Anne Sexton, poet, died at age forty-five by suicide. She is one of our most widely read poets and as she herself explained, “The only confessional poet.”She was born Anne Gray Harvey on November 9, 1928 in Newton Massachusetts.  Her parents were Ralph and Mary Gray Harvey, well-to-do and fun loving products of the Roaring Twenties. They had their daughters at a young age. Anne and her sisters,  Jane and Blanche were not close.  Jane was known as daddy’s girl and Blanche was the smart one.  Anne as the baby of the family craved attention. Her most haunting memory was of being shut up in her room as a toddler. She later wrote, in her poetry, of this room as terrifying. Life in this household was formal. All the girls were sent to the beauty parlor to have their hair done but Anne’s was more often than not snarled and tangled. Her hems trailed and her clothes untidy. So she was left out of occasions which called for good appearance and polite manners.

Image by theogeo via Flickr

Anne had her first romance at age fourteen. It was in the early forties and he was an English boy that had been sent to America to wait out the war with relatives. Anne bloomed during her teenage years. She left her shyness behind and became the center piece of her girlhood friends. At sixteen Anne began going to bars and parties. She took up smoking and looked and acted older than her age. Photos of Anne at the time show a strong resemblance to Jane Russell. After a break up with her boyfriend Jack McCarthy, Anne wrote her first poems. Later she looked back on them with amusement and called them ” bleak, depressing, horrific poems.”

In her senior year Anne met Alfred Muller Sexton. They were underage but fell in love and when her period was late she climbed out an upstairs window to elope. Her period started before they reached the state line but that had no intention of turning back. The couple were married in a little town of Sunbury NC. Invited to dinner at the Sexton’s, Anne smoked and left brilliant lipstick stains on the linen napkins. Her mother-in-law was dismayed.

When the Korean war broke out in 1950 Kayo (as Alfred was called) joined the Naval reserve, he was shipped overseas in May and Anne returned to her parent’s home.  Anne began dating other men. she said, “I don’t want to have an affair with anyone, but I have to. It’s the quality of action. Pound, pound, pound, the heart, makes me crazy and out of control.” This didn’t interrupt her marriage.  When Kayo’s ship was sent to San Francisco in 1952 for an overhaul, Anne joined him.  She became pregnant and returned to her parent’s home for the birth of her baby.

In June after watching the coronation of Elizabeth 11 on television Anne went to the hospital for the birth of her first child. Her father sent flowers and a note saying, “I hope to see you tomorrow with Prince George or Princess Linda.” On June 21, 1953 Linda Gray Sexton was born. Kayo arrived three days later from the Korean war to take up civilian life. Kayo took a job with his father and two years later they had a second child, Joyce Ladd Sexton. Anne was fearful about her children and had such weepy, panic attacks she was unable to attend to them properly. She had spells of blinding rage and would grab Linda and choke or slap her. She began to be afraid that she would kill her children,. She sought oblivion with sleeping tablets and talked of suicide. Her doctor thought it was serious enough to get her into Westwood Lodge for a mental evaluation. She was released in a few days but continued seeing Dr. Orne for eight years. But things did not improve with the children. They made demands on her emotions and brought out all her neediness. The only thing she could find any comfort in was her poetry which she had given up when she decided it wasn’t good enough.

With Dr.Orne’s encouragement, Anne began writing poetry seriously. He told her, “All your life you have been an expert at feeling, but not an expert at knowing what you feel.” Writing poetry became a part of her therapy. She realized she had something to give to people like herself. They would think, “There’s somebody else like me!” “They wouldn’t feel alone.” This was the turning point for Anne Sexton. She had found something to do with her life and as a result she threw her whole being into writing. Between January and February of 1957 she brought Dr.Orne over sixty poems. They were finished works,carefully typed on bonded white paper. They were manuscripts.

This is the first part of Anne Sexton Poet. Look for future chapters to come

http://quazen.com/reference/biography/anne-sexton-2/

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