by Anne Sexton
Not much new with me. Kayo is well; is away for a week at the moment. Mostly I look at the night movies on T.V. and cook and care for Linda and Joy who continue to delight and amaze. Why can’t I write a poem about loving them? Or Kayo? I don’t. I just write morbid (my Doctor says I write “grim” poems and stories, that I only write with one small segment of my unconscious). I told him to get the hell out of my writing life! I’m better tho. Haven’t killed myself for a year or over. (except in socially acceptable ways like drinking myself to death or taking sleeping pills each night but those don’t count) … (also not writing anything real lately) …
I guess I told you I’ve written a couple of stories and sold the first one to New World Writing (out this spring).
I’m depressed now. Maybe this is the last letter I’ll ever write anyone ever. I have nothing to say, really. I’m at my desk and my desk has nothing to say. I’m lonely. I guess I need Kayo around to pull me upstairs to watch T.V.… lonely lately. I certainly don’t believe in God either and that’s rather sad of me. Ruth Soter has converted to Christianity and goes to church all the time, she writes. She will be back this July. She still loves her husband, she writes. When she writes.
Enough. Enough. I have nothing left to say in all this world. Write me though.
Here is another newish poem [“Young,” PO] to fill out my unfinished page (I’m very compulsive and always fill out that page). […]
Goodnight, Dear De, yours,
Anne
[To Louis Simpson]
40 Clearwater Rd.
March 7th, 1960
Dear Louis Simpson,
You are wonderful and I have treasured your letter. I wasn’t going to answer as I thought it was presumptuous of me to start a “correspondence”. You know? But I am a fool. I have been rereading your book for the 10th time and in it I have placed your letter and have again reread your letter. It is rather a mean timid soul who would not answer such a letter! I will not be that. I mean, I didn’t intend to be that. I was too busy thinking of being self effacing to think I OUGHT to answer. Of course, I wanted to. But that’s something else.
What I’m trying to say is thank you for your letter. Oh stupid stupid that I didn’t answer in November. Yet maybe my instinct was right. I wrote you in the first place in a terrific burst of sincere admiration and thanks for your book. I didn’t want to start an “admiration exchange”, I didn’t want to seem social or poetry (this is a bad day, the typewriter won’t spell) political. You know?
Now—the time has passed for a chance of all that. It’s time now to wave back to you and even throw you a kiss. And what words can I send along with the kiss? Perhaps there are none left. How special it has made me feel to think that you did know of my poetry and even liked it. Of course we all care. We want someone, most especially someone we admire, to like our work. Like you (when you got my letter) I said to my husband, “nothing matters now”. And there we all were. I don’t know how long it lasts, this “nothing else”—perhaps until you reach out from your desk again and wish “please, oh please, something else now”? Or perhaps forever. I hoard your letter against the day of reviews of my own book when I fear I will be ripped open and found unsightly. And then, if I should lose your letter which praises ME I will always have your poems. They can’t die. They live in the mind, by themselves, hardly belonging to you any longer. When you love poetry (as I think we both do) you want no 1. for your own to be good and no 2. for anyone’s poems to be perfect, alive, … We are all super critical and that’s why it is so honest a delight to meet poems (a whole big book of them you dreaming Governor) that arouse all senses.
I have written a new longish poem called “The Operation” [PO] which is (damn it as I really don’t want to write any more of them) a personal narration about my experiences this fall. I mention this as you are in it. Well. Your name isn’t. But you are. Toward the end, where I decide I will live after all, I say “All’s well, they say. They say I’m better./ I lounge in frills or, picturesque,/ I wear bunny pink slippers in the hall./ I read a new book and shuffle past the desk/ to mail the author my first fan letter” … and it goes on. I won’t send the whole thing but you will perhaps read it sometime in Hudson as they’ve taken it and I’d rather not send out new poems to people when my book is about to appear. Still, I thought you might like to know that you are there in my mind and told me to get well, that there was life and great beauty left. Let me dare say what my “Operation” doesn’t (it would sound phony) After nothing but pain and fear and the problems of guilt, your book burst over me and made me want to live … I know, how overly dramatic that sounds and so I wouldn’t dare put it in a poem, but I do to dare to tell you.
So thanks and thanks. And, looking over your letters again, so shoot the guy who said that about my poems in the issue of Hudson where you had your long long effort that will be famous, for its very perfect historical poetical G.I. self. I will not let them put us in competition. We are not. We are different. I would write just like you if I could. As you know I don’t at all. I do what I do because I don’t know how to be someone else. Therefore I dedicate myself to write my best self, and in this minute to thank you for writing your best self so well and giving me a hand out of my foolish “death bed”.
I’m sure we will meet sometime. I look forward to seeing more of your poems and to the day I may shake your hand. Until then, I wave a kiss.
Yours,
Anne Sexton
In March of 1960, Anne’s father-in-law was killed in an auto accident in Florida. George Sexton had long since forgiven Anne for taking his son out of college and was very much a parent to her. His death, especially after the loss of both her parents the previous year, stunned her. As she wrote to W. D. Snodgrass on March 25:
Kayo’s father was more fatherly toward me than my own father ever was. He has, in fact, paid one half of all my psychiatric bills for these past 4 yrs and one time that I tried to kill myself he was the one who stayed at the hospital. They won’t let you stay alone if you’ve tried to kill yourself and they refuse to let any nurse be responsible for you. It has to be a member of your family. Kayo was away and my mother and father said they wouldn’t come … Well, it doesn’t matter now … Just to explain why I mind so much about his being killed.
[To Hollis Summers]
[40 Clearwater Road]
March 16, 1960
Dear Love of a Hollis,
I do not think I have written you in too long a time now. But, I told George [Starbuck] on the phone yesterday that I didn’t think I would write you again. (all I need is to make a foolish statement like that to prove it almost at once a false bit of words … He said, “Have you been writing to Hollis?” and, “I just had this nice letter.” And then he read it to me and it was as always a “hollis letter” and then we talked of you and your pleasant charm and your specialness and it was then I said I was done writing to you who I couldn’t “communicate” with you ((((as you may have gathered, it DOES provoke me that I can’t seem to reach you under your mask of charm))))) […]
All I’m trying to say is that I am writing. And for no clear reason that I can rationalize as you do seem to refuse to write me back. Why do I bother with you? Christ knows! You ARE a bother. I throw real misspelled and true words at you and with the exception of your always honest and appreciated comments on my stories and poems, you answer me with … I can’t describe what it IS, only knowing what it isn’t.
Would you like better if I did not? Why don’t you answer questions like that, Hollis? Why? You must be afraid of me. I think you are. Am I so scary?
I, frankly, do not mind you not being in love with me. Really. No need to be in love with me. But must you be frightened of me? Or perhaps my soul (that word I can’t learn to avoid) is not to your liking …? If so, damn it, tell me. I wish you would be frank with me about the condition of my soul when I throw it at you helter skelter and you act as if this had not happened when it has. Is that supposed to mean “go a
way Anne soul. You are not pretty enough to linger aside of for a while” (and only on paper. My suds (((as I say to my Linda and Joyce)))) it is only on paper.) Maybe even on paper is not so pretty. Not so pretty enough for Hollis’s soul. On paper. Hmmmm?
If you find it impossible to answer these questions I will understand that your silence leaves you your gentle mask and the answer is “not pretty enough” …
My book is delayed. It will not be out until April 22. “Dancing the Jig” comes out in New World Writing April 1st. Have you not heard from the Guggy yet. My father-in-law, who was my best friend and paid all my psychiatric bills was killed in an automobile accident last week. So many dead. I am tired. But I continue. I am not well yet. But hope I’ll make it … Let’s see? What else? Ruth Soter comes home in July. She called me from Tokyo when I sent her that story “Hair” [BF] which she liked … Four of my worst poems got in an anthology by Conrad Aiken … I have a very real honest type correspondence with James Wright (I recall that you and I agreed on the excellence of his poems) … He is just as wonderful as his poems which is almost impossible. But true … Do you like Saul Bellow’s Henderson the Rain King. I am reading it. Right now I would rather read it than breathe (of course, I’m writing you right now. For some reason though I said I wasn’t [typing runs off the page]
Dear Hollis, another p.s. I don’t mean, really I don’t, to sound not grateful for all your comments about my story and both stories. I was. I am. You are the ONLY ONE who will give me the straight talk to on them. I trust your judgment over all people and I do appreciate your giving me your advice. I do! This is about something else.
I guess I’m saying I want an honest letter from you and if I can’t have one I will cease to write except for news and, as always, to trade our new poems and stories and such. I mean, if you do not want Anne soul words I do not have to always keep sending them. Already I am beginning to feel stupid and lonely because your answers are so covered and well-dressed.
Is it necessary to wear a hat and gloves with you?
Well. Is it????
Anne
Tillie Olsen’s classic short story, “Tell Me a Riddle,” appeared in the same volume of New World Writing as “Dancing the Jig.” Anne praised the other woman’s gift in a letter which led to another important friendship.
[To Tillie Olsen]
40 Clearwater Rd.
April 5th, 1960
Dear Tillie Olsen:
I have just finished reading your story [“Tell Me a Riddle”] in New World Writing and I must write to you. My eyes are still crying and I cannot possibly tell you how much your story has moved me. I am also going to write the editors of N.W.W. to congratulate them on finding and printing the best short story of years and years. That story will never die. People will be reading it in anthologies for many years to come. I feel proud of you, although I do not know you. I have heard Nolan Miller speak of you with such pride. But mine is different. I want to sit down and say “thank God someone (anyone) wrote that story!” There is not one wrong word in it. It is all one key, a human key. How I envy you your talent and yet I am proud, more alive … well, this must sound stupid. I don’t mean to sound as foolish as I must.
I mean to send honest thanks for that somewhere and never very often found sense of having touched the middle of a heart on a printed page.
I am actually a writer of poetry and not short stories. I admit that I do have a story in N.W.W.… But now that I have read yours, I wish mine could melt right out of the book. I have only written two short stories. I know nothing of the technique and my stories are really experiments. However, my poems are better. What I guess I am saying is that I am not as lousy a writer as it would look from that issue where your story shines out like a miracle. The reason I explain is so that you will realize that I can do something and that my opinion is worth a little more than it would seem. (Which is a stupid thing to try to explain, but I’m sure you will understand.)
Well, enough of that.
Please accept my thanks, my admiration, and my need to write you in a rush.
All best wishes,
Anne Sexton
[To Frederick Morgan]
[40 Clearwater Road]
May 6th, 1960
Dear Fred,
[…] The only thing I can really say quickly and honestly is that the worst thing about a mental breakdown is that someone changes. Or at least (I don’t know really how Kayo felt but I know that this was my reaction when it happened to someone that I loved) … where was I? About the “changing”—It is somehow like a nightmare to see someone change in front of your eyes, to become a stranger and not to be able, with just your love, to make them that familiar person again. Maybe I’m wrong. […] But I do remember Kayo visiting me (and I loved him before I got sick and I love him now, more if such is possible) and saying “Anne, I just want you back—the way you were” … And also, I remember not understanding this and not understanding him, nor anything for that matter. But, in time, he got me back (only I changed a little, not much, but a little. I am a poet now and wasn’t before.) But I’m me (whoever in hell a ME really is) but still, to him I’m the Anne he wanted back. And the poetry, the writing are a gain, a something very good from a something very terrible […]
The book is out. Lots of people like it, lots of people don’t … Louis Untermeyer writes: “Anne Sexton’s To Bedlam and Part Way Back is a book of which any publisher—and any poet—can be proud. It has a singular beauty, an unusual poignance of feeling as well as phrase, a fusion of pain, suspense, and exaltation. It is a book that is not only an excitement but a reward to read—and I hope that many people will read it.”
Marianne Moore adds (this is from a H.M. Co. printed up thing to book sellers and I’m quoting it the way they put it) … “I am in sympathy with the spirit of the poems but not equally with the diction. The quoted headings reveal an attitude to prize. And nothing could surpass the presswork.”
And Dudley Fitts comments: “I had seen & admired some of these poems in various reviews but I had not expected the extraordinary power that they take from one another when collected. This is a completely engrossing, completely moving book. Mr. Lowell is quite right. Her poems do stick in the mind. And they appall me, too; especially those in the second section; but it is right and salutary to be appalled in this fashion.”
And so it goes. I will be interested to see Louis Simpson’s review. I admire his work, love his last book, but George Starbuck tells me that he (Louis Simpson that is) did not like at all my first group in Hudson. I didn’t know that. Too bad. But then, they can’t all like it, it IS appalling. I am always aware that my poems are appalling and wishing they weren’t, wishing I could make them beautiful. But you can’t force it. When I try to the result is stamped with the word PALE and other words like NO GOOD or HOW COULD YOU! or ADDRESS UNKNOWN. etc.
I am glad you like and are taking “The Truth the Dead Know”. Good. This makes me happy.
One last thing from old Wisdom Sexton here […] I think that writers […] must try not to avoid knowing what is happening. Everyone has somewhere the ability to mask the events of pain and sorrow, call it shock … when someone dies for instance you have this shock that carries you over it, makes it bearable. But the creative person must not use this mechanism anymore than they have to in order to keep breathing. Other people may. But not you, not us. Writing is “life” in capsule and the writer must feel every bump edge scratch ouch in order to know the real furniture of his capsule. (Am I making sense? I am trying, but I have never expressed this before). I, myself, alternate between hiding behind my own hands, protecting myself anyway possible, and this other, this seeing ouching other. I guess I mean that creative people must not avoid the pain that they get dealt. I say to myself, sometimes repeatedly “I’ve got to get the hell out of this hurt” … But no. Hurt must be examined like a plague. The others can run, take bottles of Miltown etc. But I think we (let’s say we have no name, this literary bunch) have g
ot to hang around and know just what’s going on. […]
As ever,
Anne
When W. D. Snodgrass received the Pulitzer Prize in May 1960 for Heart’s Needle, Anne wrote him two letters: one of appreciation and one of stern caution.
[To W. D. Snodgmss]
[40 Clearwater Road]
May 10th or 11th not sure
[1960]
Dearest De,
I am happy for you. I am proud of the world of poets. I knew. Of course, I knew. In fact I knew three years ago when I read “Heart’s Needle” for the first time. Today I will not praise you and make you nervous (does it, by the way, make you nervous now?) … instead I will praise your book which I praised one year ago anyhow. It is no better now than when you wrote it. It was magnificent when you did it. The only brilliance that has been added is to the prize. You glorify the prize; make it young again and alive. Every young one who writes is proud of you.
I am too. Was proud that anyone could write it. Proud perhaps to know you (but then I’ve been that ever since I saw your bushy mustache and your oafish face) …
One thing I hope is so. I hope your parents are sitting up and taking notice. I would wish that for you. For them to know. Even if you hate them; still, you would care. Awful, but I know you care. Well they damn well better notice. I always think prizes are for parents so they’ll know. Only a prize will convince them sometimes. And if not. Well damn them to hell.
Things will be easier for you and harder for you. I hope just easier. When you get what you want, what is left? Such a responsibility to get what you want.
I like very much your new poems in Hudson. Good. Glad to see you are still working. You write rather as if you’d written nothing and then spring forth in print with your usual strength and as always, your original voice.
If I had to say one thing I’d say that your poems have an integrity. Also they are so there. So impossible to forget once you’ve read them once.
When did I last write? I didn’t wire you (I was going to) that Cal was fine now. I’m sure he was. He was wasn’t he? He is beautiful and wise.