and decided to start over. Although Linda Gray Sexton collaborated with the Middlebrook biography, other members of the Sexton family were divided over the book, publishing several editorials and op-ed pieces, in
The New York TimesThe New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
and
The New York Times Book ReviewThe New York Times Book Review is a weekly paper-magazine supplement to The New York Times in which current non-fiction and fiction books are reviewed. It is one of the most influential and widely read book review publications in the industry. The offices are located near Times Square in New York...
.
Controversy continued with the posthumous public release of the tapes (which had been subject to doctor-patient confidentiality). They are said to reveal Sexton's inappropriate behavior with her daughter Linda, her physically violent behavior toward both her daughters, and her physical altercations with her husband.
Yet more controversy surrounded allegations that Anne Sexton had had an affair with the therapist who replaced Dr. Orne in the 1960s. No action was taken to censure or discipline the second therapist. Dr. Orne considered the affair with the second therapist (given the pseudonym "Ollie Zweizung" by Middlebrook, and Linda Sexton) to be the catalyst that eventually resulted in her suicide.
Poetry and Prose (collections and novels)
- Uncompleted Novel-started in the 1960s
- To Bedlam and Part Way Back (1960)
- The Starry Night (1961)
- All My Pretty Ones (1962)
- Live or Die
Live or Die is a collection of poetry by American poet Anne Sexton, published in 1966. Many of the poems in the collection are in free verse, and some are in rhyme. The poems, written between 1962 and 1966, are arranged in the book in chronological order...
(1966) - Winner of the Pulitzer prize in 1967
- Love Poems (1969)
- Mercy Street, a 2-act play performed at the American Place Theatre (1969)
- Transformations (1971) ISBN 0-618-08343-X
- The Book of Folly (1972)
- The Death Notebooks (1974)
- The Awful Rowing Toward God (1975; posthumous)
- 45 Mercy Street (1976; posthumous)
- Anne Sexton: A Self Portrait in Letters, edited by Linda Gray Sexton and Lois Ames (1977; posthumous)
- Words for Dr. Y. (1978; posthumous)
- No Evil Star: Selected Essays, Interviews and Prose, edited by Steven E. Colburn (1985; posthumous)
Children's books
all co-written with
Maxine KuminMaxine Kumin is an American poet and author. She was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1981-1982.-Early years:...
- 1963 Eggs of Things (illustrated by Leonard Shortall)
- 1964 More Eggs of Things (illustrated by Leonard Shortall)
- 1974 Joey and the Birthday Present (illustrated by Evaline Ness)
- 1975 The Wizard's Tears (illustrated by Evaline Ness)
Further reading
- Middlebrook, Diane Wood (1991). Anne Sexton: A Biography. Reprinted by Vintage Books, 1992. ISBN 0679741828
External links