Anne Sexton
(1928 - 1974)
American poet, playwright, author of children's books, short story writer, and essayist.
Anne Sexton: Introduction
Anne Sexton: Principal Works
Anne Sexton: Primary So...
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Biography EssayAnne Sexton was a confessional poet; that is, she wrote poetry out of the most intimate and painful details of her life. To a certain extent every poet does this, but few have done so w...
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A contemporary American poet, Anne Sexton (1928-1974) was best known for the relentlessly autobiographical nature of her poetry and for her personal "confessional" voice, which led some fans to believ...
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Anne Sexton was a confessional poet; that is, she wrote poetry out of the most intimate and painful details of her life. To a certain extent every poet does this, but few have done so with the frankne...
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Anne Sexton began writing poetry at age twenty-eight as a form of psychotherapy during treatment for a clinical depression. By the time of her suicide at age forty-five she had become a major figure i...
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In the following essay, Long explores the suicidal urge in Anne Sexton's poetry.
as if day had rearranged into night and bats flew in the sun.
Was Anne Sexton's poetry primarily ...
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Critical Essay by David Bromwich
To mourn the woman [Anne Sexton] by telling less than the truth about the poet is to perform no service. She was, let it be said, a flawed poet who became more deeply ...
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Critical Essay by Dorothy Rabinowitz
Anne Sexton's is, indeed, a poetic voice that seems, even when most intense, to lack heart. The falsification of feeling that is a prominent feature of her ...
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Critical Essay by Gail Pool
[By] the end [of Sexton's career her] work had deteriorated badly. But long before, the faults had been advertised, and like most advertisements the statements were ...
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Critical Essay by Robert Phillips
Mrs. Sexton's body of work evinces a definite progress in personalization. This progress made a giant leap when, in 1971, appeared Transformations, a rich coll...
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Critical Essay by Rise B. Axelrod
In her poetry, Anne Sexton plunges into the abyss and touches the source of regeneration. In the first 3 volumes, To Bedlam and Part Way Back, All My Pretty Ones and ...
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Critical Essay by J. D. Mcclatchy
[Anne Sexton] has described herself as "a primitive," yet is master of intricate formal techniques. Her voice has steadily evolved and varied and, at ti...
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Critical Essay by Kate Green
After her death Anne Sexton's poetry continues to push against the boundaries of loss, to embody the daily nature of a despair that is as quiet as a lit fuse. Immin...
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Critical Essay by William H. Pritchard
[Anne Sexton's] "self-portrait in letters" is very powerful publicity. There is something to be learned from it about the American poetry sc...
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In the following essay, Juhasz explores Sexton's creative urge as both a curse and cathartic force in her life. Juhasz maintains that Sexton's dual identity as housewife and poet proved ...
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In the following essay, Shurr discusses the composition and central motifs of Love Poems. According to Shurr, in Love Poems Sexton "merges the possibility of the ancient genre of erotic love po...
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In the following essay, Middlebrook examines Sexton's artistic development from suburban mother to celebrated poet, focusing on the significance of her literary mentors, particularly her relati...
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In the following essay, George explores the psychoanalytic significance of infant feeding, nurturance, and excretion in Sexton's poetry, especially as evident in O Ye Tongues. According to Geor...
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In the following essay, Shurr discusses the significance of Sexton's increasing religiosity and impending suicide revealed in The Awful Rowing Toward God.
Schweigen. Wer inniger schwieg r...
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In the following essay, George examines the significance of forbidden knowledge, incest, and psychic guilt in Sexton's poetry. George contends that Sexton's truth-seeking resembles that ...
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In the following essay, Hankins explores Sexton's response to patriarchal oppression and search for feminine identity in her portrayal of the female body. According to Hankins, "Her body...
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In the following essay, Middlebrook discusses Sexton's friendship with James Wright and the composition The Awful Rowing Toward God.
Between 10 and 30 January 1973, Anne Sexton wrote—...
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In the following essay, Long examines Sexton's preoccupation with death and suicide as an integral feature of her writing. According to Long, "Her poems clearly reflect her understanding...
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On what I imagine would be a dark day, November 9th, 1928, the dark, intelligent, and brilliant mind known as Anne Sexton was born in the small town of Newton, Massachusetts. She was the daughter of ...
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Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath were both great minds, creative individuals, and some of the greatest poetic individuals of the twentieth century. Though Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath were great poets...
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Throughout time, literature and its artists have had to accomplish something different and special that most screen players and screen writers will never have to do. Writers have to be able to write m...
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When I first discovered the poem, "Self in 1958" by Anne Sexton, my head filled with the images of life-sized plastic Barbies littering the streets of the city with their plastic Kens and convertibl...
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