Anne Sexton
Anne Sexton
Anne Sextonwas an American poet, known for her highly personal, confessional verse. She won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1967 for her book Live or Die. Themes of her poetry include her long battle against depression and mania, suicidal tendencies, and various intimate details from her private life, including her relationships with her husband and children...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth9 November 1928
CityNewton, MA
CountryUnited States of America
It is in the small things we see it. The child's first step, as awesome as an earthquake. The first time you rode a bike, wallowing up the sidewalk.
No one to hate except the slim fish of memory that slides in and out of my brain.
I would like to bury all the hating eyes under the sand somewhere....
So I won't hang around in my hospital shift, repeating The Black Mass and all of it. I say Live, Live because of the sun, the dream, the excitable gift.
life is a trick, life is a kitten in a sack.
My life has appeared unclothed in court, detail by detail, death-bone witness by death-bone witness, and I was shamed at the verdict....
I would sell my life to avoid the pain that begins in the crib with its bars or perhaps with your first breath when the planets drill your future into you....
Somebody who should have been born is gone. Yes, woman, such logic will lead to loss without death. Or say what you meant, you coward . . . this baby that I bleed.
Take adultery or theft. Merely sins. It is evil who dines on the soul, stretching out its long bone tongue. It is evil who tweezers my heart, picking out its atomic worms.
I put the gold star up in the front window beside the flag. Alterations is what I know and what I did: hems, gussets and seams.
Jewels! Today each twig is important, each ring, each infection, each form is all that the gods must have meant.
Our checks are pale. Our wallets are invalids. Past due, past due, is what our bills are saying and yet we kiss in every corner, scuffing the dust and the cat. Love rises like bread as we go bust.
Our children tremble in their teen-age cribs, whirling off on a thumb or a motorcycle....
Once I was a couple. I was my own king and queen with cheese and bread and rosé on the rocks of Rockport.