(1928-1974)
A Woman Scorned
Anne Sexton's poetry is best described as confessional. In her poems she deatils the tragedies that have left deep scars in her delicate soul. Her poetry drips with the pain and pressure of a male-structured society trying to box her into the suffocating position of a typical house wife. Anne Sexton, once a model, overcomes those societal pressures and sets her place in the canon of great American Poets.
Anne Sexton grew up in Massachusetts, living in a typical middle-class neighborhood. She married in her teens, and until the birth of her daughter, she never showed much inclination to her power for poetry. Sexton began to suffer from depression and her therapist suggested for her to write poetry to release her built-up emotions. She excelled and soon began to have contact with poets like Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath, with whom Sexton would exchange details of suicide attempts.
Anne Sexton wrote several books of poetry, with Live or Die , which contains her poem "Wanting to Die", winning her the Pulitzer Prize. It would appear that Sexton's life was perfect: a sudden fame in poetic circles, influential friends, her own music group, teaching offers, etc., but Sexton was fighting with her inner demons. In Babel To Byzantium, James Dickey critized Sexton's poetry: "As they are, they lack concentration, and above all the profound, individual lingusitic suggestibility and accuracy that poems must have to be good." Sexton later met Dickey at a party. When Dickey saw her natural beauty, he began to recant on his criticism. He tried that night, in his druken stupor, and on other nights, to seduce her, but could not. Dickey described her as looking like a bear with her huge fur coat on.
On October 4, 1974 Anne Sexton came to the crossroads of her inner chaos. She had lunch with a friend, and seemed quite jovial. When she returned home she poured herself some vodka and phoned a friend about their date that night. Afterwards she removed all her rings and put on her mother's big fur coat. Sexton had always commented on how wearing the coat made her feel like her mother. Sexton went into her garage, closed the doors behind her, and sat in the driver's seat of her car sipping her vodka. Wearing her mother's fur coat, she placed the big purse containing her rings in her lap, started her 1967 Cougar, and turned up the car's radio. She was found dead later that day.