Anne Sexton go queer. You ask me where they go.

I say
today believed
The Double Image in itself, or else it fell.

1. Today, my small child, Joyce,

love your self’s self where it lives.
I am thirty this November. There is no special God to refer to; or if
You are still small, in your fourth year. there is,
We stand watching the yellow leaves go why did I let you grow
queer, in another place. You did not know my
flapping in the winter rain, voice
falling flat and washed. And I remember when I came back to call. All the
mostly the three autumns you did not live superlatives
here. of tomorrow’s white tree and mistletoe
They said I’d never get you back again. will not help you know the holidays you
I tell you what you’ll never really know: had to miss.
all the medical hypothesis The time I did not love
that explained my brain will never be as myself, I visited your shoveled walks; you
true as these held my glove.
struck leaves letting go. There was new snow after this.

I, who chose two times 2.

to kill myself, had said your nickname
the mewling months when you first came; They sent me letters with news
until a fever rattled of you and I made moccasins that I would
in your throat and I moved like a never use.
pantomime When I grew well enough to tolerate
above your head. Ugly angels spoke to myself, I lived with my mother. Too late,
me. The blame, too late, to live with your mother, the
I heard them say, was mine. They tattled witches said.
like green witches in my head, letting But I didn’t leave. I had my portrait
doom done instead.
leak like a broken faucet;
as if doom had flooded my belly and filled Part way back from Bedlam
your bassinet, I came to my mother’s house in
an old debt I must assume. Gloucester,
Massachusetts. And this is how I came
Death was simpler than I’d thought. to catch at her; and this is how I lost her.
The day life made you well and whole I cannot forgive your suicide, my mother
I let the witches take away my guilty soul. said.
I pretended I was dead And she never could. She had my portrait
until the white men pumped the poison done instead.
out,
putting me armless and washed through I lived like an angry guest,
the rigamarole like a partly mended thing, an outgrown
of talking boxes and the electric bed. child.
I laughed to see the private iron in that I remember my mother did her best.
hotel. She took me to Boston and had my hair
Today the yellow leaves restyled.

1
Your smile is like your mother’s, the artist and still I couldn’t answer.
said.
I didn’t seem to care. I had my portrait 4.
done instead.
That winter she came
There was a church where I grew up part way back
with its white cupboards where they from her sterile suite
locked us up, of doctors, the seasick
row by row, like puritans or shipmates cruise of the X-ray,
singing together. My father passed the the cells’ arithmetic
plate. gone wild. Surgery incomplete,
Too late to be forgiven now, the witches the fat arm, the prognosis poor, I heard
said. them say.
I wasn’t exactly forgiven. They had my
portrait During the sea blizzards
done instead. she had here
own portrait painted.
3. A cave of mirror
placed on the south wall;
All that summer sprinklers arched matching smile, matching contour.
over the seaside grass. And you resembled me; unacquainted
We talked of drought with my face, you wore it. But you were
while the salt-parched mine
field grew sweet again. To help time pass after all.
I tried to mow the lawn
and in the morning I had my portrait
done, I wintered in Boston,
holding my smile in place, till it grew childless bride,
formal. nothing sweet to spare
Once I mailed you a picture of a rabbit with witches at my side.
and a postcard of Motif number one, I missed your babyhood,
as if it were normal tried a second suicide,
to be a mother and be gone. tried the sealed hotel a second year.
On April Fool you fooled me. We laughed
and this
They hung my portrait in the chill was good.
north light, matching
me to keep me well. 5.
Only my mother grew ill.
She turned from me, as if death were I checked out for the last time
catching, on the first of May;
as if death transferred, graduate of the mental cases,
as if my dying had eaten inside of her. with my analyst’s okay,
That August you were two, but I timed my complete book of rhymes,
my days with doubt. my typewriter and my suitcases.
On the first of September she looked at
me All that summer I learned life
and said I gave her cancer. back into my own
They carved her sweet hills out seven rooms, visited the swan boats,

2
the market, answered the phone, I had outgrown.
served cocktails as a wife
should, made love among my petticoats
and August tan. And you came each The artist caught us at the turning;
weekend. But I lie. we smiled in our canvas home
You seldom came. I just pretended before we chose our foreknown separate
you, small piglet, butterfly ways.
girl with jelly bean cheeks, The dry red fur fox coat was made for
disobedient three, my splendid burning.
stranger. And I had to learn I rot on the wall, my own
why I would rather Dorian Gray.
die than love, how your innocence
would hurt and how I gather
guilt like a young intern And this was the cave of the mirror,
his symptons, his certain evidence. that double woman who stares
at herself, as if she were petrified
That October day we went in time — two ladies sitting in umber
to Gloucester the red hills chairs.
reminded me of the dry red fur fox You kissed your grandmother
coat I played in as a child; stock-still and she cried.
like a bear or a tent,
like a great cave laughing or a red fur fox. 7.

We drove past the hatchery, I could not get you back

the hut that sells bait, except for weekends. You came
past Pigeon Cove, past the Yacht Club, each time, clutching the picture of a
past Squall’s rabbit
Hill, to the house that waits that I had sent you. For the last time I
still, on the top of the sea, unpack
and two portraits hung on the opposite your things. We touch from habit.
walls. The first visit you asked my name.
Now you stay for good. I will forget
6. how we bumped away from each other
like marionettes
In north light, my smile is held in place, on strings. It wasn’t the same
the shadow marks my bone. as love, letting weekends contain
What could I have been dreaming as I sat us. You scrape your knee. You learn my
there, name,
all of me waiting in the eyes, the zone wobbling up the sidewalk, calling and
of the smile, the young face, crying.
the foxes’ snare. You call me mother and I remember my
mother again,
In south light, her smile is held in place, somewhere in greater Boston, dying.
her cheeks wilting like a dry
orchid; my mocking mirror, my I remember we named you Joyce
overthrown so we could call you Joy.
love, my first image. She eyes me from You came like an awkward guest
that face, that first time, all wrapped and moist
that stony head of death and strange at my heavy breast.

3
I needed you. I didn’t want a boy,
only a girl, a small milky mouse And now I must dream the forest whole
of a girl, already loved, already loud in and your sweet hands, not once as frozen
the house as those stopped trees, nor ruled, nor
of herself. We named you Joy. pale,
I, who was never quite sure nor leaving mine. Today, in my house, I
about being a girl, needed another see
life, another image to remind me. our house, its pillars a dim basement of
And this was my worst guilt; you could men
not cure holding up their foreign ground for you
nor soothe it. I made you to find me. and me.

My dear, it was a time,

The Expatriates butchered from time
that we must tell of quickly
before we lose the sound of our own
My dear, it was a moment mouths calling mine, mine, mine.
to clutch at for a moment
so that you may believe in it
and believing is the act of love, I think, Portrait of an Old Woman on the
even in the telling, wherever it went. College Tavern Wall

In the false New England forest

where the misplanted Norwegian trees Oh down at the tavern
refused to root, their thick synthetic the children are singing
roots barging out of the dirt to work on around their round table
the air, and around me still.
we held hands and walked on our knees. Did you hear what it said?
Actually, there was no one there.
I only said
For forty years this experimental how there is a pewter urn
woodland grew, shaft by shaft in perfect pinned to the tavern wall,
rows as old as old is able
where its stub branches held and its to be and be there still.
spokes fell. I said, the poets are there
It was a place of parallel trees, their lives I hear them singing and lying
filed out in exile where we walked too around their round table
alien to know and around me still.
our sameness and how our sameness Across the room is a wreath
survives. made of a corpse’s hair,
framed in glass on the wall,
Outside of us the village cars followed as old as old is able
the white line we had carefully walked to be and be remembered still.
two nights before toward our single beds. Did you hear what it said?
We lay halfway up an ugly hill and if we
fell I only said
it was here in the woods where the woods how I want to be there and I
were caught would sing my songs with the liars
in their dying and you held me well. and my lies with all the singers.

4
And I would, and I would but And parades assembled,
it’s my hair in the hair wreath, the loud earth tellers spent
my cup pinned to the tavern wall, all fifteen minutes on it, even
my dusty face they sing beneath. shortened their weather forecast.
Poets are sitting in my kitchen. But rival nations, angry and oily,
Why do these poets lie? fired up their best atom blast
Why do children get children and and the last Earth war was done.
Did you hear what it said? The place became crater on each side,
sank down to its first skull,
I only said shedding forests, oceans, dried
how I want to be there, dones and neons, as it fell through
Oh, down at the tavern time like a forgotten pitted stone.
where the prophets are singing
around their round table These two men walked hopefully out
until they are still. onto their hot empty planet
with machines, rats, tanks,
boxes, insects and the one odd set
Venus and the Ark of three almost new snakes,
to make the tests they were meant to do.
But on the seventh month the cages
The missile to launch a missile grew small, too small to interview,
was almost a secret. too tight to bear. The rats were gray
Two male Ph.D.’s were picked and heavy things where they ran
and primed to fill it against wire and the snakes built eggs
and one hundred on eggs and even the fish began
carefully counted insects, to bump in water as they spawned
three almost new snakes, on every side of each other’s swim.
coiled in a cube, And the men grew listless; they opened
exactly fifty fish creatures the pouch of dirt, undid each locked bin
in tanks, the necessary files, and let every creature loose
twenty bars of food, ten brief cures, to live on Venus, or anyhow hide
special locks, fourteen white rats, under rocks. Bees swarmed the air,
fourteen black rats, a pouch of dirt, letting a warm pollen slide
were all stuffed aboard before from their wings and onto the grass.
the thing blasted from the desert. The fish flapped to a small pool
and the rats untangled their hairs
And the missile that launched and humped over the vestibule
a missile launched out of the cramped balloon. Trees sprang
into a marvelous scientific balloon from lichen, the rock became a park,
that rolled and bobbed about where, even at star-time, things brushed;
in the mists of Venus; suddenly even in the planet’s new dark
sank like a sweet fat grape, crotch, that air snag where snakes
oozing past gravity to snuggle coupled and rats rubbed in disrepair,
down upon the triumphant shape it grew quick and noisy with
of space. The two men signaled a kind of wonder in the lonely air.
Earth, telling their Continent
Old and withered, two Ph.D.’s
VENUS IS GREEN. from Earth hobbled slowly back
to their empty balloon, crying alone

5
for sense, for the troubling lack Frail, we say, remembering fear, that face
of something they ought to do, we wear
while countless fish slapped in the room of the special smells of dying,
and the waters grew, green came fear
taller and the happy rats sped where the snoring mouth gapes
through integrated forests, and is not dear.
barking like dogs at the top
of the sky. But the two men, There was snow everywhere.
that last morning of death, before Each day I grueled through
the first of light, watched the land its sloppy peak, its blue-struck days, my
of Venus, its sweetless shore, boots
and thought, “This is the end. slapping into the hospital halls, past the
This is the laset of a man like me.” retinue
Until they saw, over the mists of nurses at the desk, to murmur in
of Venus, two fish creatures stop cahoots
on spangled legs and crawl with hers outside her door, to enter with
from the belly of the sea. the outside
And from the planet park air stuck on my skin, to enter smelling
they heard the new fruit drop. her pride,
her upkeep, and to lie
as all who love have lied.
The Operation
No reason to be afraid,
1. my almost mighty doctor reasons.
I nod, thinking that woman’s dying
After the sweet promise, must come in seasons,
the summer’s mild retreat thinking that living is worth buying.
from mother’s cancer, the winter months I walk out, scuffing a raw leaf,
of her death, kicking the clumps of dead straw
I come to this white office, its sterile that were this summer’s lawn.
sheet, Automatically I get in my car,
its hard tablet, its stirrups, to hold my knowing the historic thief
breath is loose in my house
while I, who must, allow the glove its oily and must be set upon.
rape,
to hear the almost mighty doctor over me 2.
equate
my ills with hers Clean of the body’s hair,
and decide to operate. I lie smooth from breast to leg.
All that was special, all that was rare
It grew in her is common here. Fact: death too is in the
as simply as a child would grow, egg.
as simply as she housed me once, fat and Fact: the body is dumb, the body is meat.
female. And tomorrow the O.R. Only the summer
Always my most gentle house before that was sweet.
embryo
of evil spread in her shelter and she grew The rooms down the hall are calling
frail. all night long, while the night outside
sucks at the trees. I hear limbs falling

6
and see yellow eyes flick in the rain. Wide I soar in hostile air
eyed over the pure women in labor,
and still whole I turn in my bin like a over the crowning heads of babies being
shorn lamb. born.
A nurse’s flashlight blinds me to see who I plunge down the backstair
I am. calling mother at the dying door,
to rush back to my own skin, tied where it
The walls color in a wash was torn.
of daylight until the room takes its Its nerves pull like wires
objects snapping from the leg to the rib.
into itself again. I smoke furtively and Strangers, their faces rolling lilke hoops,
squash require
the butt and hide it with my watch and my arm. I am lifted into my aluminum
other effects. crib.
The halls bustle with legs. I smile at the
nurse 3.
who smiles for the morning shift. Day is
worse. Skull flat, here in my harness,
thick with shock, I call mother
Scheduled late, I cannot drink to help myself, call toe to frog,
or eat, except for yellow pills that woolly bat, that tongue of dog;
and a jigger of water. I wait and think call God help and all the rest.
until she brings two mysterious needles: The soul that swam the furious water
the skills sinks now in flies and the brain
she knows she knows, promising, soon flops like a docked fish and the eyes
you’ll be out. are flat boat decks riding out the pain.
But nothing is sure. No one. I wait in
doubt. My nurses, those starchy ghosts,
hover over me for my lame hours
I wait like a kennel of dogs and my lame days. The mechanics
jumping against their fence. At ten of the body pump for their tricks.
she returns, laughs and catalogues I rest on their needles, am dosed
my resistance to drugs. On the stretcher, and snoring amid the orange flowers
citizen and the eyes of visitors. I wear,
and boss of my own body still, I glide like some senile woman, a scarlet
down the halls candy package ribbon in my hair.
and rise in the iron cage toward science
and pitfalls. Four days from home I lurk on my
mechanical parapet with two pillows
The great green people stand at my elbows, as soft as praying cushions.
over me; I roll on the table My knees work with the bed that runs
under a terrible sun, following their on power. I grumble to forget the lie
command I ought to hear, but don't. God knows
to curl, head touching knee if I am able. I thought I’d die—but here I am,
Next, I am hung up like a saddle and they recalling mother, the sound of her
begin. good morning, the odor of orange and
Pale as an angel I float out over my own jam.
skin.
All’s well, they say. They say I’m better.

7
I lounge in frills or, picturesque, baring makes demands which cannot always
I wear bunny pink slippers in the hall. be met. Confession may be good for the soul,
I read a new book and shuffle past the but absolution is not the poet's job, nor the
desk reader's either." A Punch critic added, "When
her artistic control falters the recital of grief
to mail the author my first fan letter.
and misery becomes embarrassing, the
Time now to pack this humpty-dumpty repetitive material starts to grow tedious, the
back the frightened way she came poetic gives way to the clinical and the
and run along, Anne, and run along now, confessional." Many reviewers raised at least
my stomach laced like a football two questions. First, should her poetry be
for the game. classified as confessional? Second, does her
work consistently demonstrate the artistic
control which many critics feel is an essential
quality of good poetry?
Source: The Complete Poems of Anne
Concerning the first question, Erica Jong
Sexton (Houghton Mifflin, 1981)
objects to the classification: "Whenever Anne
Sexton's poems are mentioned, the term
Anne Sexton (1928 - 1974) 'confessional poetry' is not far behind. It has
BIOGRAPHY always seemed a silly and unilluminating
Much of Anne Sexton's poetry is term to me; one of those pigeonholing
autobiographical and concentrates on her categories critics invent so as not to talk
deeply personal feelings, especially anguish. about poetry as poetry.... The mind of the
In particular, many of her poems record her creator is all-important, and the term
battles with mental illness. She spent many 'confessional' seems to undercut this,
years in psychoanalysis, including several implying that anyone who spilled her guts
long stays in mental hospitals. As she told would be a poet." Sexton also often
Beatrice Berg, her writing began, in fact, as denigrated the term, but at times she applied
therapy: "My analyst told me to write between it to herself. She told Berg that "for years I
our sessions about what I was feeling and railed against being put in this category. Then
thinking and dreaming." Her analyst, ... I decided I was the only confessional poet."
impressed by her work, encouraged her to Moreover, in an interview with Patricia Marx,
keep writing, and then, she told Berg, she saw Sexton discussed the effect on her work of
(on television) "I. A. Richards [a poet and another poet often called confessional, W. D.
literary critic] describing the form of a sonnet Snodgrass, and acknowledged the
and I thought maybe I could do that. Oh, I confessional quality of her writing: "If
was turned on. I wrote two or three a day for anything influenced me it was W. D.
about a year." Eventually, Sexton's poems Snodgrass' Heart's Needle.... It so changed
about her psychiatric struggles were gathered me, and undoubtedly it must have influenced
in To Bedlam and Part Way Back which my poetry. At the same time everyone said,
recounts, as James Dickey wrote, the 'You can't write this way. It's too personal; it's
experiences "of madness and near-madness, confessional; you can't write this, Anne,' and
of the pathetic, well-meaning, necessarily everyone was discouraging me. But then I saw
tentative and perilous attempts at cure, and of Snodgrass doing what I was doing, and it kind
the patient's slow coming back into the of gave me permission."
human associations and responsibilities
which the old, previous self still demands." The second question is perhaps best
answered in critics' specific responses to
This kind of poetry, which unveils the poet's several of her individual books. Like many of
innermost feelings, is usually termed Sexton's volumes, To Bedlam and Part Way
confessional poetry, and it is the subject of Back received a mixed response. Dickey
much critical controversy. A Times Literary praised the subject of the work, but found
Supplement reviewer, for example, said of that "the poems fail to do their subject the
Live or Die that "many of Mrs. Sexton's new kind of justice which I should like to see
poems are arresting, but such naked psyche-

8
done.... As they are they lack concentration, her own inner landscape.... Poem after poem
and above all the profound, individual focuses on the nightmare obsessions of the
linguistic suggestibility and accuracy that damned: suicide, crucifixion, the death of
poems must have to be good." On the other others ..., fear, the humiliations of childhood,
hand, Melvin Maddocks believed that "Mrs. the boy-child she never had.... It is, though,
Sexton's remarkable first book of poems has through facing up to the reality (and
the personal urgency of a first novel. It is full implications) of these things that the poet,
of the exact flavors of places and peoples with her tough honesty, is able to gain a series
remembered, familiar patterns of life recalled of victories over them.... All in all, this is a
and painstakingly puzzled over.... A reader fierce, terrible, beautiful book, well deserving
finally judges Mrs. Sexton's success by the its Pulitzer award."
extraordinary sense of first-hand experience
he too has been enabled to feel." Barbara Transformations, a retelling of Grimm's fairy
Howes thinks that many of the poems are tales, marked a shift away from the
flawed, but overall she judged Bedlam "an confessional manner of her earlier work,
honest and impressive achievement." which several commentators found to be a
fruitful change. Gail Pool, for example,
All My Pretty Ones also garnered mixed contended that the tales provided Sexton with
reviews. Peter Davison found one poem, "The "a rich medium for her colorful imagery," a
Operation," "absolutely superb," but he felt distance from her characters which allowed
that none of the others are nearly as good. wit, an eerie realm "where she had always
Dickey's critique was even stronger: "Miss been her sharpest," and "the structure she
Sexton's work seems to me very little more needed and so often had difficulty imposing
than a kind of terribly serious and on her own work. At last she had found
determinedly outspoken soap-opera." Yet in material to which she could bring her
an essay on both Bedlam and Pretty Ones, intelligence, her wit, all that she knew, and
Beverly Fields argued that Sexton's poetry is she created, in Stanley Kunitz's words, 'a wild,
mostly misread. She contended that the blood-curdling, astonishing book.'"
poems are not as autobiographical as they Christopher Lehmann-Haupt echoed Pool's
seem, that they are poems, not memoirs, and analysis, arguing that Sexton's earlier work
she went on to analyze many of them in depth tended to lack control, that perhaps she
in order to show the recurrent symbolic worked too closely with firsthand experience.
themes and poetic techniques that she felt Lehmann-Haupt continued, "by using the
make Sexton's work impressive. artificial as the raw material of
Transformations and working her way
Dissent among the reviewers continued with backwards to the immediacy of her personal
the appearance of Live or Die, Sexton's best vision, she draws her readers in more
known book. A Virginia Quarterly Review willingly, and thereby makes them more
critic believed that Sexton was "a very vulnerable to her sudden plunges into
talented poet" who was perhaps too honest: personal nightmare." Similarly, Louis Coxe
"Confession, while good for the soul, may discovers a new objectivity and distance in
become tiresome for the reader if not Transformations, which he considers "a
accompanied by the suggestion that growth of the poet's mind and strength."
something is being held back.... In [ Live or
Die ] Miss Sexton's toughness approaches In The Death Notebooks, The Awful Rowing
affectation. Like a drunk at a party who toward God, and 45 Mercy Street, the last
corners us with the story of his life,... the two published posthumously, Sexton
performance is less interesting the third time, returned to the confessional method. While
despite the poet's high level of technical these books have been praised, they have also
competence." Joel O. Conarroe, however, had been more severely criticized than her early
a more positive view of Sexton's candor. writings, many readers detecting a
"Miss Sexton is an interior voyager," deterioration in quality. William Heyen
commented Conarroe, "describing in sharp remarked that Sexton's "poems went almost
images the difficult discovered landmarks of 'steadily downhill, became less intense, less

9
dramatic, less interesting as one book which any number of people might have
followed another.... There were moments, written. When Anne Sexton is at the top of
occasional lines or even poems that wept or her form, she writes a poem which no one
raged with her old power," but overall her else could have written."
voice became often "maudlin or patently CAREER
melodramatic or simply silly." Heyen added Fashion model in Boston, MA, 1950-51;
that Awful Rowing continues the downward Wayland High School, Wayland, MA, teacher,
trend; it is touching, "but it's not very good." 1967-68; Boston University, Boston, lecturer
Robert Mazzocco seconded Heyen, in creative writing, 1970-71, professor of
commenting that while the early poems creative writing, 1972-74; writer. Scholar,
"depict intensely introverted states in highly Radcliffe Institute for Independent Study,
extroverted style" and are well constructed, 1961-63; Crawshaw Professor of Literature,
the later poems "seem to me less Colgate University, 1972. Gave numerous
commanding, strike dissonant strains, poetry readings at colleges and universities.
chromatize the keyboard, or become
programmatic." In like manner, Patricia
Meyer Spacks argued that Sexton's poems
become more and more sentimental in that
they overindulge in emotion and fail to
evaluate that emotion. The sentimentalism
becomes "painfully marked" in Awful
Rowing, "with its embarrassments of
religious pretension.... The problem of
internal division, the perception of divinity,
the will to rebuild the soul: all alike register
unconvincingly. The poetry through which
these vast themes are rendered is simply not
good enough."

On the other hand, not all critics disparaged

the later books. In a response to Spacks's
critique, Jong commented: "Let's be fair
about Sexton's poetry. She was uneven and
excessive, but that was because she dared to
be a fool and dared to explore the dark side of
the unconscious." Moreover, Sandra M.
Gilbert believed that The Death Notebooks
"goes far beyond [the earlier volumes] in
making luminous art out of the night
thoughts that have haunted this poet for so
long." Finally, Jong, in a review of Notebooks,
assessed Sexton's poetic significance and
contended that her artistry is often
overlooked: "She is an important poet not
only because of her courage in dealing with
previously forbidden subjects, but because
she can make the language sing. Of what does
[her] artistry consist? Not just of her skill in
writing traditional poems.... But by artistry, I
mean something more subtle than the ability
to write formal poems. I mean the artist's
sense of where her inspiration lies.... There
are many poets of great talent who never take
that talent anywhere.... They write poems

10