An American Poet: Anne Sexton

http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/annesexton/635


1) Anne Sexton lived a complex and overall depressing life. Although she was living comfortably, her life was completely different behind the doors of her Newton, Massachusetts home. Her father was an alcoholic and her mother’s literary aspirations often were distracted because of affairs at home. Anne often felt her parents were hostile toward her and feared that they would abandon her. She found refuge from this drama through her Nana.
Her later life was followed by fame, infidelity in her husbands absence, therapy, medication, the death of her Nana, the birth of two children, the unexpected death of her parents, several attempts at suicide, and finally, a divorce. During her struggles, the only road to stability seemed to be through her poetry, art, friends, and affairs. She died due to asphyxiation of carbon monoxide in her Boston home.
In her poem, she wished to die among the stars. In other words, to exceed fame and escape her profound lifestyle. With all of her drama, she probably had to fight everyday to succeed in separating her life as a celebrity from her complicated life at home. Reading her biography, her life sounded really exhausting. The way she described the stars that night gave some insight into her faith that when she dies she hopes to be at peace.

2.) Anne Sexton’s imagery is the main rhetorical aspect that contributed to my reading of her poem/ She uses colorful adjectives and suggestive verbs that really create a source of vivid imagination within the reader’s mind. Some examples are “the night boils”, “the moon bulges in its orange irons”, and “the old unseen serpent swallows up the stars”. In my opinion, the arbitrary actions she describes are what kept the poem moving for me.

http://www.poemhunter.com/anne-sexton/
In her poems, it is often difficult to decipher what she is trying to depict in her writing. At least, the first time around. However, in her poems, Sexton has a lot of emotion and expression. She often describes a scene, and then warps it in some way. If she were an artist, I would guess she was a post impressionist. Well, actually, she was an artist, and even quoted Vincent Van Gogh in her poem (another post impressionist), so maybe she was. In that case, I think she is amazing to have the same affects in her writing as a post impressionist has in their paintings.

4) What makes Sexton’s writings distinctively American is the fact that she writes about whatever she wants, and expresses herself in the best way that she can. The fact that she is a poet is also distinctively American because in her life, she wanted to live it the best way she would, and the best way she thought she should live her life was through expression. She isn’t just an idle day dreamer coming up with crazy scenarios and metaphors, she made her imagination a profession.