Her words are moving. Some poems were very cutting-edge for her time. ( )

meh, started this, was unimpressed, will come back to it later. Hard to judge someone from their early works, maybe she gets better and stops sulking so much. doubtful.

This took me quite a while to get through, although not quite as long as I thought it would. Sexton's poems are raw, immediate, and at times make for painful reading. Also, because they are so confessional and autobiographical, there are times when one feels as those Sexton is speaking in pointed code that will only be understood by those closest to her. Overall, it's an impressive body of work, and my copy of this book is now bristling with slips of paper marking poems I want to return to later. ( )

Spooky, spiky, unforgettable poetry ( )

Before, I really dug Anne Sexton. But now she feels like a part of me.

This text includes all seven of her published books (To Bedlam and Part Way Back; All My Pretty Ones; Live or Die; Love Poems; Transformations; The Book of Folly; The Death Notebooks; The Awful Rowing Toward God), two posthumously published books (45 Mercy Street and Words For Doctor Y), as well as half a dozen previously unpublished poems.
I posted about Anne Sexton fairly recently, over the summer, when I was a bit more than half-way through the book, and commented that I seem to be drawn to the confessional poets. I think I remarked then that it was predictable and typical of me.
But Anne is different. At least, she is to me now. I'm not sure I could make it through over 600 pages of Berryman's poetry, or Ginsberg's, or Plath's.

Morrissey said that "(Anne Sexton) died for you, you know. And for me." but quite frankly I am, as of late, entirely unable to view suicide as something romantic or selfless and this sentiment rings shallow. Don't tell me she died for us. Her corpse left us no poetry. ( )