The Inevitability of Death

Death and its looming inevitability are Anne Sexton's key preoccupations in nearly all of her poems. This is not to say that she doesn't deviate from this theme from time to time, but in the vast majority of Sexton's work, her relationship with death borders on the obsessive. Indeed, Sexton was first encouraged to write after her hospitalization from a suicide attempt, so it stands to reason that the author would use her art as a means of coming to terms with her demons. The poet perceives death in a variety of ways, personifying it as a lover, a frightening specter, a faithful friend, and as an infant that she cradles in her arms. Sexton never seems to consider death as a vague, distant conclusion, but rather as a hovering, omnipresent certainty.

The poet is also fond of predicting her own death, which can be...