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, in my brand new body, which was not a woman's yet, told the stars my questions and thought God could really see the heat and the painted light, elbows, knees, dreams, goodnight.
My objects dream and wear new costumes, compelled to, it seems, by all the words in my hands and the sea that bangs in my throat.
She is so naked and singular. She is the sum of yourself and your dream. Climb her like a monument, step after step. She is solid.
I am your dwarf. I am the enemy within. I am the boss of your dreams. See. Your hand shakes. It is not palsy or booze. It is your Doppelganger trying to get out. Beware...Beware...
Bless all useful objects, the spoons made of bone, the mattress I cook my dreams upon, the typewriter that is my church with an altar of keys always waiting.
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.
In a dream you are never eighty.
this is no dream just my oily life where the people are alibis and the street is unfindable for an entire lifetime.
What a lay me down this is with two pink, two orange, two green, two white goodnights.
If you meet a cross-eyed person you must plunge into the grass, alongside the chilly ants, fish through the green fingernails and come up with the four-leaf clover....
When the cow gives blood and the Christ is born we must all eat sacrifices. We must all eat beautiful women.
Then God spoke to me and said: People say only good things about Christmas. If they want to say something bad, they whisper.
Let God be some tribal female who is known but forbidden.
For I could not read or speak and on the long nights I could not turn the moon off or count the lights of cars across the ceiling.