Who was Anne Sexton?
Why did Erica Jong decide to write a poem about her? I think the poem is a tribute to her. I remember visiting the public library and researching Anne Sexton because I wanted to know more about her. I began reading the volume of poetry by Sexton called “To Bedlam And Part Way Back” immersing myself into Sexton’s world. I also read another volume of poetry by Sexton called “Love Poems”. Anne Sexton was born in the year 1928 in Newton Massachusetts. Sexton had a history of depression for most of her life but she found solace through writing. I definitely find internal peace when I have something interesting to write about. Perhaps this is one of the reasons I identify with Sexton? I only tend to write my poetry when I am depressed. Isn’t that strange? Anyhow, when I write poems I tend to be confessional. I cannot write about a flower, or a bug, or a plant. I cannot just “write” a poem. Something in my life has to push me or even force me to write poetry. I have to have conviction when I
Heres a virtual movie of the tragic Poet Anne Sexton reading her poem “All My Pretty Ones”” All My Pretty Ones by Anne Sexton Father, this years jinx rides us apart where you followed our mother to her cold slumber; a second shock boiling its stone to your heart, leaving me here to shuffle and disencumber you from the residence you could not afford: a gold key, your half of a woolen mill, twenty suits from Dunnes, an English Ford, the love and legal verbiage of another will, boxes of pictures of people I do not know. I touch their cardboard faces. They must go. But the eyes, as thick as wood in this album, hold me. I stop here, where a small boy waits in a ruffled dress for someone to come … for this soldier who holds his bugle like a toy or for this velvet lady who cannot smile. Is this your fathers father, this commodore in a mailman suit? My father, time meanwhile has made it unimportant who you are looking for. Ill never know what these faces are all about. I lock them into their
