by Anne Sexton
Tender Heart Club, The, 40–41
Terry, Ellen, 161
“That Day,” 300
Theater Company of Boston, 317
Thirty-six Children, 323
Thomas, Dylan, 138, 409
“Those Times,” 157
“Three Seasons and a Gorilla,” 331
Time magazine, 296
“To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Triumph,” 97
To Bedlam and Part Way Back, 31, 54, 58, 77, 87, 104, 141, 163, 165–166, 296
“To Lose the Earth,” 157
“To Market,” 331
“Touch, The,” 283, 421
Transformations, 360–313, 359, 361–363, 367, 370–372, 372–373, 373–375, 382, 384
“Traveler’s Wife,” 25
Traveling Through the Dark, 157
Trilling, Diana, 81
Tri-Quarterly, 272–274, 306
“Truth the Dead Know, The,” 105, 128, 421
Tufts University, Honorary Doctorate from, 1970, 313, 354
Turek, Rosalyn, 382
“Twelve Dancing Princesses, The,” 350
“Two Sons,” 157
“Under a Blueberry Moon,” 246
University of Massachusetts, 357
Untermeyer, Louis, 104, 120, 131
“Vampire, The,” 410
Van Gogh, Vincent, 291
Venice, Italy, 205–211, 227
Village Voice, The, 354
Virginia Beach, Virginia, 16, 17
Voices, 46
Volpe, John (Governor of Massachusetts), 309
Vonnegut, Kurt, 349, 365, 367–368
Wakefield, Dan, 367, 407
Waldorf Cafeteria, 38
Waltham, Massachusetts, 178
“Wanting to Die,” 231, 280
Washington, D.C., 55
Wayland High School, 315
Wayne State University, 114
Way of the Cross, The, 153
Wellesley College, 3
Wellesley, Massachusetts, 4, 5, 21, 147, 262
Wellesley National Bank, The, 3
Welty, Eudora, 47
West, Jessy (Jessamyn), 35
Western Review, The, 34
Weston, Massachusetts, 4, 18, 21, 254
Westwood Lodge, 22; “the summer hotel,” 80, 219, 226
“White Snake, The,” 359
Wilbur, Richard, 64
Williams, C. K., 323, 331, 333, 369–370
Williams, Oscar, 126
Williams, W. C., 421
Wirtschafter, Zelda, 322–323
Wizard’s Tears, The, 395
Woman of the Year Award, 392
Wonderland, 396
Woulbroun, John, 178, 182, 190, 218, 266
Woulbroun, Peggy, 218
Wright, James, 47, 102, 131, 301
Yaddo, 46, 50, 67, 68, 73–74
Yale Review, 72
Yale University, 89
YMHA (New York City), 91
“You All Know the Story of the Other Woman,” 319
Yaguchi, Yorifumi, 393
“You, Dr. Martin,” 31, 47
“Young,” 2, 98
Zurich, Switzerland, Anne’s 1963 visit to, 198–202
Acknowledgments
We are grateful for the generosity of those who shared their time, material, advice, or recollections of Anne Sexton: Bruce Berlind, Elizabeth Bishop, Julie Joslyn Brown, Michael Dennis Browne, Alfred C. Cancelleri, Bev Chaney, Anne Clarke, Robert Clawson, Carol Dine, Stella Easland, Elizabeth Fuller, Arthur Furst, Charles Ghigna, Linda Glick, Dorianne Goetz, Donald Hall, Wynn Handman, David Harris, Joyce Hartman, Anthony Hecht, Anne Hussey, Barbara Kane, Galway Kinnell, Carolyn Kizer, Stanley Kunitz, Maryel Locke, Deborah London, Robert Lowell, Craig Lucas, the Rev. Arthur MacGillivray (S.J.), J. D. McClatchy, Charles Maryan, Rollie McKenna, Nolan Miller, Frederick Morgan, Rose Fillmore Morgan, Joan Nemser, Louise Noble, Joan Norris, Tillie Olsen, Joseph Parisi, Brooke Peirce, Eugenia Plunkett, Ted Polumbaum, A. Poulin, Jr., Joan Reischauer, Suzanne Rioff, Ellin Sarot, Marian Seldes, Alice Smith, W. D. Snodgrass, Jon Stallworthy, George Starbuck, Belinda Straight, Mark Strand, Brian Sweeney, Nancy Talbott, Blanche Harvey Taylor, Deborah Trustman, Tom Victor, Randall Warner, Ruth Whitman, and C. K. Williams.
We are especially indebted to Dr. Howard Gotlieb, director of the Boston University Library Special Collections. The staff of Special Collections was both cheerful and indispensable: Paul Guay, Margaret Goostray, Douglas MacDonald, Charles Niles, Carolyn Sadler, and Vita Widershien.
In addition, there are special people to whom we owe a deep and outstanding debt:
Alfred Muller Sexton II who generously opened his heart to the past.
Wilhelmine Sexton Morse who gave a mother’s gift.
Joyce Ladd Sexton for her buoyant spirit. Her mother would be proud.
Louise and Loring Conant for food, warm talk, and a fire on the hearth.
Maxine Kumin, keeper of the gate for seventeen years.
Anne Clarke who gave laughter, wisdom, and encouragement.
Claire S. Degener and Sterling Lord who saw the book whole from its inception.
Haskell Kassler and Larry Levinson, whose wit and skill guided us past legal morasses.
Richard McAdoo, whose solid presence urged us on.
Gail Stewart, our copy editor, who has the eye of a hawk and a sharp green pencil.
Kathleen and Paul Walker for their good humor and steadying hands.
Dr. Stanley King, for he built a bridge across the dark.
Polly Williams Zarella and her smile. She was with us from the beginning, exercising a copy editor’s eye as she graciously performed each mundane chore.
Linda Gray Sexton thanks John Freund for the long hours he has spent on her part of this book. For patience, for support, for the silence of love.
Lois Ames thanks her children, Liz and Adam, for whom Anne was a special friend: they have given me the gift of time and kept courage on our doorstep.
Above all, for his courage, perception, and friendship, we thank our editor, Jonathan Galassi.
L.G.S.
L.A.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Anne Sexton (1928–1974) was a Pulitzer Prize–winning American poet born in Newton, Massachusetts. She attended Garland Junior College for one year and briefly worked as a model. She married Alfred Muller Sexton II at age nineteen, and in 1953 gave birth to a daughter. Shortly after, she was diagnosed with postpartum depression, suffered her first mental breakdown, and was admitted to Westwood Lodge, a neuropsychiatric hospital to which she would repeatedly return for help. In 1955, following the birth of her second daughter, Sexton suffered another breakdown and was hospitalized again; her children were sent to live with her husband’s parents. That same year, on her birthday, she attempted suicide.
Sexton was encouraged by her doctor to pursue the interest in writing poetry she had developed in high school, and in the fall of 1957, she enrolled in a workshop at the Boston Center for Adult Education. In her introduction to Sexton’s Complete Poems, poet Maxine Kumin, who was in Sexton’s workshop and became her close friend, describes her belief that it was the writing of poetry that gave Sexton something to work toward and develop and thus enabled her to endure life for as long as she did. In 1974, at the age of forty-six, despite a successful writing career, Sexton lost her battle with mental illness and committed suicide.
Like Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, W. D. Snodgrass (who exerted a great influence on her work), and other Confessional poets, Sexton offers the reader an intimate view of the emotional anguish that characterized her life. The experience of being a woman was a central issue in her poetry, and though she endured criticism for bringing subjects such as menstruation, abortion, and drug addiction into her work, her skill as a poet transcended the controversy over her subject matter. Sexton’s poetry collections include To Bedlam and Part Way Back, All My Pretty Ones, Transformations, and Live or Die, which won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1967.
All r
ights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
The editors are grateful to Maxine Kumin, Stanley Kunitz, Robert Lowell, and Suzanne Rioff for permission to print excerpts from letters by each of them.
Copyright © 1977 by Linda Gray Sexton and Loring Conant, Jr., executors of the will of Anne Sexton
Commentary copyright © 1977 by Linda Gray Sexton and Lois Ames
Cover design by Greg Mortimer
Cover photograph by Arthur Furst
ISBN: 978-1-5040-3437-1
This edition published in 2016 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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