The Life and Struggles of Anne Sexton - Research Paper Example

The Life and Struggles of Anne Sexton People either love poetry or they hate it. Some are intrigued by the ability a poet has to put together rhymes or find the exact word that helps a poem flow with the rest of the words already written. Poetry can touch a person's soul in a different way that other writing does and it often will strike a cord for each person who reads it. Anne Gray Harvey Sexton is one such poet who was able to write poetry and plays that touched people. She was a prolific writer until her tragic death. THE EARLY LIFE Anne Sexton was born in Newton, Massachusetts in 1928. Her father was a woolen manufacturer and an alcoholic. He was very abusive and Sexton's biographer suggests that she was sexually abused by her father. Her mother was a writer but found it difficult to hone her craft because of the stress that her husband's alcoholism brought to the family (Wagner-Martin 1). Because of her family was emotionally absent and dysfunctional, Anne sought solace with her great aunt "Nana" who lived with the family; her aunt eventually had to be hospitalized. (Wagner-Martin 1). This caused problems for Sexton because between her family and Nana she felt abandoned for much of her life and this caused her to think about suicide. She would state later that she always felt hostility coming from her family. SEXTON'S EDUCATION Sexton had a variety of problems with school. She did not like being there and some of her teachers felt she needed counseling because of these problems. She eventually was sent to a private boarding school where she started what would become her writing career. From the boarding school she went onto a finishing school and eventually went on to college. Anne married a man that went to the same college and they started life as a couple in love. Her husband later enrolled in the war in Korea and she became a fashion model. She did not hold a degree but later was honored with several "honorary" degrees. EMOTIONAL CONFLICTS Sexton had several emotional problems all of her life and she stayed in psychotherapy. The first time she went to therapy was because of "infidelities" that she committed while her husband was away. She had many lovers during that time and she slipped into chronic depression. She eventually had children whom she would abuse when she was in her depressive states. Sexton attempted suicide repeatedly and eventually had several times when she was institutionalized and often had to stop school. Her therapist suggested that she start to write about her mental illness as a way to help others who may have the same problems (Kendall 1). By 1957, she was meeting with other writers and writing continuously. The more she wrote the more she improved and she finally began to publish her work. By 1960 she was able to publish her first book, To Bedlam and Back. She began to gain attention from readers and this lead them to believe that her poetry was about her life; this also helped her readers relate her poetry to their own lives (Wagner-Martin 1). SEXTON'S EARLY CAREER Anne Sexton's poetry is very popular because she is able to bring real life situations into her poetry. Diana Hume George states: "Anne Sexton's poetry tells stories that are immensely significant to mid-twentieth century artistic and psychic life. Sexton understood her culture's malaise through her own, and her skill enabled her to employ metaphorical structures [that were] both synthetic and analytic… she assimilated the superficially opposing but deeply similar ways of thinking represented by poetry and psychoanalysis" ( George 1). One of the reasons why Sexton's poetry created such emotional reaction from her readers is because she was able to show them the turmoil within her own life. Many of her poems may have been cathartic for because she could talk about the human anguish and angst that she felt through dealing with her own life. Her readers could relate to her because many of them were having some of the same challenges.. Her poetry spoke about people she knew which included her family and friends (Hume 1). AWARDS During her career Sexton won many awards for her writing. In 1967 she won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry for her book, Live or Die. She also received the Frost Fellowship to attend the Bread Loaf Writer's Conference. In addition to these honors she received the Radcliffe Institute Fellowship and the Shelley Memorial Prize. She also received a Guggenheim Fellowship, several grants and honorary degrees; she also received professorships at Colgate and Boston Universities (Wagner-Martin 2). SEXTON'S WORK AND THE HOLOCAUST Beyond her work that talked about everyday people she wrote about contemporary issues and how they affected people around the world. Between 1956 and 1974 she wrote several poems that had themes about the Holocaust. Some of her poems like "My Friend, My Friend," and "After Auschwitz" have imagery about the atrocities committed during this period of history. Melanie Waters has studied Sexton's poetry from this angle. One example of how she used her poetry for this them was in her poem, "My Friend, My Friend". She used a formal structure called the villanelle which is based on repetition. Usually these repetitions have a specific number of rhymes which were difficult to use within the English language (Waters 1). Sexton modified the structure somewhat to create what she needed for this poem. For Sexton, using complicated rhyming schemes was her forté and she used these different schemes in her early poetry. The significance of using these structures was that they advanced the poem in some way. Again, using the example of "My Friend, My Friend" the use of the villanelle is interesting because it creates parallels with the Holocaust. According to Waters this allows the reader to "imagine the cultural sidelining of Jewish identity (Waters 1). The migration that the Jews were forced to do is paralleled with the villanelle's migration from Europe to America. This poem is about the victimization of the Jews and using this structure also parallel's "an attempt to reinstate the principles of order that the chaotic violence and extreme brutality of the Second World War had seemed to obliterate" (Waters 2). Although readers will find that "My Friend, My Friend" can be read to mean many different things, if they have knowledge about the Holocaust they may understand the parallels. POEMS ABOUT PEOPLE As stated before many of her poems stemmed from experiences in her life and the people around her. She wrote many poems about the relationships between mothers and daughters, daughters and fathers, duality in relationships and the balance between love and hate (George 2). As an example, in many relationships between mothers and daughters she showed a balance of what this relationship can do to both. One of her poems has the theme of a daughter who is watching her mother die but is not feeling the grief as much as the love she feels for her mother (George 2). Sexton also wrote about her life as a poet to show that poets were people who felt too much, thought too much and who lived in an environment that sometimes was strange (George 2). Sexton showed the connection between art and suicide in many of her poems: "The limited extent to which Sexton connected art and self-destruction may have been symptomatic of her illness" (George 2). Sexton lived throughout her life as a very troubled and abused soul and she shared her feelings and her aspirations with her readers. THE USE OF DEATH METAPHOR IN HER POEMS Sexton use many metaphors in her poems and suicide was one of these metaphors. It was known that she was always thinking about suicide and she was more introspective than many other people of her time. She was able to ask questions about death and dying that other people did not want to talk about and she was always held a conflict within herself of whether she should live or die (Kendall 1). Although depression is sometimes difficult for people to talk about, Sexton was able to put her thoughts and words onto paper so that the average individual would understand exactly what she was feeling. She used metaphor to do this and as Charity Kendall states: Anne Sexton was metaphorically gifted; metaphors are an intrinsic and dynamic force throughout her poetry. Metaphors abound in her work. She was a bold and daring woman who cleaved naturally to this strong form of speech because it was forceful and because imagery came to her easily. She used metaphor expansively to define everything in her world (Kendall 2). SEXTON AND MENTAL ILLNESS As Sexton continued going to psychotherapy and attempting to deal with her depression, she slipped further into mental illness. In many of her poems, she told about issues she discussed in her therapy sessions. Many of her problems may have stemmed from her life with her parents (Wagner-Martin 1). The fact that her favorite aunt was institutionalized early and her great aunt had a nervous breakdown that led to hospitalization may have contributed more to her emotional difficulties. In 1959 her life became more emotionally difficult when both of her parents died and she was tortured by the memories of her early relationship with them. Wagner-Martin reported that poetry was the only thing that kept her stable. Sexton had many affairs in which she drew relationships that were more abusive than loving. As an example, her husband was physically abusive. As time went on she became more dependent on people around her including her therapist, family and friends and her various lovers. She also became more dependant on medication. She slipped deeper and deeper into depression and "unexpected trance states" (Wagner-Martin 2)that followed with frequent attempts at suicide. She finally divorced her husband and her depression continued, creating a decline in her health and an extreme loneliness which she tried to abate with alcoholism. Some experts think that her depression started after her first child and that it was post-partum depression which continued to develop throughout her life. She had both depressive and manic moods. (Kendall 1). In the end, Sexton committed suicide through carbon monoxide, sitting in her car in her closed garage in 1974. CONCLUSION Most people who read her poems will remember her as someone who lived in the deepest anguish. She never quite understood how to get out of her depression though she spent many years inside a madness that no one seemed to be able to bring her through. Like many brilliant writers, artists and musicians, she used her madness to produce master works. Some of her poems will go unnoticed while others will touch the hearts of those who read her work. Some may find it morbid and unforgiving while others will find it refreshing because they relate to her trauma. Sexton was admired by many and her work has been critiqued because of how deeply she felt about certain issues. She was obsessed with death and dying and in the end she decided death was her best choice. Works Cited George, Diana Hume. "On Sexton's Career". Modern American Poetry. 04 July 2009. Read More