Anne Sexton: Writing Away Her Worries Evelyn Shannen College

Anne Sexton is a modern model of the confessional poet and was very open with her poems and writings. Her therapist recommended her to start writing when she first had a breakdown, prompting Sexton to use her writing as a way to escape the world and reality. Her emotions struggles, and thoughts were spilled onto the pages. As mentioned in her biography in the textbook, “the purpose of her poems was not to analyze or explain behavior but to make it palpable in all its ferocity of feeling” and “poetry should be a shock to the senses. It should also hurt” (549). Reading through her works, it is like a punch in the gut with the realness of her poems were because she was not holding back and expected the words to resonate.

With little formal training in literature, Anne Sexton emerged as a major modern voice, transforming verse begun as therapy into poetic art. Despite periodic hospitalization for depression, ultimately leading to her suicide at age forty-six, Sexton contributed to her craft, receiving critical recognition and traveling widely. As she struggled to deal with her own marital infidelity and the problems associated with being a female poet in a male dominated genre, she combined the theme of depression with one based on...