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
This is what poems are: with mercy for the greedy, they are the tongue's wrangle, the world's pottage, the rat's star.
Poetry to me is prayer ...
Images are the heart of poetry ... You're not a poet without imagery.
One of my secret instructions to myself as a poet is "Whatever you do, don't be boring."
I was only sitting here in my white study with the awful black words pushing me around.
I tell it stories now and then and feed it images like honey. I will not speculate today with poems that think they're money.
I am not lazy. I am on the amphetamine of the soul. I am, each day, typing out the God my typewriter believes in.
Now that I have written many words, and let out so many loves, for so many, and been altogether what I always was a woman of excess, of zeal and greed, I find the effort useless.
My business is words. Words are like labels, or coins, or better, like swarming bees.
I said, the poets are there I hear them singing and lying around their round table and around me still.
Poets are sitting in my kitchen. Why do these poets lie? Why do children get children and Did you hear what it said?
You must be a poet, a lady of evil luck desiring to be what you are not, longing to be what you can only visit.
Saints have no moderation, nor do poets, just exuberance.
As for me, I am a watercolor. I wash off.