Anne Sexton: A Self-Portrait in Letters
by Anne Sexton 
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A revealing collection of letters from Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Anne Sexton While confessional poet Anne Sexton included details of her life and battle with mental illness in her published work, her letters to family, friends, and fellow poets provide an even more intimate glimpse into her private world. Selected from thousands of letters and edited by Linda Gray Sexton, the poet's daughter, and Lois Ames, one of her closest friends, this collection exposes Sexton's inner life from her show more boarding school days through her years of growing fame and ultimately to the months leading up to her suicide. Correspondence with writers like W. D. Snodgrass, Robert Lowell, and May Swenson reveals Sexton's growing confidence in her identity as a poet as she discusses her craft, publications, and teaching appointments. Her private letters chart her marriage to Alfred "Kayo" Sexton, from the giddy excitement following their elopement to their eventual divorce; her grief over the death of her parents; her great love for her daughters balanced with her frustration with the endless tasks of being a housewife; and her persistent struggle with depression. Going beyond the angst and neuroses of her poetry, these letters portray the full complexities of the woman behind the art: passionate, anguished, ambitious, and yearning for connection. show lessTags
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Member Reviews
Sexton's writings were so raw and almost needy sounding, but not in a bad way. You could really get a grasp for what she may have been feeling, and the constant need for validation sort of broke my heart. It was tough to get through, but still worth the read.
Amazon Book Description
An expression of an extraordinary poet's life story in her own words, this book shows Anne Sexton as she really was in private, as she wrote about herself to family, friends, fellow poets, and students. Anne's daughter Linda Gray Sexton and her close confidant Lois Ames have judiciously chosen from among thousands of letters and provided commentary where necessary. Illustrated throughout with candid photographs and memorabilia, the letters -- brilliant, lyrical, caustic, passionate, angry -- are a consistently revealing index to Anne Sexton's quixotic and exuberant personality.
An expression of an extraordinary poet's life story in her own words, this book shows Anne Sexton as she really was in private, as she wrote about herself to family, friends, fellow poets, and students. Anne's daughter Linda Gray Sexton and her close confidant Lois Ames have judiciously chosen from among thousands of letters and provided commentary where necessary. Illustrated throughout with candid photographs and memorabilia, the letters -- brilliant, lyrical, caustic, passionate, angry -- are a consistently revealing index to Anne Sexton's quixotic and exuberant personality.
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Epistolary Non-Fiction (Letters and Correspondence)
99 works; 5 members
Author Information
116+ Works 6,345 Members
Anne Sexton (1928-1974) is one of the most influential & frequently discussed American poets. She lived all her life in the Boston area. (Publisher Provided) Poet Anne Sexton was born in Newton, Massachusetts in 1928. She attended Garland Junior College for a year and at nineteen, married Alfred Muller Sexton II. After the birth of her first show more daughter in 1953 and her second daughter in 1955, Sexton suffered mental breakdowns, which included attempting suicide on her birthday in 1955. She had been diagnosed with postpartum depression. Both times she was hospitalized at Westwood Lodge and it was there that her doctor got her to pursue her interest in writing poetry. She enrolled in a poetry workshop at the Boston Center for Adult Education in 1957, which is where she met fellow poet, and soon to be close friend, Maxine Kumin. Sexton then wrote "To Bedlam and Part Way Back" (1960), "All My Pretty Ones" (1962), and in 1966, Sexton won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry for "Live or Die." Sexton wrote about controversial subjects, which included abortion and drug addiction. As with many other "confessional" poets, Sexton wrote of emotional anguish which came from her battle with mental illness. In 1974, she lost that battle and committed suicide. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Anne Sexton has a Legacy Library. Legacy libraries are the personal libraries of famous readers, entered by LibraryThing members from the Legacy Libraries group.
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Common Knowledge
- Original publication date
- 1977
- Original language
- English
Classifications
Statistics
- Members
- 428
- Popularity
- 71,783
- Reviews
- 2
- Rating
- (4.03)
- Languages
- English, German
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 7
- UPCs
- 2
- ASINs
- 8
