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The Life Of Anne Sexton

The Life Of Anne Sexton. Early Life. Born November 9 th 1928 Died October 4 th 1974 Disliked and disobedient in school Parents sent her to boarding school in 1945 . Parents. Ralph Harvey who was a successful woolen manufacturer and Mary Gray Staples Father was an alcoholic

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The Life Of Anne Sexton

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  1. The Life Of Anne Sexton

  2. Early Life • Born November 9th 1928 • Died October 4th 1974 • Disliked and disobedient in school • Parents sent her to boarding school in 1945

  3. Parents • Ralph Harvey who was a successful woolen manufacturer and Mary Gray Staples • Father was an alcoholic • Mother was a writer frustrated with family life

  4. Growing Up • Some evidence of abuse by parents • Anne felt that her parents were hostile • Found Refuge in her nana (Great Aunt) • First started writing when sent to boarding school

  5. Graduation and College • After graduation she eloped with Alfred “Kayo” Sexton even though she was already engaged • Became a fashion model • Her infidelity while Alfred was at war led her to therapy

  6. Later On • She became very depressed after the death of her nana in 1954 • Went back into therapy after the birth of her second child in 1955 • She abused her children on many occasions • After many attempted suicides she was institutionalized

  7. Continued • While she was institutionalized her therapist encouraged her to write • In 1960 several of her poems were published • At that time she became known to many other poets and considered one of the best

  8. In 1957 both Anne’s died • This led to more breakdowns • Poetry was the only thing to stabilize her • Her husband abused her due to her new found fame • She continued to decline and depression and suicide attempts were more frequent

  9. In 1974 she divorced Kayo and became even more depressed and lonely • After the divorce alcoholism and depression took its toll • Sexton was searching for love through her many sex affairs • In an interview a year before Anne aid that she would not allow her book “The awful rowing toward god” which was published not long before • In October 1974 Sexton locked herself in the garage with the car running • She died of carbon monoxide poisoning

  10. Accomplishments • Radcliff Institute Fellowship in 1961 • Poetry book selection in 1964 • Pulitzer Prize in 1967 for her work, Live or Die • Shelly Memorial prize in 1967

  11. Writing Styles • Sexton’s earlier poems were focused on her life and feministic ideas Such as abortion, adultery and masturbation • Later on in her life her works focused more on religion and her life

  12. Works 45 Mercy Street (1976) All My Pretty Ones (1962)Live or Die (1966)Love Poems (1969)Selected Poems (1964)The Awful Rowing Toward God (1975)The Book of Folly (1973)The Complete Poems (1981)The Death Notebooks (1974)To Bedlam and Part Way Back (1960)Transformations (1971)Words for Dr. Y.: Uncollected Poems (1978)

  13. Critical Reviews Maxine Kumin, a poet who enrolled in the same workshop as Anne, said that it was the writing that gave her the ability to endure life as long as she did. It was a way for her to let out her feelings and make it through just another day. That and the fact that she wanted to educate other women about feministic problems

  14. Continued Diane Hume George she assimilated the superficially opposing but deeply similar ways of thinking represented by poetry and psychoanalysis. Sexton explored the myths by and through which our culture lives and dies: the archetypal relationships among mothers and daughters, fathers and daughters, mothers and sons, gods and humans, men and women

  15. Continued J. D. McClatchy All My Pretty Ones opens on "The Truth the Dead Know," which is their absolute isolation, against which the poet fights to save both herself and her dead parents. Her father's death, three months after her mother's, intervened not only between the different concerns of these first two books but also between the completed realization of her inheritance: in the fine print of their wills, the poet fears to find her father's alcoholism and her mother's cancer, which would at the same time prove her their daughter and destroy her. The sins of the father are revisited in the title poem, which blends memories and objects like snapshots out of order to invoke the man's loss and, again, her guilty. . . .

  16. Continued Greg Johnson In that strange, bitter elegy, "The Truth the Dead Know," Sexton seems to eschew the common rituals of mourning: "Gone, I say and walk from church, / refusing the stiff procession to the grave"; she prefers, instead to "cultivate myself" and to avoid such a powerful intimation of mortality as the death of both parents within a few months. The poem ends, however, by emphasizing not her own refusals but those of the dead, and into her voice creeps something like envy. . . .

  17. Work Cited • Wagner-Martin, Linda. "Anne Sexton." Modern American Poetry. March 18 2001. 24 Apr 2008 <http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/s_z/sexton/sexton_life.htm>. • Trinidad , David. "Anne Sexton: An Actress in her own Autobiographic Play." Anne Sexton: the life V. the work. PSA Journal. 24 Apr 2008 <http://www.poetrysociety.org/journal/articles/sexton.html>.

  18. By John McClure

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