by Anne Sexton
If so, I don’t care, I love you anyhow. It is too late to turn you out of my heart. Part of you lives here.
love, Anne
While studying with Lowell at Boston University, Anne also participated in an informal workshop with other Boston poets—Maxine Kumin, George Starbuck, Sam Albert, and John Holmes. Drawing on the criticism she received from her class and her workshop, Anne gradually began to develop her own style and voice, and wrote many of the poems which were to make up her first book, To Bedlam and Part Way Back. Her poems were intensely personal, revealing much about her family problems and her own mental illness. Holmes, who had been her teacher a year earlier, did not approve of her candor. Early in 1959 he expressed doubts about such public confessions, warning her against exposing both herself and her family. She replied with a letter and the poem “For John, Who Begs Me Not to Enquire Further” [TB], explaining that she could not help herself. Later, her choice of a preface for Bedlam reflected this conflict with her earliest teacher:
It is the courage to make a clean breast of it in face of every question that makes the philosopher. He must be like Sophocles’s Oedipus, who, seeking enlightenment concerning his terrible fate, pursues his indefatigable enquiry, even when he divines that appalling horror awaits him in the answer. But most of us carry in our heart the Jocasta who begs Oedipus for God’s sake not to inquire further …
—from a letter to Goethe by Schopenhauer
[To John Holmes,
possibly draft]
[40 Clearwater Road]
LINCOLN’S BIRTHDAY
[1959]
Dear John,
I have spent the morning writing you a poem [“For John, Who Begs Me Not to Enquire Further,” TB]. And now that’s that. I could have written you the volumes that raced defensively through my mind, for two days now. Instead, a poem; the condensation of it all. I let one word speak for many.
Of course there are other poems that I did not write. I didn’t say that, although we seem to be strangers, that I wave to you from my distant shore, that I send semaphore signals that you may find my signal no matter how foreign the language. I didn’t say that you have taught me everything I do know about poetry, and taught me with firm patience and a kind smile. And I didn’t say that poetry has saved my life; has given me a life and if I had not wandered in off the street and found you and your class, that I would indeed be lost. I didn’t say that I have spent two years wishing that you would like me and feeling that instinctively you did not. I didn’t say how I cried the day this summer after leaving your house, because you were such a good man and your home seemed to radiate. I didn’t say that I am surely a fan of yours, a lesser but a firm fan. I didn’t say how welcome you make me feel in your home when you think to include me to a party. Or that Doris is great—and Doris really is so great, so likable and fun.
And then I didn’t say that your criticism of me as a person was difficult, was perceptive, but bitter, or that I would like to cry, “but I don’t know how to be anyone but myself”, and that I felt ashamed … and then I knew that I had forgotten the affection and the courage that wrote the letter. I do not know how to be what you would rather have me be. But I will try. Of course, I will shuck off this shell; of course I will change, will grow to look around instead of inside. But in case it takes a little while, I hope that you will wave back to me from your distant shore, and understand the signal—if not the words, will see the gesture and disregard the lack of sound.
And because you can see a young light within me, hidden but possible and I can see your special sensitive light, always constant … I will blink in your direction. And that is a bridge, from my window to your window (no door!) …
In the midwinter of 1959 she sent “Some Foreign Letters” [TB] to Philip Rahv at The Partisan Review and “The Road Back” [TB] to Howard Moss at The New Yorker. Both poems were accepted. She wrote to Moss: “Despite many successes nothing has been sweeter. (I mean yippee).”
As the friendship with Snodgrass developed and the tutelage under Lowell continued, Anne worked with more intensity on her book. She later remarked that Lowell didn’t teach her what to put in a poem, but what to leave out: “What he taught me was taste. Perhaps that’s the only thing a poet can be taught.” Following his suggestions, she cut out fifteen poems and replaced them with new ones.
[To Nolan Miller]
40 Clearwater Rd.
Sunday Feb. 15th, 1959
Dear Nolan,
I was so sorry to hear from Jud about your Mother’s death. It was so sudden; that is always hard. Easier for her, of course, but so difficult for you. I meant to write you right off and tell you that I was thinking of you day by day and hoping for you. Now I hear that you are back. I am sure the trip helped a little, as time will, as all things of life do help a little. I know how close you and your mother were … and there is nothing that I can really say. I remember reading an essay by Theodor Reik in memory of Freud … and Freud said something to him that he remembered more especially after Freud had died. The last time he saw Freud, he knew that Freud was dying, and he felt unable to speak, Freud took his hand and said, “People that belong together, do not need to be glued together.” … and I remember it too. I mean, I kind of like it and I kind of think I will not forget it either … I always have this desperate feeling about time, time passing by and not being able to catch it. But, now that I consider it again, I try to remember that people who belong together do not need to be glued together.
Do I make ANY sense. I doubt it. But the gesture is sincere. […]
Recently I gathered up my stuff and piled it into a book of sorts and gave it to Robert Lowell for his opinion. Now he tells me that he showed it to Stanley Kunitz and Bill Alfred and they like it (with some critical reservations) and then he left it with Harry Ford at Knopf … So lots is going on. I hadn’t meant for him to do anything but read it and give me an idea of what was wrong. And now I find it is resting in its bastard form at a publisher’s. I feel it will axe me. The book is a mess, though since have dragged SOME of the lousy stuff out and have written some new poems. Lowell is very enthusiastic about my work. (But I haven’t forgotten WHO discovered me) …
I am giving a reading at the Poets’ Theater in Cambridge. It will be my first real reading. George Starbuck and Maxine Kumin are reading with me. Also Houghton Mifflin seem anxious to see my book (though I doubt they would want it in its present form) … But I do seem to be getting help from all sides. Writers and writers’ folk are the best of all in this big world.
I have tried to follow your advice and crit of my work and it has helped me, has steered me quite a bit. I have been so busy with the poetry that I have not given any time to prose. I will because I will have to, sooner or later. I do have a feeling for stories, for plot and maybe the dramatic situation. I really prefer dramatic situations to anything else. Most poets have a thought that they dress in imagry imagery (I just can’t spell. I’m in too much of a hurry.) But I prefer people in a situation, in a doing, a scene, a losing or a gain, and then, in the end, find the thought (the thought I didn’t know I had until I wrote the story) … This is, in fact, a major criticism of my poetry. But still, I think it makes stimulating poetry and poetry need not be dull. And anyone can think of images, most anyone. I like a good image; I use them often enough—but I want, usually, more than that. I wonder, rocking on the tight rope of my own proclamation, if I am right. I announce my belief and then doubt my position in air. (Speaking of those anyone’s images). […]
And forgive this hasty letter. I save my grammar and spelling for the poetry and just don’t have time to write a decent letter.
with my best,
Anne
[…]
[To W. D. Snodgrass]
[40 Clearwater Road]
Feb the 24th the 59th year
Dearest Snodsy,
[…] Am writing like sixty, lately. Alternately depressed or up. All my personal life stinks as you know. Mother still dying awa
y and Daddy acting nutty. Thank god for my good sane husband. He holds me up. He is a wonderful good man. I am lucky. He is the … god knows what I was going to say. Have been interrupted … cup of coffee with Sandy and Les. Now it is time to get lunch. And you know.
I hope you had good luck on the job interview. I wish you would find one around here.
My book is taking shape. Though will probably reshape itself a dozen times before I get it accepted. Still, it doesn’t look bad. I am about to write an article in defense of sincere poetry, saying more than you said. I guess because I am starting to get attacked on my kind of poetry. I guess this always happens when you do something out of the norm. John Holmes thinks my book is unseemly, too personal, tho talented. So I have been firing the burners in defense of myself. I have one comment to make that might interest you. One comment that is essentially a personal comment. And that is … J. Holmes wasn’t impressed with “Heart’s Needle” … and now I have figured out why. He is afraid of something that real. People are afraid of people, especially poets. As I said to Fred Morgan, in discussing how I came to know you and how I first came to be influenced by you … I read “Heart’s Needle” and I changed. It made me see myself new. In seeing you, in feeling your marvellous restrained sense of immediate loss, I saw my own loss in a new color. And I changed. I said to Fred, “A poem isn’t supposed to do that! It isn’t supposed to be that vital!” … meaning, of course, how unusual, how much genius and the fine grip of talent, is in such a poem that reaches down and touches the inmost part of the reader. A writer, showing himself, in his true light, and doing it so well, has indeed done something so great that one might be afraid. Afraid of the writer’s truth and their own truth … That’s what I think you did. That’s the great thing you did. And who would expect it from a ‘just a poem’ … I don’t mean to imply that I have written anything as good. I have not. But I would, if I could. I damn well wish I could … Tho Rose Morgan said to me, about “The Double Image” [TB] “Thank you, Anne, for writing that poem” … it meant something quite real to her tho I don’t actually know what. Something about being a woman and a mother. and Fred said, in talking of it, in talking of the final insight of the poem, in the last lines, I quote “I, who was never quite sure/about being a girl, needed another/life, another image to remind me./ And this was my worst guilt; you could not cure/nor soothe it. I made you to find me.” … he looked kind of funny and said, something about those lines really got him. And how he guessed he understood better why his first wife kept wanting and having more and more children … “She made them to find herself—but couldn’t” … What I’m trying to say is that, I think a poem that can do that to people, make them see themselves through yourself, is valid … not unseemly, not too personal … but worth it!
Christ. I’m off again. Talking in circles. My darling, the peanut butter calls.
You will write, won’t you … Nothing else is new. Got an acceptance from Accent … two old rather cruddy poems … though one you will recognize from Antioch and down at that tavern [“Portrait of an Old Woman on the College Tavern Wall,” TB]. Maybe I sent it to you a long time ago, I forget. Will be out for the winter issue if you happen to run into it. But I forget you never read the mags around.
You really wouldn’t like it around here. There are always these parties after readings that The Poets, the good, the almost and the best all go to and muck around. It is politics and as bad as the University itself. See Cal at them, but avoid hanging onto his jacket … People like Phil Booth (who I think very phony by the way) go … Last week for Dick Wilbur, John Holmes had a party. After most had left (Cal, Stanley Kunitz, John Brinnin, and Isabella Gardner) we sat around and read our poems aloud (dozens of others must have been 50 people there!) … Wilbur, Holmes, Dave Ferry, Phil Booth, Maxine, Me, George Starbuck and some others I forget. and that was kind of fun. But still all very political and “who do you know” and “do you have a new book in process” And … Wilbur, by the way, is a doll. Very handsome and handsome himself. His wife is a go-jus creature, curvy and all, expensily dressed.…
The kids are jumping on my feet. MOMIE we want some lunch.
fondly,
Annie
Her mother died of cancer in early March. Each day Anne had sat by the bedside of the woman for whom she felt such ambivalence, playing cards and talking until time ran out. She poured out her grief in “The Division of Parts” [TB], published by The Hudson Review in 1959.
This winter when
cancer began its ugliness
I grieved with you each day
for three months
and found you in your private nook
of the medicinal palace
for New England Women
and never once
forgot how long it took.
In June her father died. While in letters Anne could bear to mention the loss of her parents only in passing, in “All My Pretty Ones” [PO] she mourned within the strict walls of her art.
… My God, father, each Christmas Day
with your blood, will I drink down your glass
of wine? The diary of your hurly-burly years
goes to my shelf to wait for my age to pass.
Only in this hoarded span will love persevere.
Whether you are pretty or not, I outlive you,
bend down my strange face to yours and forgive you.
[To W. D. Snodgrass]
[40 Clearwater Road]
Marchsnowingout [11, 1959]
Dearest De,
How really splendid your letters are for me. I kept your last letter in my notebook to give me the strength to be myself and to hell with the rest of them. We read again at the Poets’ Theater this Sunday night because it was a sell out the week before. And was again, this last time. In fact, tho most of the really important people came the first time—the second reading was a greater success. Maxine read much better and I had really organized my stuff into a coherent whole and said a few words about—well about “loving,” which seems odd I suppose. I tied my reading up on the statement that someone had said the week before about there being no love poems read … So, after saying that I WISH I could read a love poem (as we know them) I went on to say that mine were, in fact, love poems—and/or poems about finding the way toward love … and etc. but it did work out into a whole and went well. Still read “The Double Image” [TB] which seems to read well and moved both Sundays’ audiences. There was a sweet gray woman in the front row crying when I read it (later find out she is Mrs. Marquand—wife of …)
Then last tuesday Lowell did the complete “Double Image” in class and what’s more he made ME read it. I was quite unprepared but he was adamant—I had to read it out loud. (I think this means that he liked my reading and now likes the poem better. More better. As a whole it has a good dramatic structure—but many faults when picked apart—He didn’t pick it apart tho …) … When you do read it, and please wait until it comes out in Hudson … it will remind you, in its like ways, of “Heart’s Needle” because there was some experience so alike; the letting go of the child; the visits of the child … But in main, now that I can be objective about it—I do not feel it is an imitation of your great poem … (I was afraid it was, you know) … But it ain’t really. It is much more twisted, less objective, more caught up in its own sickness—and then, it resolves like a story. I can never add nor subtract to it.—Does this seem odd to write you about this???? Maybe I do because I think you don’t want to read it because you love me and don’t want to find me copying you with my own like sick inventions pasted over your true poem … And if you feel that I have, when you do read it, I can only say that when I read your poem, that first time, leafing through the anthology, and it walked out at me and grew like a bone inside of my heart. So, if the bone shows, it will only add to your fame and fortune. Now that it and even you are a kind of terrible part of me—I do not know how to disorganize myself. I have grown into this. No way back. No way at all.
&nb
sp; This letter is disjointed. I am slugged with tranquilizers today. My mother died last night. I have just returned from the undertaker’s and viewing the body and picking out the gaudiest baroque (but cheapest) casket. And will leave here, in a minute, with my sister to go down to Gloucester and pick up some pieces. De, I am going to lose myself—or else, the chance is that poetry will save me. (That is even the reason that I am writing you right this very minute in the middle of ghoulish death—because you … no. I won’t say. I am over-effusive. You represent something to me. So rare. Is it too dumb or trite or feminine to say I love your soul?… I am just beginning to learn to love at all … you taught me with “Heart’s Needle” …)))
The mail just came. Fred Morgan has taken another new poem with great enthusiasm. He is a doll. A real love. I forgot, somewhere in New York about what he was thinking of me, and found I did like him. and whatismore he really does like my poetry. He took “A Story for Rose On The Midnight Flight To Boston” [TB]—did I ever send it to you??? I forget? It doesn’t matter.
Also got a swell letter from Nolan Miller who wishes I would come back to Antioch. He is most enthusiastic over my work (which I send him as I write along) and his comments are good ones too … I might … But it costs. And I can’t take the time to go everywhere, lest I lose my husband.
I would like to go [to] Yaddo. What should I do? Can you find out for me (unofficially) if I could get in … and if so, when. After, or around the end of June is better because I could have Sandy [Robart, a next-door neighbor] take the kids. But if it must be in May, that luscious of all months, I could try to find someone else. Would it be possible to go for only ten days or even just a week … I would like to get some real work done … and Antioch just isn’t the place for it. But I don’t care to go to Yaddo if there isn’t some dear to talk to in the evening. If I write all day, I prefer to get smooshed in the eve. a bit anyhow … I prefer Yaddo cuz it is all free. But could probably get into MacDowell easier. Russell Lynes (Harper’s) made the offer … Write me your complete thots on this. You wouldn’t like to try and write a verse play (maybe a small one-act thing) together would you??? I think I’d like to try it but think that two poets could do such an unusual job of it, if they were of such a mind to do so … Maxine and I have discussed it … But can’t seem to get her away from her text books … The theory of the 2 voices working with and against each other amuses me. And I DO have a real feeling for drama and know I could do it if I set out to …