Anne Sexton

by Anne Sexton

  You have a wonderful voice yourself. I suggest you buy 100 copies of Poetry Australia. I suggest that because I know how much you like to give things away, and before you know it the magazine will be out of print. I love you.

  [To Ted Hughes]

  [14 Black Oak Road]

  November 24, 1970

  Dear Ted,

  Just a word to you, dear Ted, to tell you I think the Crow poems are brilliant. They go further than anything you’ve done. They go into that unknown land where spirits live—crow spirits. I hear a book is forthcoming, and I can’t wait to own it.

  I have been hearing for a year that you were coming to the USA, but you do not appear. When and if you do, let’s be sure to get together. We have an extra bed if you feel like a little home life.

  With best wishes,

  [To C. K. Williams]

  [14 Black Oak Road]

  December 8, 1970

  Dear Charlie,

  I Am the Bitter Name is not a good book. It is a great book. I think of you as the last guru singing your poems to God. They are so associative they delight and evoke. I can’t pretend to understand them any more than I understand my dreams, but the aura of gentleness and sorrow for man pervades. I like the title and yet they are not bitter poems. As far as titles go, in sixty to seventy percent of the poems I personally see no connection between the poem and its title. Not so with something as easy as “My Shopping Trip” but so with a poem like “Creams,” but I feel this is my flaw not yours. The progression of the book, that is, the order of the poems, seems good to me with the exception of “In The Heart of The Beast.” I am sure you have been roundly praised for that poem, but I found myself disappointed by it. It was as though the whole book said it about mankind forever with its wars and cruelties. It’s the first time you don’t forgive the murderer. It’s the first time your anger really showed. I’m sure you wouldn’t consider omitting it and perhaps that is for the best, making you less guru and more human, but I wouldn’t put it right at the end because it isn’t like your other poems. I think you ought to end on something that says the same thing in the C. K. Williams style, even “The Sting” would do or perhaps there are others that would be better.

  At any rate, the book is a solid one and lacks the somewhat uneven quality of your first book. It is more religious in tone and my envy knoweth no bounds.

  I’m awfully glad you’re not calling the book “Bad Mouth.” It couldn’t suit it. I’m going to hold on to this copy for as long as you’ll let me, to share with friends and to reread. Thank you for returning my Transformations so promptly and hope to see you in February.

  Love,

  Still uneasy about publishing Transformations, Houghton Mifflin asked Anne if she would mind if they solicited an outside reader’s opinion. Taking the initiative herself, Anne wrote the distinguished poet Stanley Kunitz, asking him to read the book and comment upon it. He did not disappoint her.

  [To Stanley Kunitz]

  [14 Black Oak Road]

  December 23, 1970

  Dear Stanley,

  What a great guy you are to read my book not only once but three times! You can’t know how much your words mean to me. I’m drawn, of course, particularly to that first paragraph with its bug-eyed Jonahs. I had hoped you would like it, but I hadn’t let myself hope you’d be wild about it … even with your qualifications.

  I wish now that I could have shown it to you as I was writing it, for your most important suggestion (switching the prologues and making them epilogues) could have been done then, but somehow not now. After tearing open the envelope and reading your letter seven times, I sat down for an afternoon and reread the poems in light of that suggestion. With about four of them it was a stroke of genius. With about five of them it’s so-so. With eight of them it destroys. The poems seem to grow out of the prologue to, as it were, take root in them and come forth from them. I appreciate what you mean when you say that they tell the story in advance, or rather what it means to me. I see that as kind of a necessary flaw. Damn it all. If only last January I had thought or dared to send you the early poems. But you see, if you hadn’t liked them at that writing and most tentative stage, it might have stopped me … cut me off. I consulted with Maxine about your suggestions, and she agrees that it’s too bad I couldn’t have brought you in sooner. Maybe I should put it I just don’t have the “strength.”

  But let me tell you exactly how much your praise means to me. I showed this book to my editors at Houghton Mifflin, and they felt it was not up to my other work and that the critics would hate it and that my fans would hate it. They suggested I get an outside reader … or rather they get an outside reader. I didn’t tell them and I didn’t tell you, but you were my secret outside reader. You were the kind of person I was writing for. I had a secret suspicion you were fond of Grimms’ Fairy Tales. Need I say that I adore them? At any rate, you liked the poems. May I have your permission to show your letter to Houghton Mifflin? They have already accepted the book (this happened yesterday) without the so-called outside reader. But I would like to have them have more confidence in it. How would you feel if they wanted to quote a line of your letter? I think they may want to for an ad, but I know this was a personal letter from you to me, and I won’t let them quote from it unless you feel right about it. I don’t think I’d dare ask you if you hadn’t said “let the praise stand.” My question is more exact. May I stand up your praise like a toy soldier? May I wind it up and let it march into my editor’s office? May I press it with an iron and fold it into an ad? The most important thing for me is that you said it and meant it—that was my first reaction. My second reaction is needy, but then, we poets are always needy.

  I didn’t find your criticism harsh or supercilious. It was very much to the point, and I thank you for taking the time from your own work for me. It strikes me funny that you say it is my sacred confession to be confessional. I don’t see Transformations as confessional but perhaps it is indeed. At one time I hated being called confessional and denied it, but mea culpa. Now I say that I’m the only confessional poet. No matter how hard you work at it, your own voice shows through.

  It’s exciting about your book coming out in March. I can’t wait to see it. That will be an event of note. By the way, your letter is so well-written. You can’t touch anything without turning it into an angel.

  Love,

  [To Paul Brooks]

  [14 Black Oak Road]

  December 30, 1970

  Dear Paul,

  I am so happy that Houghton Mifflin is taking Transformations. It would break my heart to leave Houghton Mifflin even for one book.

  I gave some thought to your doubts and after I typed up the manuscript for Houghton Mifflin I sent a copy to Stanley Kunitz. He is the judge for the Yale Younger [Poets] Series, a Pulitzer Prize winner and one of our most respected men of letters. I don’t know him very well. Just well enough to ask him to take a look. He has some reservations. He wanted my prologues to be epilogues … something that clearly doesn’t work … at least I thought about it, and I couldn’t make it work. Here, however, is the first paragraph of his letter:

  I must tell you that I was wary of your MS because I expected not to like it. The brothers Grimm are so much a part of me that I really didn’t want to see their tales recapitulated, modernized, diluted. Now that I have read Transformations more than once—three times, to be exact—I know how wrong I was not to put more trust in you. You have swallowed the tales alive and carried them in the belly of your imagination until you were ready to disgorge them like a whole brotherhood of bug-eyed Jonahs. What a wild, astonishing, blood-curdling book you have written!

  I’ve written to ask him if he will let me quote his letter. He just may not, but one can hope.

  I hope your work goes well.

  Love,

  [To Stanley Kunitz]

  [14 Black Oak Road]

  January 20, 1971

  Dear Stanley,

  Thank you so much for your le
tter. Sorry you had the flu and the holiday depression, but more than that I’m awfully sorry you had to go to the hospital and have the repair job. That can be hell. Kayo has gone through similar problems, and I’m rapidly approaching.

  I have shown your letter, or rather an excerpt from your letter, to my publishers, and they are delighted. Now I hope they’ll really get behind this book and promote it. Naturally, what I quoted to them was your first paragraph which I will repeat to you in case you don’t keep carbons. [Quotation from preceding letter follows.]

  A bit of a coward, what, not to have included your “almost written” but then you did say “let the praise stand.” What they can take from that paragraph I’m not sure, but “bug-eyed Jonahs” and “blood-curdling book” sound awfully good to me.

  Believe me, the bloody effort that you mention, the work and the sweat preceded my sending them to you. If I could have sent them right after I wrote them, not a first draft perhaps but a second or third or fourth or fifth, but it didn’t work out that way. I’m a little scared of you, Stanley, and like to show you my more finished work. I adore you, you know. By “scared” I mean respect.

  The “blazing hurry” is that I’m so God damned sure I’m going to die soon. I know it’s silly, but it’s a conviction. At any rate, here I am very much alive, writing at full tilt—some trapeze acts and even a hand at prose—dark tales but not confessional. Take care and be good to yourself.

  Best wishes,

  The preface, blurbs, and illustrations for Transformations kept Anne busy all winter. As a collaborator she enlisted Barbara Swan, whose art she had admired since their days together at the Radcliffe Institute. A detail from Barbara’s sepia, Gothic Heads had appeared on the book jacket for Live or Die.

  As Anne and Barbara read and reread Transformations a series of seventeen ribald grotesqueries formed, and the Swan drawings became an integral part of the book.

  Anne continued her experiments with prose, working on two short stories: “The Letting Down of the Hair,” and “The Buffoon.” These pieces were eventually to be part of The Book of Folly, which she began in earnest in early 1971.

  [To Stanley Kunitz]

  [14 Black Oak Road]

  February 17, 1971

  Dear Stanley,

  I have special knowledge about daisies. They last and last as both you and I will. They are my favorite flower. There is something innocent and vulnerable about them as if they thanked you for admiring them.

  I am sorry that you had a rough time but am glad to hear that you are on the mend.

  Thank you for that sentence about Transformations. I read it every day to bring my spirits up, and I’m sure the publishers will put it to good use, and it has indeed quieted their qualms about the worth of this new work.

  It’s strange that you say I’m “too tough” for my “blazing hurry” (that sentence makes no sense, but you know what I mean). People are always telling me I’m tough. Maybe because I’ve survived so much. Inside I feel like cooked broccoli, and I don’t mean the stalks which should be crisp and tasty. I mean the heads that fall apart when you cut them. The only time I’m tough in my own mind is when I’m seized by a poem and then determined to conquer it and let it live its own peculiar life. All my toughness goes into my writing. All an effort, really, to not sound like a sap. Oh well, I’m just going on. Don’t feel in any hurry to answer this. Do so at your most leisure.

  With best wishes and fond regards,

  Anne the Broccoli

  In June, a strange and painful query appeared in the daily mail. A young woman wrote that her mother had shown her “The Sun” and “The Fortress” in a 1962 New Yorker and claimed that she’d written the poems under a pseudonym. Struggling with the desire to believe her dead mother’s story, but aware of Anne’s inimitable style, Anne Gallagher wrote to learn the truth.

  [To Anne Gallagher]

  [14 Black Oak Road]

  June 23, 1971

  Dear Anne Gallagher,

  I am awfully sorry to have to tell you that I did write the poems “The Sun” [LD] and “The Fortress” [PO], and I did publish them in The New Yorker. I am sure that your mother liked these poems and perhaps felt they were so meaningful to her that she had almost written them. It can happen that way. I wish I could tell you otherwise, but of course you want the truth.

  Sincerely yours,

  In the autumn of 1971, Colgate University offered her the Crawshaw Chair in Literature for the spring semester. They were willing to pay her handsomely to teach one course in poetry writing and another on her own poetry. Although this meant commuting weekly to Syracuse from Boston, she accepted.

  As a guest professor at Colgate University, Anne gained additional power which she did not hesitate to use. She waged a campaign to be appointed a professor at Boston University, and she won.

  [To George Starbuck]

  [14 Black Oak Road]

  September 8, 1971

  Dear George,

  Here is a copy of my résumé newly brought up-to-date. May I point out it includes two Honorary Phi Beta Kappa awards, three Honorary Doctor of Letters Degrees, a professor at Colgate with a chair yet. As I said to you at lunch, a professor at Colgate shouldn’t have to be a lecturer at BU. What do I want? MORE! I’d like more bucks once the freeze is off.

  That was a good lunch, but next time I say Joseph’s with or without Elizabeth Bishop.

  Love,

  [To Morton Berman, Chairman,

  Department of English

  Boston University]

  [14 Black Oak Road]

  November 17, 1971

  Dear Mort,

  Just a reminder from a happy member of your department. I will be going to Colgate the spring term to hold a chair (Crawshaw Professor of Literature). I will be teaching from February to the first of May, and I am being paid $13,000. I will be teaching a creative writing course and another course that the department chairman calls “Anne on Anne.” There is a lot of work to be done on the latter, but I’m finding it challenging and even an original concept.

  I would like to have more feeling of permanence with BU. If not tenure, then some form of written agreement that would not leave me up in the air about the forthcoming year. Not only do I enjoy the work, but I desperately need the money. I know I am a good teacher, and this year is my best class of all.

  My students are getting things published in small magazines and two of them have had acceptances from The New Yorker as well as one acceptance from The Sewanee Review.

  BU’s writing department is becoming the best in the country, and it is exciting to be a part of it. Colgate will be an adventure, and I hope to return to you more vital and somehow stronger.

  So there is money to think about and some sort of permanence to think about. I know you are harried but perhaps you will find time for this, too.

  With best wishes,

  [To Brian Sweeny,

  telegram]

  February 1, 1972

  ON NEW YEARS GOD REMEMBERS YOU STOP SO DO I

  ANNE SEXTON

  [To Julie Joslyn]

  14 Black Oak Road

  February 1, 1972

  Dear Julie,

  Sorry to have been so long in answering. I have been in a supermarket of work and there just hasn’t been time to be in touch with the people that mean a lot.

  I do hope you are writing prose. It is a kind of opening up. In my forthcoming book, The Book of Folly, to be published February, 1972, I have three pieces of prose. In one of them I used part of a letter you sent me. Of course I don’t use your name and your privacy is indeed respected, and I hope it will please you as it does me. A piece of your life put into mine. The story is called “The Letting Down of the Hair” [BF] and will appear in the March Atlantic. It’s really about the life of a poet and what it’s like to have people like your poetry but not know you really. The letter is changed. You might not recognize it, but I wanted you to know that you are part of my life as a poet. As well as a human be
ing.

  The thorazine is just a drag, but my shrink won’t let me off it, so what the hell can I do? I’ve been on mellaril, too. I don’t mind it except for the sun. I say to myself, why must I hide from the thing I love the most? I went off it a year ago and got sick. But my shrink says I won’t ALWAYS be on it.

  Yes, for me death is always very close. Life is fragile, but then I’m a very apprehensive person and in one of my poems I describe my husband as “as straight as a redwood.” And it sounds as though Josh is the same for you. That is good.

  I like your poems—both. “A Futile Experiment” I would take out the word “damn.” Otherwise it’s perfect.

  Do let me hear from you and take care.

  All best,

  Anne

  In June, Anne went into the Newton-Wellesley Hospital for an operation: removal of the steel screws which had held her broken hip, and repair of her bladder. She spoke on the phone with Lois Ames, who also underwent surgery that day at Massachusetts General Hospital. They shared a sense of fury at their impotence in the face of pain, hospital authoritarianism, and carelessness. Anne turned her agony to good use by beginning the “Fury” poems. The Furies of “Sunsets,” “Sundays,” “Cooks,” “Cocks,” “Bones,” and “Overshoes” were only a few from the series that was to go into The Death Notebooks.

  [To Charles Newman]

  [14 Black Oak Road]

  June 20, 1972

  Dear Charlie:

  Forgive, forgive that I never answered your letter from Budapest. Forgive, forgive, forgive that I never sent my condolences over the death of your wife. I was broken for you, Charlie, but I was quiet, thinking that perhaps the letters just ate into you all the more.

  Now to business. I am fully aware that a year ago your Tri-Quarterly was full all the way through 1973. What is it now, Charlie, ’75? You see, I have this long poem, and after I got it back from The New Yorker, I thought to myself, “Anne, this is a major poem. It goes places you’ve never been. You want it in the most important magazine in the country. Doesn’t that mean the Tri-Quarterly?” I don’t mind waiting two or three years to get it in a right place. So what do you say Charlie, my dear, to taking a reading of “O Ye Tongues”? I don’t intend to publish it in book form except posthumously from my book, The Death Notebooks. If it appealed, you could have a few shorter pieces from that too.