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
I lay there silently, hoarding my small dignity. I did not ask about the gate or the closet. I did not question the bedtime ritual where, on the cold bathroom tiles, I was spread out daily and examined for flaws. I did not know that my bones, those solids, those pieces of sculpture would not splinter.
Being kissed on the back of the knee is a moth at the windowscreen....
The grass as bristly and stout as chives and me wondering when the ground will break and me wondering how anything fragile survives
The tongue, the Chinese say, is like a sharp knife: it kills without drawing blood.
Put your mouthful of words away and come with me to watch the lilies open in such a field, growing there like yachts, slowly steering their petals without nurses or clocks.
And the aura of you remains, remains, remains…
Well, one gets out of bed and the planets don't always hiss or muck up the day, each day.
Rejoice with the day lily for it is born for a day to live by the mailbox and glorify the roadside
Dead drunk is the term I think of, insensible, neither cool nor warm, without a head or a foot. To be drunk is to be intimate with a fool.
Thumbs grow into my throat. I wear slaps like a spot of rouge.
Poor thing. To die and never see Brooklyn.
Today life opened inside me like an egg ...
Of course the New Testament is very small. Its mouth opens four times as out-of-date as a prehistoric monster, yet somehow man-made....
My safe, safe psychosis is broken. It was hard. It was made of stone. It covered my face like a mask. But it has cracked.