Although Sylvia Plath may be the
most widely recognized twentieth century poet who committed suicide, I venture
to say that the name of Anne Sexton is not far behind, and her poetry is
considerably more approachable. While
Plath’s poetry is declarative and confrontational, Sexton well deserves her
reputation as a confessional writer.

J. M.
McClatchey’s nine-page summary of Sexton’s career, which serves as an
introduction to this collection, will be helpful to those who are not familiar
with her work. It is helpful to know
that “Elizabeth Gone” and “Some Foreign Letters” are about her great-aunt who
to whom Sexton was very close. Sexton
invites an intimate relation with her reader, writing about being given the
remains of Elizabeth in a cardboard box. 

Sexton
writes about her experience as a mental patient, on a psychiatric ward, and
although there may be some element of taunting in her references to her
doctors, she is not defiant about her illness in the way that Plath was in
several of her poems. Sexton’s style
often sounds like the reporting of personal thoughts. While hearing Sexton read her own work does not reveal much about
their meaning that cannot be seen from the words themselves on the printed
page, and I find the poems easier to grasp on the page than hearing them on a
tape, still there’s a power in hearing the poet read.

Biographies
of Sexton show that she had considerable personal failings, especially as a
mother, but nevertheless her poetry makes her an appealing figure, because she
seems emotionally open and honest, even with hints of humor and
vulnerability. To hear her reading
“Unknown Girl in a Maternity Ward,” about the early days in the life of her new
daughter, one gets a sense of a rare glimpse into a difficult relationship in
the making. As a mental patient, she
was given some stupid tasks to do, and she reports them faithfully, without any
great anger. Even in “All My Pretty
Ones,” written to her alcoholic father, she writes about the experience of
recollecting the past, seeing its horrors, and still ends on a note of
forgiveness.

These poems
still have great power even though most were written in the late 1950s or the
1960s. Indeed, in my opinion, they have
aged better than much of Sylvia Plath’s work. 
I was very pleased to be reminded of the directness and clarity of
Sexton’s poetry in this audiobook with an accompanying book.

Links:

RandomHouse
web page for this book

Yahoo
page for Anne Sexton

Review of Sylvia
Plath: Voice of the Poet audiobook

© 2002 Christian Perring. First Serial Rights.

Christian Perring,
Ph.D., is Chair of the Philosophy Department at Dowling College,
Long Island. He is editor of Metapsychology Online Review.
His main research is on philosophical issues in psychiatry.
He is especially interested in exploring how philosophers can
play a greater role in public life, and he is keen to help foster
communication between philosophers, mental health professionals,
and the general public.

Categories: Fiction