by Anne Sexton
[letter runs off edge of page]
[To Anthony Hecht]
[40 Clearwater Road]
Friday, Sept 15th, 1961
noon time
Dear Tony,
I think that I’m cross with you. I have just finished reading your letter, just now—and I have things to say back. I’d do it better in person, but this will have to do … when you say that I am giving vent to a wild, romantic fantasy of a rather suspect kind … etc. and that I tell you (too often) that “Tony, I feel so comfortable with you” … Well, damn it, I’m going to defend myself because there really isn’t anything wrong with a wild romantic fantasy and it is the warmest blurting forth to tell you that I am comfortable AND that you attract me (all at once). What I meant very simply is that I love you … but that I’m not in love with you … that it isn’t necessary to be IN love with you. To be your friend, a good close friend, is not complicated by neurotic demands. This is unusual. Maybe you don’t know it, damn it … but there aren’t many around like you (not any). For one thing you are kind, rather unusually so … not kind like people are kind to Oscar [Williams] because he is pitiful (that’s easy) but kind to a Joe Bennett when he hires a queer car and hopes we will laugh.
Besides it’s all just a fact, what I said and I’m not sure what it meant except that it isn’t as bad as you make out and, Tony, it may have been silly and childish to say … perhaps it was and I don’t dislike you for coming back with your feelings on the subject but I am very cross with you for not allowing me some room for a very female emotion that wasn’t meant to bother you or tempt you or do anything but make you smile your nice smile. I wasn’t talking about “fucking” (I’m really too New England to use the word with ease) and I don’t suppose I was talking about who you really love. In fact, I wasn’t trying to intrude. You make me feel as if I had intruded. You make me feel sad, I guess. Is everything a question of the one love or on the other hand “fucking”? Or being “pals”?
Jesus, what is anything? What I meant, if I meant anything real at all … I meant that I have loved, really loved a few people and with the exception I guess of Kayo (he is too complicated to go into) it always seemed to be tragic or something equally neurotic. When I am with you I feel happy. I guess that sentence says the whole thing and says what I meant in the first place. It isn’t only that you make no demands on me as a woman but that you don’t feel you have to and yet I still feel like a woman. This in itself is a compliment to your musculinity, I would think. […]
It is late and I’m drinking my pills in a glass of milk. John Malcolm Brinnin Inc, are putting 2 of my poems in that book. You were right … “Her Kind” [PO] and “Letter on Long Island Ferry” [PO]. I don’t think L.I. Ferry really a good poem of mine … too sentimental. But perhaps I’m wrong. Perhaps I ought to allow my female heart more room … it seems to be the way I’m writing lately … my new poem too … but I’m going to harden up soon I promise myself … stop all the emoting around and get down to facts and objects. Can I send you my new poem. You OWE me some good crit … though this poem may not inspire it.
I’ll type out the poem for you before I fall asleep here in my brown study. You know, Tony, even if I’m cross that I love you and bless you and wish you well. You make me happy but that doesn’t mean I own any of you. None of that is fantasy.
love
Anne
[To Tillie Olsen]
40 Clearwater Road
November noon [1961]
Dear Tillie Olsen,
Your letters look like poems and here I am typing on this paper that looks like I run a business or that, at least, I knew who I was. I wish my letters could look like a poem … your writing is so tiny and perfect that it looks as if a fairy with a pink pen and rubies in her hair had sat down to write to me. And I … I must look like a rather stout man who sits by a very respectable black typewriter.
Dear dear Tillie Olsen, you are a genius and a good woman. I am thankful that you like my book. I think often of you too and hope we will meet sometime for talking. How kind to think of my face on your wall.
Do you ever get East? I wish you would.
My writing? Bah, it is terrible now. I dare not venture into any stories … they are all experiments and I must not again feel ashamed as I did of my story in New World. Bah, I am a commonplace, or if not then why are the objects of my life not worth noting. And then, everyone is dead lately … I shall type out a poem [“The Truth the Dead Know,” PO] for you (so that my letter can look like a poem too). […]
There are more poems, about 20 pages toward another book and all sold to someplace or other in the meantime … but now, this now, this November now, there seems to be nothing to say. Two years ago at this time I was struggling with the poem, “The Double Image” [TB] and now … Bah! Perhaps it is reading the reviews … though most are good enough … still it makes me feel that I am evesdropping (sp?).
I lived in San Francisco once, for three months … I forget where exactly. My husband was in the Navy and it was federal housing. Out of our window we could see a little bit of ocean and a dump. At night the dump glowed on the water, burning its little fires. We had no furniture, but a bed and a table and I was pregnant with my first child and rather sick. All I could eat were radishes and carrots and with too much vertigo to read and too shy to make friends. Most of the time I watched the gulls. Once in a while I dressed up and we went into the city. I love your city.
Now I live in the suburbs. New England is a delight, its seasons are my seasons. I would send you a scarlet leaf but they are gone. Outside my window only the Oak holds on, dry leaves, the color of tobacco that only the ice will yank down in a couple of months.
Tell me your life, if you will … and your work or any. We might talk by letter … and perhaps get more said … I feel suddenly much to say and you know that I will hold your words gently and honor them.
Yours,
Anne Sexton
[To Brother Dennis Farrell]
[40 Clearwater Road]
Dec. 22, 1961
Dear Brother Dennis:
Your Christmas letter, written on Gaudete Sunday, is beside me on my desk. I am deeply touched. I have on the crucifix, with a piece of package string as usual. I don’t have a collection which you inferred with your happy sense of humor … I don’t have a crucifix at all because I sent the other back to Ruth [Soter]. It made me feel too guilty to keep it; it was hers, she had worn it for years and I didn’t feel I ought to keep it somehow. I think I was in danger of loving it too much. I will keep the one you have sent me … I don’t know if I will wear it, or rather, continue to wear it … but please know that I will never wear it without a feeling of humility and awareness. Which is a round about way of saying, thank you deeply. And thank you too for the Thirty Masses and thank you too for liking some of the new poems in Partisan. I was afraid you wouldn’t. I just sat here rereading them (over with you so to speak), listening to them with your ears.
I feel like sitting here and writing YOU a ten page letter. I promise to, if you’ll send the one you didn’t send. (Would you send it anyhow?)
Brother Dennis … it is dark in my room now and I can’t see to type. It is now after 12 midnight … but I can see out of my window where tonight the landscape is fired by moonlight … it is covered by patches of snow and the frozen whistle of the air … and I am thinking of you somehow … because I’m wearing your crucifix, I guess … the sky is quite blue … the moon is on the other side of the house but before I came into my room I looked at it for a long time and thought a long time. Somehow, I can’t spoil my thought by turning on the lights which would enable me to type this better … It is almost Christmas. I wish that I knew you better. I wish that I knew God better. I guess that your letter and all that goes with it, has made me want to write a poem … or to pray … I am still, in the dark, thinking more than I can type … all I can say is that I have been wearing that crucifix and I wish it would talk to me. I guess I’ll go up to
bed now … and write more tomorrow … or soon when I can … tonight I feel your prayer. Tonight I will try one of my own. Bless you, dear Brother Dennis … Bless you …
… Dec. 29th …
Time goes by … my desk is heavy with work and letters and much too much. Write me when and if you can find the time. I have on The Crucifix … I haven’t taken it off since Dec. 22 …
Always my best,
[To W. D. Snodgrass]
40 Clearwater Road
Dec. 27th, 1961
Dearly De,
I think maybe I am a bitch … but I do think of you and I don’t seem to have written. Have you missed me? Hope so! To tell the truth I’ve been so “fucking” busy that I don’t know what the hell is going on. Also I keep losing your address every time I’m in the mood to type you a letter … be sure to always put your address on your letters.
I got a grant from Radcliffe, I forgot if I told you that or if I’d gotten it … no, I went for my interview the same day that we spoke at B.U. Well, I did get it … so did Maxine. Weren’t we lucky, both of us yet! Anyhow this is the first year they have given these grants (it’s for mothers … I mean, the grant is for talented mothers with a Ph.D. (or equivalent!)) … well there has been so much publicity that I’ve spent most of this fall talking to newspapers and magazines. By now I could write an interview with myself better than they. Also I got tied up with a lecture bureau (Redpath Agency) and have been giving readings around hell and gone. It takes a terrible toll on me as I still feel required to get plastered before each reading. I would like your advice on the lecture bureau, if you’ve heard of them and if you think they are any good. One place I read they asked me why my fee was so cheap … so I promptly gave Redpath hell and raised it to $250.00 plus expenses … previously it was $150.00 plus expenses. I know that you have had a lot of experience with this and wonder how you handle it …? Please advise. Of course I’m not a prize winner like you and it wouldn’t seem to me that I should be able to get a fee such as you can … but I have no one to ask as no one that I know (know well) is in this racket except a couple of “old timers” like Untermeyer or people like that. What you advise, uh?
Jim Wright wrote that he saw you and that you spoke so well of me (you damn better speak well!! I’m your bean sprout) and that you went to see some belly dancers (so I gather you are still the same).
I wrote a stupid thing about Cal for The [Harvard] Advocate, quoting (I’m sure they wrote you) you very nicely. It makes you sound better than me, but you are anyhow. I have a new room to write in (thanks to Radcliffe) and am right now looking out on the blazing blue lights of the snow field.… I’m still going to my Dr. and will be going for life I guess … I have enuf guilt to last for 2 lifetimes. How are you doing? And Jan?
George [Starbuck] is in Rome. June [Hill] is still here. He ought to marry her, she is a doll. I see her sometimes. Tony Hecht is coming here for New Year’s. Do you know him? He is very nice.
I have written a few new poems. I tried a story but I can’t seem to handle prose. Kayo is fine, also going to a psychiatrist twice a week (I’m three times a week). You can IMAGINE what that is costing us! But I think it will be worth it. He had to start … or else we couldn’t have stayed together. It was getting terrible for various complicated reasons. Maxine is also in treatment. Jesus, where is someone sane?
Now here comes someone to visit me. I wish to hell I’d get a little time to myself. Now that I have this grant the whole god damn world keeps interrupting me …
Where was I … telling you everything all at once.
I signed a first reading contract with the New Yorker. You get $100.00 just for signing … but it hasn’t changed my poetry at all. I’m not really their type, as you know. I did sell them one thing though …
Linda is learning to play the violin. She is so grown up. Joy is learning to read, but still a minx with fat cheeks and happy naughty ways. Linda is, I guess, just like me, which makes me alternately adore and loathe her, depending on which me she seems like (good Anne or bad Anne).
Write me if you can. Christmas, though nice in its way, always sends a great and almost irreparable wound to my writing self … I am left without a word to say and all the poems in the world seem to have drifted out into the Atlantic without once looking back at me. I hardly feel like a “poet” if I am one anyhow.
The kids are giving a puppet show in the next room … the unconscious is showing. I’m the witch who won’t let them stay up all night (or so it seems) …
Love to you yours,
Annie
[To Paul Brooks
Houghton Mifflin Company]
[40 Clearwater Road]
Jan 9th, 1962
Dear Paul,
I am delighted with your enthusiastic reception of All My Pretty Ones. I am mad for the fall publication date too! I think I have settled all my problems about that (those I mentioned in our pre-Christmas talk) … as The New Yorker has promised me to print “The Fortress” [PO] on Sept. 15th. So we will all be in safe for an October printing on the book. Hooray!
I have sent the contracts on to my agent, Sterling Lord, to deal with a little more officially, because the very sight of a contract confuses my poetic mind (as you might have guessed). I have been writing a little prose and Sterling Lord has been handling it for me. So, when he offered to handle this too I thought it would save me a little time and energy. I hope you will hear from him shortly as I am most anxious to get the book really underway. There are a few things (not your nice advance) that I would like to change and add, but they can talk to you about it.
I have written two more poems that I’d like to add to it and I want to check your copy for typos that I have since come across in my carbon copy. Perhaps after we settle the contract we could meet for lunch and do all these things at once?
I am feeling very cheered up about the book … as I sent most of it to Robert Lowell for his critical evaluation and he likes it and because you (my friends at Park St.) like it too. I will quote you a few sections from Lowell’s letter to me, although it couldn’t be used for publicity … it might interest you to know what he said …
“The best thing about your book is its unstoppered fullness. I get an impression of increasing supply and weight; indeed your first book, especially the best poems, spills into the second and somehow adds to it. Perhaps, you shouldn’t be too critical, and should have no fear, except the fear of losing your material and screaming off into vagueness. This you haven’t done. My favorite still is the Hudson one on your father (“All My Pretty Ones”). I feel a passion and concentration here. I’m glad you’ve tried new things, the religious poems and character sketches. They are variously successful, I guess, but give the book a professional air of not just confessing, but of liking to write poems. Your final “Letter” (last in book) is a good idea and reads like one of your own letters. Maybe I’ll find myself imitating it too. (Others have).
“Faults? I don’t think they matter. Or perhaps they are unavoidable human limitations—yours! There are loose edges, a certain monotony of tone, a way of writing that sometimes seems to let everything in too easily, uninspired voice, poems that all one can say about them is they are Sexton and therefore precious. I sometimes feel that you are one of the few people who could write a whole book, like the Spoon River Anthology, where the little moments would prop the big moments and there’s little waste. To an extent, you have done this, and have made your life your treasury.”
There is some more but that is the general idea and awfully nice, I think. I don’t know him very well at all but I respect his judgement of my work more than anyone else’s. He is not easily given to praise (when sane) and so it means more than with most people.
Again, my thanks … I’m really counting on being on the fall list.
Best wishes,
[To Robert Lowell]
[40 Clearwater Road]
Jan. 25th, 1962
Dear Cal,
You’d never know h
ow much your letter meant to me because I didn’t answer it. For one thing I was too busy reading it over and over. You gave me the confidence I needed and as always your thinking was clear and definitive. I have added a few new poems to it—none that are important in themselves—but give it a little additional weight. The book has been accepted by Houghton Mifflin for publication next fall. I haven’t signed the contract yet as there are a few “extras” (not money but hopefully an assurance of both of them coming out in two years in a paperback edition) that I am trying to get.
I haven’t written any poems toward a third book but will soon, I hope. I worked over Christmas on a little prose piece about Santa Claus [“The Last Believer”] (of all things!) and the few new poems for the book. During the past few weeks I seem to have gotten way off the road trying to write a one act play. It is almost done—a bit too melodramatic I fear—but I was seized with it completely. It isn’t about me, but I used some material that I knew something about and which moved me greatly. It’s called “The Cure” … four scenes, three characters: an hysterical girl, a psychiatrist and a priest. (Now don’t smile!) It has some good lines. At the end, the last lines of the play, I am using one of my own poems … I wonder if that’s kosher?—otherwise the play is not a verse play, except for that one poem.
As you can see this Radcliffe Grant has fired me up a bit—actually given me more time, which is what I needed in the first place—I was fired up in the first place. I am teaching, one day a week, a group of Harvard-Radcliffe students. They are, for me at least, rather uninspired. I have one who has the energy and latent talent to be a poet. But she is a senior and also a dancer. Anyway, I understand you will be teaching at Harvard next year so you will probably inherit some of my students and you will find, I fear, that I have taught them nothing. That under pressure I got soft with them and that their work is limp. I always wanted to teach, but it is more demanding than I had thought. Did you see my sentimental article about you in The Advocate? I wrote it the only way I knew how … no masterpiece but sincere. De should have written it anyhow … he was your student long before I ever wrote a poem.