Anne Sexton (1928-1974)
Daughter of a "old and prominent New England family," Anne Gray Sexton was born in Newton, Massachusetts (Kennedy/Gioia 1290). Most of her childhood was spent in Boston, and she attended Rogers Hall boarding school in Lowell. Known for her elegance, she modeled for a short time for the Hart Agency in Boston, but jettisoned her modeling career to marry Alfred Muller Sexton in 1948. The marriage lasted twenty-five years and produced two daughters: Linda Gray and Joyce Ladd. After the birth of her first daughter, however, Sexton suffered her first mental breakdown--the first of many to come . After Sexton attempted suicide numerous times, it was her therapist, Dr. Martin Orne, whom she began seeing in the mid-fifties, who encouraged her to begin writing poetry as a means of therapy. Though she was reluctant to try to publish her first poems, they were accepted by major magazines such as Harper's Magazine and The New Yorker (2).
As her poetry gained her success, Sexton had multiple mentors and collaborators, including W.D. Snodgrass and Robert Lowell. By 1960, she had published her first collection of poetry, To Bedlam and Part Way Back, which received positive reviews. However, as her poetry gained national acclaim, her marriage began to suffer, and, as Linda Wagner-Martin writes, "Her marriage was torn by discord and physical abuse as her husband saw his formerly dependent wife become a celebrity" (Martin). Still, another collection followed in 1962, All My Pretty Ones; and another in 1966, Live or Die. These publications were followed by considerable accolades--Sexton was the first woman to become a member of Harvard's Phi Beta Kappa honor society; she was awarded the Frost and Radcliffe Institute fellowships, as well as Guggenheim fellowships and Ford Foundation grants to name but a few of her many honors. Despite the success her many publications garnered her, her personal life soon began to unravel as she divorced from Kayo and her relationship to her daughters became all the more strained as she slipped further into alcoholism and depression. In 1974 she would asphyxiate herself in the garage of her Boston home (Martin).
Sexton and Sylvia Plath are perhaps the two poets associated most closely with Confessional writing: writing in which the poet attempts to explain herself or divulge her darkest feelings while using the 'personal I' reference to the self. While at first glance, Confessional Poetry may appear to be mere absorption of the self in one's feelings, there is a rigorous attention to form and structure. One source points out that "While their treatment of the poetic self may have been groundbreaking and shocking to some readers, these poets maintained a high level of craftsmanship through their careful attention to and use of prosody" (4). While reading Sexton's poetry, pay careful attention to the poet's employment of rhythm, sound, stress and intonation. How might these strategies complement the underlying meaning beneath Sexton's poetic expression of her inner turmoil?
Below, Anne Sexton talks about her poetry, and her practice of embodying a persona.
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