Well Said: Anne Sexton
Anne Sexton
b. 1928. d. 1974
I don’t like the majority of Anne Sexton’s work, but the pieces I do love, I love fiercely.
I’ve heard recordings of Anne reading - voice like a cigarette and a dirty martini.
She
was a model, a wife, a mother.
She was prone to
long bouts of depression
and fits of violence, which included beating her daughters.
She tried
to kill herself 3 times before she succeeded. In fact, the only reason it didn’t work the previous times was because she called a friend. The friend had given up when Anne called the last time.
She was very beautiful,
but that’s not really important.
Cigarettes And Whiskey And Wild, Wild Women
Anne Sexton
(from a song)
Perhaps I was born kneeling,
born coughing on the long winter,
born expecting the kiss of mercy,
born with a passion for quickness
and yet, as things progressed,
I learned early about the stockade
or taken out, the fume of the enema.
By two or three I learned not to kneel,
not to expect, to plant my fires underground
where none but the dolls, perfect and awful,
could be whispered to or laid down to die.
Now that I have written many words,
and let out so many loves, for so many,
and been altogether what I always was-
a woman of excess, of zeal and greed,
I find the effort useless.
Do I not look in the mirror,
these days,
and see a drunken rat avert her eyes?
Do I not feel the hunger so acutely
that I would rather die than look
into its face?
I kneel once more,
in case mercy should come
in the nick of time.
b. 1928. d. 1974
I don’t like the majority of Anne Sexton’s work, but the pieces I do love, I love fiercely.
I’ve heard recordings of Anne reading - voice like a cigarette and a dirty martini.
She
was a model, a wife, a mother.
She was prone to
long bouts of depression
and fits of violence, which included beating her daughters.
She tried
to kill herself 3 times before she succeeded. In fact, the only reason it didn’t work the previous times was because she called a friend. The friend had given up when Anne called the last time.
She was very beautiful,
but that’s not really important.
Cigarettes And Whiskey And Wild, Wild Women
Anne Sexton
(from a song)
Perhaps I was born kneeling,
born coughing on the long winter,
born expecting the kiss of mercy,
born with a passion for quickness
and yet, as things progressed,
I learned early about the stockade
or taken out, the fume of the enema.
By two or three I learned not to kneel,
not to expect, to plant my fires underground
where none but the dolls, perfect and awful,
could be whispered to or laid down to die.
Now that I have written many words,
and let out so many loves, for so many,
and been altogether what I always was-
a woman of excess, of zeal and greed,
I find the effort useless.
Do I not look in the mirror,
these days,
and see a drunken rat avert her eyes?
Do I not feel the hunger so acutely
that I would rather die than look
into its face?
I kneel once more,
in case mercy should come
in the nick of time.