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
There is no word for time. Today we will not think to number another summer or watch its white bird into the ground.
I tied down time with a rope but it came back. Then I put my head in a death bowl and my eyes shut up like clams. They didn't come back.
Yes, I know. Death sits with his key in my lock. Not one day is taken for granted. Even nursery rhymes have put me in hock.
Poets are sitting in my kitchen. Why do these poets lie? Why do children get children and Did you hear what it said?
Everyone has left me except my muse, that good nurse. She stays in my hand, a mild white mouse.
Now I am going back And I have ripped my hand From your hand as I said I would And I have made it this far ...
All I am is the trick of words writing themselves.
I think it will be a miracle if I don't someday end up killing myself.
I hoard books. They are people who do not leave.
Poetry is my life, my postmark, my hands, my kitchen, my face.
All I wanted was a little piece of life, to be married, to have children.... I was trying my damnedest to lead a conventional life, for that was how I was brought up, and it was what my husband wanted of me. But one can't build little white picket fences to keep the nightmares out.
The silence is death. It comes each day with its shock to sit on my shoulder, a white bird, and peck at the black eyes and the vibrating red muscle of my mouth.
God has a brown voice, as soft and full as beer.
Yesterday I did not want to be borrowed but this is the typewriter that sits before me and love is where yesterday is at.