Anne Sexton, 1974

Anne Sexton (November 9, 1928, Newton, Massachusetts – October 4, 1974, Weston, Massachusetts), born Anne Gray Harvey, was an American poet and writer. Image File history File links Download high-resolution version (512x768, 36 KB) Portrait of Anne Sexton by Elsa Dorfman File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ... Image File history File links Download high-resolution version (512x768, 36 KB) Portrait of Anne Sexton by Elsa Dorfman File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ... November 9 is the 313th day of the year (314th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1928 (MCMXXVIII) was a leap year starting on Sunday (link will display full calendar). ... Nickname: The Garden City Location in Massachusetts Coordinates: Country United States State Massachusetts County Middlesex County Settled 1639 Incorporated 1688 Government  - Type Mayor-council city  - Mayor David B. Cohen (Dem) Area  - City  18. ... October 4 is the 277th day of the year (278th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... 1974 (MCMLXXIV) was a common year starting on Tuesday. ...   Settled: 1642 â€“ Incorporated: 1713 Zip Code(s): 02493 â€“ Area Code(s): 781 Official website: http://www. ... The poor poet A poet is a person who writes poetry. ... Cosette Dwyer is an amazing author. ...

Personal life

Sexton was born in Newton, Massachusetts, and spent most of her life near Boston, Mass. In 1945, Sexton began attending a boarding school, Rogers Hall, in Lowell, Massachusetts. For a time as a young woman, she modeled at Boston's Hart Agency. Although she was engaged to someone else, in August of 1948 when she was eighteen she eloped with Alfred Muller Sexton, known as "Kayo". The couple carried out the romantic 'climbing out of the window in the middle of the night' escape and drove from Massachusetts to North Carolina, where the legal marrying age was eighteen. Before their divorce in the early 1970s, she had two children with Kayo: Linda Gray Sexton, later a novelist and memoirist, and Joyce Sexton. Nickname: The Garden City Location in Massachusetts Coordinates: Country United States State Massachusetts County Middlesex County Settled 1639 Incorporated 1688 Government  - Type Mayor-council city  - Mayor David B. Cohen (Dem) Area  - City  18. ... 1945 (MCMXLV) was a common year starting on Monday. ... A boarding school is an educational institution where some or all pupils not only study, but also live, amongst their peers. ... Nickname: Motto: Art is the Handmaid of Human Good Location in Massachusetts Coordinates: Country United States State Massachusetts County Middlesex County Settled 1653 Incorporated 1826 A city 1836 Government  - Type Manager-City council  - Mayor William F. Martin, Jr. ... Nickname: City on the Hill, Beantown, The Hub (of the Universe)1, Athens of America, The Cradle of Revolution, Puritan City, Americas Walking City Location in Massachusetts, USA Counties Suffolk County Mayor Thomas M. Menino(D) Area    - City 232. ... To elope, most literally, merely means to run away. ... For the record label, see Divorce Records. ... The 1970s decade refers to the years from 1970 to 1979. ... Linda Gray Sexton (born July 21, 1953 in Newton, Massachusetts) is the daughter of Anne Sexton and Alfred Muller Sexton. ...

Controversy was stirred with the public release of tapes recorded during Sexton's psychotherapy (and thus subject to doctor-patient confidentiality), wherein Sexton revealed incestuous contact with her daughter.^[1] // Psychotherapy is a range of techniques based on dialogue, communication and behavior change and which are designed to improve the mental health of a client or patient, or to improve group relationships (such as in a family). ...

Illness and subsequent career

Sexton spoke candidly about her battle with bipolar disorder, SIDS which she fought for most of her life. Her first manic episode took place in 1954. After a second breakdown in 1955, she met Dr. Martin Orne, who was to become her long time therapist, at Glenside Hospital. Sexton held the belief that she was not valuable except in her ability to please men and told Orne in her first interview that her only talent might be for prostitution. He later told her that his evaluation showed that she had a creative side and encouraged her to take up poetry.^[2] Though she was very nervous about it and needed a friend to make the phone call and accompany her to the first workshop, she enrolled in her first poetry workshop with John Holmes as the instructor. Writing poetry became part of her therapy and her livelihood. 1954 (MCMLIV) was a common year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar. ... 1955 (MCMLV) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... There are very few or no other articles that link to this one. ... John Holmes (January 6, 1904-June 22, 1962), was a poet and critic. ...

After the workshop, Sexton experienced remarkably quick success with her poetry, with her poems accepted by The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, and the Saturday Review. The New Yorker is an American magazine that publishes reportage, criticism, essays, cartoons, poetry and fiction. ... An issue of Harpers Magazine from 1905 Another issue, from November 2004 Harpers Magazine (or simply Harpers) is a monthly general-interest magazine covering literature, politics, culture, finance, and the arts from a progressive, moderate left perspective in a fashion often not found in the ordinary news... Saturday Review is a UK publication for which Winston Churchill reported. ...

Sexton's poetic life was further encouraged by her mentor, W.D. Snodgrass, whom she met at the Antioch Writer's Conference in 1957. His poem, "Heart's Needle", about his separation from his three year old daughter, encouraged her to write "The Double Image," a poem significant in expressing the multi-generational relationships existing between mother and daughter. "Heart's Needle" was particularly inspirational to Sexton because at the time she first read it her own young daughter was living with her mother-in-law. Sexton began writing letters to Snodgrass and they soon became friends. William De Witt Snodgrass (born January 5, 1926 in Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania), pseudonym S. S. Gardons, is an American poet and a 1960 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry winner. ...

While working with Holmes, Sexton encountered Maxine Kumin, with whom she became good friends throughout the rest of her life. Kumin and Sexton rigorously critiqued each other's work, and wrote four children's books together. Maxine Kumin (b. ...

With Sylvia Plath, she attended a poetry workshop taught by Robert Lowell in 1957. Sylvia and Anne remained friends and were rumored lovers. This relationship is alluded to in the poem "Sylvia's Death" written after Plath's suicide. Later, Sexton herself taught workshops at Boston University, Oberlin College, and Colgate University. Sylvia Plath (October 27, 1932 – February 11, 1963) was an American poet, novelist, and short story writer. ... Robert Lowell (March 1, 1917–September 12, 1977), born Robert Traill Spence Lowell, IV, was a highly regarded mid-twentieth-century American poet. ... For similarly-named academic institutions, see Boston (disambiguation). ... Oberlin College is a small, selective liberal arts college in Oberlin, Ohio, in the United States. ... Colgate in fall. ...

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the manic elements of Sexton's illness began to affect her career. She still wrote and published work and gave readings of her poetry. She also collaborated with some musicians, forming the group Anne Sexton and Her Kind, who were working to put some of her prose to music.

Content and themes of work

Sexton is the modern model of the confessional poet. She was inspired by the publication of Snodgrass' Heart's Needle. She is widely known for tackling controversial themes, at times emphasizing the female perspective. Her work encompasses issues specific to women such as menstruation and abortion, and more broadly masturbation and adultery, before such subjects were commonly addressed in poetic discourse. Confessionalism is a label formally applied to a style of American poetry which emerged in the 1950s and 1960s. ... Menstrual cycle. ... Young woman masturbating, 1916 drawing by Gustav Klimt Masturbation refers to sexual stimulation, especially of ones own genitals and often to the point of orgasm, which is performed manually, by other types of bodily contact (except for sexual intercourse), by use of objects or tools, or by some combination... Adultery is voluntary sexual intercourse between a married person and a partner other than the lawful spouse. ...

The title for her eighth collection of poetry, The Awful Rowing Toward God, came from her meeting with a Roman Catholic priest who, although unwilling to administer the last rites, did tell her: "God is in your typewriter," which gave the poet the desire and willpower to continue living and writing for some more time. The Roman Catholic Church, most often spoken of simply as the Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with over one billion members. ...

Death

On October 4, 1974 Sexton had lunch with Maxine Kumin to review her most recent book, The Awful Rowing Toward God. Upon returning home, she locked herself in her garage, started the engine and committed suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning. // The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics is founded by Allen Ginsberg and Anne Waldman. ... Maxine Kumin (b. ...

In an interview over a year before her death she told an interviewer that she had written the first drafts of The Awful Rowing Toward God in 20 days with "two days out for despair and three days out in a 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 & Crematory in Jamaica Plain, Boston, Massachusetts. The Forest Hills Cemetery (1848) in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts (formerly in the city of Roxbury, now in the city of Boston) is an early suburban garden cemetery inspired by the Mount Auburn Cemetery. ... Jamaica Plain is a neighborhood in Boston, Massachusetts. ...

Awards

• Audience magazine's annual poetry prize (1959)
• Poetry magazine's Levinson Prize (1962)
• National Book Award nomination for All My Pretty Ones (1963)
• American Academy of Arts and Letters' traveling fellowship (1963)
• Ford Foundation grant (1963)
• Shelley Memorial Prize for "Live or Die" (1967)
• Pulitzer Prize in poetry for Live or Die (1967)
• Guggenheim Foundation grant (1969)
• Tufts University's Doctor of Letters (1970)
• Crashaw Chair in Literature from Colgate University (1972)

Bibliography

• To Bedlam and Part Way Back (1960)
• All My Pretty Ones (1962)
• Live or Die (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 Miguel Flores' Dad (1972) ISBN 0-395-14014-5
• The Death Notebooks (1974)
• The Awful Rowing Toward God (1975; posthumous)
• 45 Mercy Street (1976; posthumous)
• Words for Dr. Y. (1978; posthumous)

References

1. ^ Psychiatrist Criticized Over Release Of Poet's Psychotherapy Tapes By Ken Hausman
2. ^ Anne Sexton: A Biography by Diane Wood Middlebrook

Further reading

• Anne Sexton: A Biography, by Diane Wood Middlebrook 1992. ISBN 0-679-74182-8
• Searching for Mercy Street: My Journey Back to My Mother, by Linda Gray Sexton 1994.
• Anne Sexton & Middle Generation Poetry: The Geography of Grief, by Philip McGowan [2004]

1992 (MCMXCII) was a leap year starting on Wednesday. ... 1994 (MCMXCIV) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated as the International Year of the Family and the International Year of the Sport and the Olympic Ideal by United Nations. ...

Miscellaneous

• Conrad Susa composed an opera called Transformations, based on her collection of poems by the same name.
• British musician Peter Gabriel wrote a song, "Mercy Street", dedicated to Sexton in 1986.
• Dave Matthews has said that the song Grey Street, from the album Busted Stuff (2002), is inspired by Sexton.

Peter Brian Gabriel (born February 13, 1950, in Chobham, Surrey, England) is an English musician. ... Mercy Street is a song by Peter Gabriel from his album So (1986). ... 1986 (MCMLXXXVI) was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... For other people named Dave (or David) Matthews see David Matthews (disambiguation) David John Matthews (born January 9, 1967) is a South African, now naturalized American, Grammy-winning lead vocalist and guitarist for the Dave Matthews Band. ... Grey Street is a song written by the Dave Matthews Band, featured on their 2002 album, Busted Stuff. ... Busted Stuff is an album by the Dave Matthews Band, released by RCA Records on July 16, 2002. ...

External links

• Poems by Anne Sexton at PoetryFoundation.org
• 1991 audio interview with Diane Wood Middlebrook, author of Anne Sexton by Don Swaim
• Anne Sexton's Gravesite
• Anne Sexton biography and example of poetry Part of a series of poets.
• Rare film footage of Anne reciting some poetry, and some home movie excerpts From an Arts Review programme from the early 1990s

Spanish Anne Translation Raul Racedo,Argentina: Don Swaim is an American journalist, writer, and broadcaster. ...

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