Sexton, Anne

Average customer rating:

She is so depressing
"Originality is important..."
You Wanna Know About Old School Confessional Poetry?
superior poetry
forcefull & fragile

The Complete Poems: Anne Sexton
Anne Sexton
Manufacturer: Mariner Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Similar Items:

Anne Sexton: A Biography
Collected Poems
The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
Ariel: The Restored Edition: A Facsimile of Plath's Manuscript, Reinstating Her Original Selection and Arrangement (P.S.)
Anne Sexton: A Self-Portrait in Letters

ASIN: 0395957761

Amazon.com

She drew her poems from a great depth in herself, and they continue to stir us...Her voice remains a distinctive one in American poetry of the past half century. -- J.D. McClatchy

Book Description

From the joy and anguish of her own experience, Sexton fashioned poems that told truths about the inner lives of men and women. This book comprises Sexton's ten volumes of verse, including the Pulitzer Prize-winner Live or Die, as well as seven poems form her last years.

Customer Reviews:

She is so depressing.......2007-05-12

I love Anne Sexton, but really, one can only take her a little at a time. Having read her bio and her daughters book, "To Mercy Street and Back" I had to have her complete works. Here is a woman who is stark raving mad, incests her daughter, and is still a great writer, but even my dark side says "too much". I can't read too much at a time. Still, i'm glad to have it in my library. It is amazint too me how much medication her doctors kept her on, on had an affair with her, one sold her tapes, supposedly confidential information. I feel a great deal of empathy and pity for this woman, oh she also had a husband who liked to use her as a punching bag and a mother in law that took over her household she lived with a bunch of enablers, without which she might never have become a writer, but maybe would have had a chance at life. A true American tragedy of a woman abused in every way, but still a genius.

"Originality is important...".......2006-05-14

The Complete Poems by gifted poet Anne Sexton is my favorite book of poetry. Sexton suffered from repeated periods of depression and attempted suicides, unfortantely this talented woman could not overcome her inner-demons, she took her life in 1974. The first poem I ever read by Sexton was The Abortion: "Somebody who should have been born is gone/just as the earth puckered its mouth/each bud puffing out from its knot/I changed my shoes and then drove south." Some of the other poems I love are The Wifebeater, Mr. Mine, In the Deep Museum, Killing the Spring, Man and Wife, and Imitations of Drowning. I have always enjoyed her most personal poems such as The Double Image: "I lived like an angry guest/like a partly mended thing/an outgrown child/I remember my mother did her best/she took me to Boston and had my hair restyled/your smile is like your mother's the artist said/I didn't seem to care/I had my portrait done instead." The first poem in the book is You, Doctor Martin: "Your business is people/you call at the madhouse/an oracular eye in our nest/out in the hall the intercom pages you/you twist in the pull of the foxy children who fall like floods of life in frost." Sexton also wrote beautiful love poems like the poem Eighteen Days Without You: "Swift boomerang, come get!/I am delicate/you've been gone/the losing has hurt me some, yet I must bend for you/see me arch, I'm turned on/my eyes are lawn-colored, my hair brunette." There are so many fabulous and haunting poems by Sexton, I highly recommend buying this collection, she was a real writer.

You Wanna Know About Old School Confessional Poetry?.......2006-02-28

In a nutshell, Anne Sexton is the second coming of Christ...and this is coming from an Atheist...if you dig Kim Addonizio, Maxine Kumin, or Denise Duhamel, pick up this definitive collection of Sexton's work and be prepared to be floored by one of the originators of the confessional school. Long before feminist revisionist mythmaking was a catch-phrase, Sexton was turning the Brothers Grimm on their heads...enjoy.

superior poetry.......2006-01-27

Oddly enough, I find Sexton's disturbing nature to be almost soothing in her poetry. Like Plath, her history of mental illness makes for a sad life but amazing poetry.

forcefull & fragile.......2005-09-22

Ann Sexton tried hard to liberate herself and stand tall in a male dominated society.
Her work is direct, without compromises and hits you hard where poetry should hit; in your heart. This beautifull book tells it all from the early work to the last bits, before she ended a life that looks like a brilliant career but must have been a struglle and extremely painfull proces of trying and trying again.
After reading this I can only be convinced that Ann and Sylvia Plath belong, or should belong, to the most influentual poets of the past decade.

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Sexton as poet-storyteller, retelling dark fairytales with modern details and personal themes
A Dark and Lovely Exploration of Fairy Tales
Beautifully-crafted fairy tale variations
Sexton's Transforming Take on Grimm is Fascinating
bad

Transformations
Anne Sexton
Manufacturer: Mariner Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Similar Items:

The Bloody Chamber
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The Great Fairy Tale Tradition: From Straparola and Basile to the Brothers Grimm (Norton Critical Editions)
Anne Sexton: A Biography
The Complete Poems: Anne Sexton

ASIN: 061808343X

Book Description

These poem-stories are a strange retelling of seventeen Grimms fairy tales, including "Snow White," "Rumpelstiltskin," "Rapunzel," "The Twelve Dancing Princesses," "The Frog Prince," and "Red Riding Hood." Astonishingly, they are as wholly personal as Anne Sexton's most intimate poems. "Her metaphoric strength has never been greater -- really funny, among other things, a dark, dark laughter" (C.K. Williams).

Customer Reviews:

Sexton as poet-storyteller, retelling dark fairytales with modern details and personal themes.......2005-12-28

In this remarkable collection of poems, Anne Sexton offers readers seventeen transformations of classic Brothers Grimm fairy tales. As she makes clear in the first poem "The Gold Key", Sexton assumes the persona of the storyteller for this collection, calling herself a "middle-aged witch" with "my face in a book and my mouth wide, ready to tell you a story or two." This device allows her to write about intensely personal topics, such as a sexually abusive father, through the detached voice of a storyteller. The use of fairy tales also provides Sexton with a shared cultural framework that enables her to communicate her own experiences and perspectives in a universal language that readers already understand intimately.

Fairytales have a power few of us realize. The stories shape many of our fantasies as children; they also condition us to accept traditional gender roles as we grow up. I believe that Anne Sexton understood their power and influence. She brilliantly tapped into that power and transformed the tales in a way that forces the reader to look at them with fresh eyes. Before launching into the tales themselves, Sexton set the themes of the stories in a modern or personal context. These connections, along with the interlacing of 20th century details (like soda pop and jockstraps) and her use of modern syntax in the fairy tales made their subversive commentary on the burdens and fears of women in a society shaped by male dominance startlingly clear.

In her transformed tales, Sexton examines the female archetypes they depict: the docile virgin, the wicked stepmother, the aging witch. She also sheds an illuminating, feminist light on the themes of female competition and the idea of happily ever after which pop up often in fairytales. It is significant that Sexton uses the gritty Grimm versions of the tales, instead of the child-friendly Disney versions we grew up with. Their original form reveals the subversive nature and insightful symbolism of the fairy tales, many of which were crafted by women.

While this collection is a departure from Sexton's typical confessional style, the poems of "Transformations" are unabashedly naked and intimately introspective--a wondrous achievement by one of our greatest poets.

A Dark and Lovely Exploration of Fairy Tales.......2003-04-29

I have Anne Sexton's complete works, and this book rises above the rest. The fairy tale framework compels more structure and discipline from a poet accustomed to rambling (but often brilliant) confessional observation. It is, in my estimation, her finest work.

Her take on "Snow White" refuses to establish heroines or villains. The girl is a lovely virgin, "cheeks as fragile as cigarette paper...lips like Vin du Rhone." The jealous queen, still beautiful at middle age but fearing that time isn't on her side and informed by her mirror she's no longer "the fairest of them all," tries to kill her. For this, she is punished by torture. The twist here is that Sexton makes it clear that some day the virgin girl will meet the queen's fate: "Meanwhile Snow White held court,/ rolling her china-blue eyes open and shut/ and sometimes referring to her mirror/ as women do."

The lesbian implications of "Rapunzel" are brought to the fore, and the transvestite deception of "Little Red Riding Hood" is remarked on. Sexton crashes the dreamy romance of Cinderella with the mundane reality of marriage. "Happily ever after" is contrasted with "diapers...arguing...getting a middle-aged spread." The Freudian power of mother is accented in the poet's take on "Hansel and Gretel"; Sexton brings out dark implications of child murder and pedophilia that the original tale merely glosses.

Twenty years before Robert Bly tackled the "Iron John" fairy tale, Sexton put her spin on it, stressing the main character's cannibalism and outcast status. She compares the hairy wild man to a string of deeply troubled characters from her imagination. It is here where her poetry reaches the peak of its intensity: "A lunatic wearing that strait jacket/ like a sleeveless sweater, singing to the wall like Muzak.../ And if they stripped him bare/ he would fasten his hands around your throat/ After that he would take your corpse/ and deposit his sperm in three orifices./ You know, I know,/ you'd run away."

Sexton's deep-delving into childhood stories, unearthing the very real and plausible taboos they skirt, is refreshing. Her anachronistic use of modern language (Muzak, for instance) is artful and effective. The best thing about this book, however, is that so much madness and sadness is surmised from such timeless and appealing stories. Happy endings are left intact but with a shadow cast over them. Sexton is a poet of the dark--with no one to save her "from the awful babble of that calling."

Beautifully-crafted fairy tale variations.......2000-06-14

In all my readings of fairy tale variations, this has to be one of the best. Anne Sexton takes a grim and twisted approach to the already grim and twisted versions of the Grimm Brothers.

Of course, these poems are simply an extension of Anne Sexton's already established confessional form, but poetry is, first and foremost, an expression of society. These poems fail to remain part of Sexton's inner turmoil. Rather, they mock society and the roles that women are traditionally placed within fairy tales. Anne Sexton, in an example here, uses anachronisms to reach her audience, making references to popular culture.

The Queen Cried two pails of sea water. She was as persistent as a Jehovah's Witness.

Anne Sexton, "Rumpelstiltskin"

Although Sexton's poems are not suitable for an audience of children, they do serve as interesting, even necessary reading, once a child has matured and read beyond the traditional fairy tales that are `suitable' for kids.

Sexton's Transforming Take on Grimm is Fascinating.......1999-10-24

I teach Anne Sexton in my freshman College English class and I work specifically from this text because the stories are at once familiar shared traditions and disturbing alterations of those traditions. The 18 year olds I teach, who only know fairy tales from the white-washed Disney versions, are intrigued by these dark and psychological interpretations. For the fairy tale afficianado these poems are a must read.

bad.......1999-03-19

it was ba

Average customer rating:

Love Poems.
Anne SEXTON
Manufacturer: see notes for publisher info
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000MXEFTW

Average customer rating:

mesmerizing!
Anne's poetry swims back to me
The Sound of Immortality
Certainly haunting
Harrowingly Beautiful

Anne Sexton Reads
Anne Sexton
Manufacturer: Caedmon
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Audio Cassette

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The Voice of the Poet : Anne Sexton
Sylvia Plath Reads
The Complete Poems: Anne Sexton
Anne Sexton: A Self-Portrait in Letters
Anne Sexton: A Biography

ASIN: 0694522228

Book Description

Anne Sexton's poems are brutally honest, often controversial, and always thought-provoking. Her work continues to dazzle new generations of readers and listeners.

On this recording, made shortly before her death in 1974, Ms. Sexton reads twenty-four poems selected from different periods in her creative life, all in a dramatic, resonant voice that complements the deeply personal quality of her dark poetic explorations. Ms. Sexton had a wonderful, unique literary vision, and she ranks among the great poets of our century.

<CENTER>Side 1:<BR>Her Kind, The Ambition Bird; Ringing the Bells, Music Swims Back toMe; The Truth the Dead Know, With Mercy for the Greedy; The StarryNight; Letter Written on a Ferry While Crossing Long Island Sound;Little Girl, My String Bean, My Lovely Woman; The Little Peasant</CENTER>

<CENTER>Side 2:<BR>Self in 1958, Divorce, Thy Name Is Woman; Gods Making a Living;Jesus Cooks, Jesus Walking; The Fury of Overshoes; The Fury of Cocks;Rowing, Riding the Elevator in the Sky, The Play; The RowingEndeth; Us; The Touch</CENTER>

Customer Reviews:

mesmerizing!.......2007-03-08

listening to anne sexton read her own works in her gravely, husky, smoke filled, throaty, voice is riveting.

Anne's poetry swims back to me.......2004-04-13

How absolutely superb to be read to by Anne Sexton...

That husky, sexy, deep cigarette voice-- reads her own poetry so beautifully, that nobody else could have done it justice, except Anne herself.

I love her poetry...."Music Swims Back To Me" is deliciously devine!!!!!!

Wait Mister. Which way is home?
They turned the light out
and the dark is moving in the corner.
There are no sign posts in this room,
four ladies, over eighty,
in diapers every one of them.
La la la, Oh music swims back to me
and I can feel the tune they played
the night they left me
in this private institution on a hill.... Anne Sexton

Get the audio! Get in a hot-bath and let Anne read to you!
You won't be disappointed!!!!!

The Sound of Immortality.......2000-12-26

Having to read the seminal poetry of Sexton--in my view a giant in the world of poetry (regarding just her talent for words alone, never mind her being a woman, etc., etc.)--and having to have fallen so deeply and intimately in love with the work--without ever having the opportunity to HEAR and LISTEN to her recite these masterpieces; well, that would be somewhat akin to having been given the gallies of all of Bob Dylan's lyrics, and never getting the chance to hear him sing[ing] them.Listening to her reading these words which I had known and admired for so long, and never knowing what her voice was like; finally hearing her speak the lines was like being in the room with a ghost who could make you hear her voice. Strangely, I felt throughout that I had known the voice all along...

Certainly haunting.......2000-04-09

I had read so much about Sexton's dramatic readings and her absolute captivation of an audience through her reading. This tape, though, does not re-create that for me. It is infused with the drama characteristic of her performances, to be sure, but it is not the voice I expected from her and this somehow makes it disconcerting for me. She sounds (due to her habit of chain smoking much of her life) like an old woman, even though she was quite young. It's ok, but just not all that I expected.

Harrowingly Beautiful.......1998-12-01

This recording, made a few short months before Sexton's death, is a remarkable document for anyone interested in Sexton, confessional poetry, or American literature in general. The selection of poems is at once characteristic of Sexton's work without becoming overly monotonous in tone or subject, but it is really the sound of the author's own voice that makes the poetry come alive. Sexton's dark voice adds an element of authenticity to these poems that is perhaps lost when they are read silently. Her convincing reading is truly a testament to her own tortured yet beautifully rendered artistic vision.

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Restrained Melancholy and Rhythmic Genius

To Bedlam and Part Way Back
Anne Sexton
Manufacturer: Houghton Mifflin (P)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
Similar Items:

Life Studies & For the Union Dead
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Anne Sexton: A Biography
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Autobiography of Leroi Jones

ASIN: 0395081793

Customer Reviews:

Restrained Melancholy and Rhythmic Genius.......2003-06-01

In this evocative volume (and also in the second book All My Pretty Ones), Sexton's despair is still beautifully controlled, enabling her to discuss it with an aloof but engaging sense of objectivity. For example, The Waiting Head is a poignant memory of a beloved grandmother who lived alone and the poem ends with the line "but no one came no one came." Equally poignant, but humorous too, is her description of being admitted to a mental institution. The poem is called Music Swims Back To Me and contains a repeating refrain and flowing rhythm that convey the sense of alienation particularly well. Said The Poet To The Analyst, a look at the relation between patient and therapist, is another masterpiece in its economical use of vivid images and the rhythm of the words. The poem Her Kind described the poet as the witch, inhabiting a different world and a person "who is not ashamed to die." The Moss Of His Skin opens with a quote from Psychoanalysis And Psychoanalytic Review and is a resigned description of a terrifying occurrence, being buried alive. The musical quality of Sexton's poetry comes to the fore again in her tale of accepting the death of a friend, in the poem Elizabeth Gone, one of the most magical elegies I have ever read. Noon Walk On The Asylum Lawn integrates a line from Psalm 23 in each of the three stanzas, juxtaposing the reassuring words of protection with her own terrifying observations to eerie effect, for example, the second verse:
"The grass speaks.
I hear green chanting all day.
I will fear no evil, fear no evil
The blades extend
And reach my way."
A sense of first hand experience lends a genuine authenticity to these poems, whilst her mastery of imagery and the natural rhythm of language is original and impressive. To Bedlam And Part Way Back and All My Pretty Ones remain her best books, since the later works became so bleak and harrowing that some of them are very painful to read and digest.

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Looove Anne!
The Art of Self-Exposure

Anne Sexton: A Self-Portrait in Letters
Anne Sexton
Manufacturer: Mariner Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Similar Items:

Anne Sexton: A Biography
The Complete Poems: Anne Sexton
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No Evil Star: Selected Essays, Interviews, and Prose (Poets on Poetry)

ASIN: 0618492429

Book Description

An expression of an extraordinary poet's life story in her own words, this book shows Anne Sexton as she really was in private, as she wrote about herself to family, friends, fellow poets, and students. Anne's daughter Linda Gray Sexton and her close confidant Lois Ames have judiciously chosen from among thousands of letters and provided commentary where necessary. Illustrated throughout with candid photographs and memorabilia, the letters -- brilliant, lyrical, caustic, passionate, angry -- are a consistently revealing index to Anne Sexton's quixotic and exuberant personality.

Customer Reviews:

Looove Anne!.......2003-11-04

I love reading other people's letters. It's a little like catching them undressing! ... Making one feel a little naughty for watching.
Ann's letters are quite revealing, refreshing, honest, as if she is talking to you directly. The misspelled words and puntuation errors just add to the honesty of the words...especially in the beginning of the book. The way Anne jumps from here to there... the same way a person's thoughts or ideas would. Anne writes her letters like this!

Can you believe Anne Sexton got a C in Engish class w/ little effort? Just goes to show you, the genius many of us may hold inside. But throughout the letters, Anne continually second guesses herself, continually craves validity about her writing..."Is this any good?"

She and Sylvia Plath have much in common and discuss their suicide attempts as if it is a common thing to discuss. "How many times have you tried to kill yourself?" Sounds like a poet to me!

I so wanted Anne to be happy, to feel satisfyed, to be content with her MANY accomplishments, but the mental illness would not allow her this luxury.

Anne wrote letters to many people and made them fall in love with her..."I love you." she told many of them. "I don't know what I would do without you." She even wrote beautiful letters to a monk who was, after a while, willing to leave his Monk-hood. "Oh no!" Anne wrote back. "This love affair can only be in letters!" Yes, what a perfect distance, Anne.

One fan wrote about his love for Anne and her poetry. "I am only a housewife!" She wrote back. Did she really see herself this way? Oh, Anne!

Anne said..."Poetry is the opposite of Suicide."
WOW!
And when she finally stopped writing it, she killed herself once again. This time for real.

I give Anne's letters five stars, but the book as a whole four stars because of the lack of Anne's poetry, which should have been available for the reader throughout the book.

I loooove Anne Sexton!!!!!! put this review under Siammuse!!!!!

The Art of Self-Exposure.......2001-03-20

The Art of Self-Exposure

Anne Sexton (1928-1974) showed the best of herself in letters. To quote Donald Hall she was a `soul-flasher.' She was passionately engaged in living and tormented into dying. Her flight through life was one of breathtaking bravery in the face of crippling odds. The letters date from 1944 when she was sixteen, through 1974 a few days before her death. Full credit should go to the editors, Linda Gray Sexton, daughter of Ann, and Lois Ames, Ann's closest friend. The commentary is sensitive, knowledgeable and readable. The necessary biographical linkage is there.

There have always been unfortunate attempts to link Ann Sexton and Sylvia Plath. Their similarities are their age, their sex, their birthplace in the Northeastern United States, and their self-inflicted deaths. And there the similarity ends. Ann was a fragile child who emerged a tormented woman. She was creatively brilliant in a very natural sense; yet she worked feverishly all her life to improve every word she wrote. She once said, "I am tearing at the stars." Ann enjoyed a large circle of devoted friends and repaid their devotion in kind. She was supportive and free with advice to younger struggling poets when she could barely survive her own despair. Ann was a naturally beautiful woman who seemed completely unaware or disinterested in her own breathtaking countenance.

I am astounded at how helpless she became at the end of her life. I truly do not comprehend how her friends and family could bear her onslaughts of misery and self-paralysis. They must have loved her very much. These letters are appealing and a pleasure to read. She was a wordsmith as well as an incredible poet. Following is a stanza from "All My Pretty Ones"

Never loving ourselves,

hating even our shoes and our hats,

we love each other, precious, precious.

Our hands are light blue and gentle.

Our eyes are full of terrible confessions.

But when we marry, the children leave in disgust.

There is too much food, and no one left over

Book Description

Twenty-five poems celebrating the sensual frontiers of Sexton's time.

Customer Reviews:

number one on the list of this century's greatest poetry.......1998-11-27

although all anne's work has moved me to contemplation (and often tears), love poems has been the most gorgeously presented and emotionally draining collection of poetry any author i have before seen published. i challenge all readers to find a more beautiful reflection of inferior self-perception than in 'for my lover, returning to his wife.' anne's poetry is as once angelic and crude, inspiring a kinship between herself and the reader -- the true mark of a gifted writer.

IT WAS A INTERESTING TEAR JERKER BUT WAS EXCITING TO.......1997-02-07

I THOUGHT THAT SHE GOT INTO REALISM AND HEART WITH THIS BOOK AND REALLY WROTE ABOUT IT IT WAS ALMOST LIKE SHE LIVED THESE FEELINGS HER SELF I REALLY LOVE HER WRITING AND POETRY SHE MADE ME FEEL THOSE THOUGHTS And feelings i love this writer!!!!!!

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Joey and the Birthday Present
Maxine and Anne SEXTON KUMIN
Manufacturer: W.W. Norton
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000ILN3BE

Average customer rating:

riveting!
But life is a trick, life is a kitten in a sack
If you like Sexton's poerty

The Voice of the Poet : Anne Sexton
Henri Cole
Manufacturer: Random House Audio
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Audio Cassette

Poetry, Drama & Short Stories | Literature & Fiction | Books on Cassette | Formats | Books

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Anne Sexton Reads
Sylvia Plath Reads
Langston Hughes (Voice of the Poet)
Adrienne Rich (Voice of the Poet)
Voice of the Poet: e.e. cummings (Voice of the Poet)

ASIN: 0375415858
Release Date: 2000-04-04

Book Description

Read by the Poet
One Cassette, 1 hour

The second installment of our exclusive The Voice of the Poet series, comprised of rare archival recordings, some never before released, featuring Anne Sexton.

This audio production is accompanied by a book containing the text to the poems and a commentary by J.D. McClatchy.

Customer Reviews:

riveting!.......2007-03-08

it is mesmerizing to listen to anne read her own written words in her husky, throaty, dusky, smoke filled, hauntingly beautiful, voice!

But life is a trick, life is a kitten in a sack.......2004-11-21

I assume if you're looking at this item that you'll already be somewhat familiar with Sexton's work, so I'll comment only on the recording itself, in an objective (and objectifying!) sense. Anne Sexton, if I may say so, has an incredible voice. It's deep and throaty, as if she's had a few drinks and continues to chain-smoke as she reads (which is entirely possible). Among my favorite poems to hear Anne read is "Some Foreign Letters," in which she achieves an intensely acerbic tone, spitting out the words to her subject. I've seen a different recording, in which she reads that same poem, and she pronounces it tenderly, with an obvious affection for the woman she's talking to. Hearing these differences, the way that one poet seems to change her mind about her own work, is fascinating.

Anne Sexton's voice is gorgeous, and her poetry makes so much sense when read by the woman herself. Buy this recording.

If you like Sexton's poerty.......2000-06-19

Reading Anne Sexton's poetry is amazing by itself, so imagine what it would be like to hear them read out loud by miss Sexton herself. A great experience for a true poetry lover.

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The Good, The Bad, And All The Pretty Ones
Moving tapestry of melancholy and acceptance
The best Sexton-- read it before you read the collected works

All My Pretty Ones
Anne Sexton
Manufacturer: Houghton Mifflin (P)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

To Bedlam and Part Way Back
Anne Sexton: A Biography
Ariel: The Restored Edition: A Facsimile of Plath's Manuscript, Reinstating Her Original Selection and Arrangement (P.S.)
Autobiography of Leroi Jones
Life Studies & For the Union Dead

ASIN: 0395081777

Customer Reviews:

The Good, The Bad, And All The Pretty Ones.......2003-12-17

There are few people who can look at the world and see consistently either a dark paradise of pleasure, pain and perdition, or a sub-Eden of endless wonders and gratitude. It is hard to find such persons because the world in fact exists in both realms, the light and the dark. The inherent beauty of life and order and prosperity is conjoined to its bastard twin, the seemingly endless cycle of suffering, death and calamity. If one could surgically separate these two halves of the world, the aura, the spiritual connection left between them would be the poetry of Anne Sexton. Her poetry is careful to never appear too cheerful, yet it can never fully condemn the heart's need for gladness. There seems to be a desperate loathing for hope in her writing, yet the writing itself becomes redemption. Just as the separation of twins joined by birth cannot undo that certain duality unknown by those born alone, Anne Sexton seems to carefully choose which way to shift her weight as she sits on the fence.

The two-faced reality of living is a difficult burden for any of us to bear, but what drives us toward our conclusions is often unclear. This, of course, is what we have poets for. These lines from "With Mercy For The Greedy" define, at least for Sexton, the only ointment for the injuries of the world.
"This is what poems are:
With mercy
For the greedy,
They are the tongue's wrangle,
The world's pottage, the rat's star."

Her poetry is her confession of sin, her prayers of both petition and praise. The stanzas of her poems are the frontlines in her battle to choose a side. Sexton longs to touch the sweet, soft, white underbelly of the world, but consistently draws her hand back from the raised and prickling hairs on the back of the beast. She sees the wonders of the world, even acknowledges God, but as she writes, "need is not quite belief."

In All My Pretty Ones, Sexton does seem at times to step over the edge, completely, into either the bliss of ignorance or the dead man's walk of self-absorbed bitterness. Her poem, "The Hangman," is a heartbreaking picture of disappointed motherhood, in which a child is stricken near death, only to live on, cruelly.
"Supplied
With air, against my guilty wish,
Your clogged pipes cried
Like Lazarus."

Against her guilty wish. How many times have we wished for the beauty to die? How many times have we begged the eyes of the face of God to simply turn away? It is this kind of realism in Sexton's poetry that does not anger or hurt her reader, because she will not take a side. Indeed, she is not without her moments of joy.

"I Remember" is one of the few poems in this collection which lingers for its whole duration on the beautiful. At least in this collection, it is a rare moment. All of her images are of satisfied adventure, not perfect, but just right.
"...one day I tied my hair back
with a ribbon and you said
that I looked almost like
a puritan lady and what
I remember best is that
the door to your room was
the door to mine."

It is in the lines of these poems that one sees the spirit of a person torn in two. Sexton's poems are exploratory, consolatory, and reconciliatory. She seems to be trying constantly to make even the numbers of an impossible equation. If ever wandering spirits, lost and confused souls could communicate their frustrations, perhaps they would find their clearest voice in the words of Sexton's poems. As she writes in "Flight" of the streetlights which, "sucked in the insects who had nowhere else to go," Sexton's poetry seems to beckon the leftover auras of broken people to sit with her on the fence, in the hope that they will not have to chose a side after all, and perhaps instead there can be a middle place, a gathering of unhappy dreamers, all her pretty ones.

Moving tapestry of melancholy and acceptance.......2003-06-01

The magnificent title poem opens this second volume of Sexton's poetry and again showcases her innovative skill at weaving words, images and rhythm to gripping effect in its description of sorting through personal effects after the death of a parent. There's some quirky humour in A Curse Against Elegant Elegies, especially in the image of the surly preacher who shuffled into the yard "looking for a scapegoat." One of the most moving poems here is titled For Eleanor Boylan Talking With God, a lovely and touching description of a devout friend. And one of the saddest poems, The Truth The Dead Know, reveals the poet's feelings as she leaves church after the death of her father. The flowing structure of the poem and the resigned sense of finality are breathtaking; it reminds me of the music of Angels Of Light, especially the desolate landscape of Song For My Father on the New Mother album. The poem Old brilliantly juxtaposes the reality of a geriatric ward's needles, rubber sheets and tubes with a childhood dream of eating wild blueberries, whilst The Starry Night which opens with a quote by Vincent Van Gogh, reminds me of Sylvia Plath's Ariel and Don McLean's song Starry Starry Night. Other favourites of mine include Lament, In The Deep Museum and The Black Art which reminds me of the poem Her Kind from the first book To Bedlam And Part Way Back. All My Pretty Ones shows Anne Sexton at the height of her art and together with Bedlam, should be in every poetry lover's collection.

The best Sexton-- read it before you read the collected works.......1999-11-26

All My Pretty One is, in my opinion, the best of the Sexton works, even as it is also one of the most difficult to read for being sad.

When she says "Also, I am tired of all the dead" in the poem "A Curse Against Elegies", it is a measure of her strength as a poet how heavily that line reads. It should also not be forgotten (as it too often is about Sexton) how well this work depicts not only the sorrow, but the tentative steps towards something lighter:

"I cannot promise very much.
I give you the images I know.
Lie still with me and watch.
A pheasant moves
by like a seal, pulled through the mulch
by his thick white collar. He's on show
like a clown. He drags a beige feather that he removed,
one time, from an old lady's hat.
We laugh and we touch.
I promise you love. Time will not take away that."

All My Pretty Ones is also one of the poetry books that functions very well together as a book rather than as merely a collection of poems. Accordingly, even though many or most of these poems are available through other collections, I would advise you to read this as a single volume if you can find it.

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