Some poems are light as air and fluffed-up with empty meaning and simple phrases; with no intention of entering past the layer of fluid surrounding the reader’s brain. Anne Sexton never wrote a poem that didn’t penetrate deeply the brain, and the heart.
Her Kind, The Room of My Life
Whether it's connecting with her outcast sisters of Salem in Her Kind.
I have gone out, a possessed witch,
haunting the black air, braver at night;
Or conscientiously recognizing and immortalizing the inanimate objects that surround her in The Room of My Life.
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,
Anne Sexton's Confessional Poetry
A poet of extraordinary skill, Anne Sexton bared her soul in the most brutally honest manner possible; writing about herself in unrelenting and sometimes unbearable detail; helping to invent what was labeled confessional poetry.
Ms. Sexton’s confessions took the form of an increasing inevitability regarding the outcome that lay ahead for a poet who was plagued by mental illness and emotional instability; in her poem Wanting To Die, she speaks of suicide as if it were a foregone conclusion.
leaving the page of the book carelessly open,
something unsaid, the phone off the hook
and the love whatever it was, an infection.
Such self-destructive musings, however beautifully written, in actuality fade on impact, after the act is consummated. But, in The Room of My Life, the subtext returns a more intricate examination.
the sockets on the wall
waiting like a cave of bees,
the gold rug
a conversation of heels and toes,
I Have Been Her Kind
What holds up more from Anne Sexton’s oeuvre, again are the poems that don’t necessarily abandon the confessional altogether, but rather internalize her surroundings and return them regurgitated upon the page.
Anne Sexton embraces her notorious history with Her Kind; rediscovering herself anew; a wonderful poem, rich with intriguing undercurrents; about a woman’s instinctual desire to bathe in the darkness and shadows.
dreaming evil, I have done my hitch
over the plain houses, light by light:
lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.
A woman like that is not a woman, quite.
I have been her kind.
Anne Sexton's legacy stretches across over three decades since she chose to exit the world prematurely. To see how influential Anne Sexton has been, one need not look any further than the best sellers lists, which include two daughters born of Sexton's art, Stephanie Meyer (Twilight) and J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter).
Read Erica Jong's New York Times piece on Anne Sexton: Remembering Anne Sexton, October 27, 1974
And to read Her Kind, The Room of My Life, and Wanting To Die, as well as other works by Anne Sexton, go to PoetryFoundation.Org
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