Sexton's Poetry example essay topic

Anne Sexton was an excellent poet; she was both inspirational and brutally honest. Sexton's poems present a true sense of the world, not the sugar- coated version usually heard. She touched on subjects that were considered to be taboo in her era; everything from incest to masturbation. Sexton was born in 1928. She grew up in a conventional middle- class family, in Massachusetts. Sexton married in her teens and worked as a fashion model.

She had her first child at the age of twenty five, and it wasn't until after her second child two years later she began to write. All the while, she had huge fights with her mother and dealt with the guilt of being a mother herself. Sexton had a love / hate relationship with her mother. She resented her mother for so many things and constantly felt like a disappointment to her. Sexton's early experiences with guilt and unhealthy relationships eventually turn around with her discovery of poetry, but her writing only prolonged her eventual suicide. (George 308) Sexton's life was filled with extremely difficult experiences.

Anne Sexton was an extraordinary woman. At the age of only seventeen Anne Sexton became a wife, a beginning writer, and a model. Sexton grew up in an extremely strict home. Her parents were high class and their children were expected to act as such.

From the beginning Sexton's parents knew she was going to be different, and in their mind different was not acceptable. Sexton was forced into marriage. She needed to be free, from the pressures of "high society", and free of high expectations. Quite a few years after she married, they had their first child, Joyce.

Sexton saw Joyce more as a burden than a blessing. She already had so much going on with her family issues and she was not established in a career yet. She was not ready for motherhood, not because she was young, she was 24, but she was inexperienced and had bad examples to follow. Never the less, she overcame it and so began her journey into motherhood. Joyce eventually became her joy. She learned how to be a mother.

Sexton was not the best of mothers; she struggled daily to balance her daughter, her husband, her job, her dysfunctional family, and her love of writing. Ultimately, her writing took priority and just after Sexton began to learn to be a good mother, she found out she was pregnant. Sexton felt nothing but guilt and total agony over her second child; she did not feel worthy enough to be a mother with one child, let alone two. She felt as if God was punishing her for her disobedience to her parents. The birth of her second child left her with nothing but feelings of guilt and unworthiness. (George 297) Sexton's poetry helped play a significant role in her life.

Her upbringing did nothing but hinder her ability to be herself; her writing helped to sort of "undo" that. Growing up Sexton's father always told her, "Discipline is the key to success". (Hall 176) One would assume that with this being the family policy that is what attributed to her success as a writer; it was quite opposite. Sexton grew up resenting her family, her upbringing, and being of a prominent family; she was far from disciplined. It was her writing that disciplined her. An aspiring poet once wrote Sexton asking her how she does it; here was her answer, "the discipline the reworking the forging into being is the stuff of poetry".

(Middlebrook 142) Sexton firmly came to believe that her poetry disciplined her. It taught her to take the time to work and revise and work and revise and work and revise some more. She learned that through discipline she could do and be anything she aspired. Sexton's poetry was more than that though, it was also her confessional.

All the bitter hatred she had toward mother hood, toward her father, toward her like as a whole was expressed in her writing. Everything she thought may be taboo, everything she liked and did not like, everything she every thought and never said, she wrote about. Her poetry was her true confessional. In Sexton's poem, To Bedlam and Part Way Back, illustrates this " I didn't want a girl, only a boy, already loved, already in the house / I who was never quite sure about being a girl / And now you, this was my worst guilt".

(George 112) Clearly she was guilty from childhood and has carried that guilt into mother hood. Everyone needs someone to turn to, someone to confide in, Sexton lacked this person so she substituted the person with her writings. Eventually her poems were more than just her confessional; they were seen to be her salvation. At the end of a long hard day se knew she could go to her writings, she knew they would not judge her or take her for granted. Sexton understood the meaning of "me time", you know the time everyone needs to themselves.

She learned that without this time she would explode and say thing to her children, as well as her husband, she did not really mean. (Middlebrook 48) Ultimately her poetry could not save her and Sexton was lead to suicide. Throughout her life she had battled the desires to take her life, and eventually she could not fight them anymore. She had dealt with her children for as long as she could. She had listened to the negative comments and criticisms from her mother for as long as she could.

She had done everything for everyone else for as long as she could before she exploded. Sexton felt as if she had no other options. She could not take the pressures of life anymore. She was quoted in her memoir's to have said, "I realize life's frailty and shortness and am not giving it the option to take mine". (George 309) Sexton was aware of her loneliness and life's frailty and shortness; ultimately the pain of life's brevity pushed her over the edge. Suicide was an issue of control for her.

She felt as if she had never had any control in her life. Everyone had always made decisions for her and this was one decision she would make for herself. Anne Sexton died October 4th, 1974 of carbon monoxide poisoning. Very few writers can take a story, a fairytale for example, and make it reality.

Very few writers can be both honest and extremely inspirational, and very few writers have been as good as Anne Sexton. She lived the life that any writer would dream to have, but it just became to much. Sexton could not deal with her mother and family problems. She could not deal with motherhood and let go of her guilt, but worst than that not anything could have saved her, not even her poetry.

Anne Sexton had dealt with so many family issues, so much guilt, that although she found comfort in her writing ultimately it wasn't enough. "Death motions to us wordlessly. Powerfully in the voice she was given, Sexton motioned back, each word a gift to the living". (George 315).