Anne Sexton

by Anne Sexton

  My doctor says I’m running from therapy. He’s right. I didn’t know it when I accepted but I guess he is right. All I can think is that I’ve got to make it, stay well enough and all … it would be awful to accept and then not make it. In some funny way, De, I wish I were back to the old days when I sat hunched over the typewriter, doing the desperate and lonely and even heart breaking work of trying to write, and rewrite and rewrite “The Double Image”. I was “true” then. Now I keep thinking I’m losing myself in some mad welter of publicity … Poems, maybe, should be published anonymously. You wouldn’t get any readings but you wouldn’t have to get so nervous. It is only a fantasy but it sounds so calm. […]

  Write when you can. Try and write before I go, (August) … wish you’d come to visit! Kayo sends his best and adds you MUST come to visit and to have a swim. And please forgive the silence for you know, of course, the love is there.

  still,

  still,

  still,

  Anniepance

  In the midst of Anne’s preparations for Europe came a letter from the Oxford University Press in London, asking if Anne would consider bringing out a volume of selected poetry from All My Pretty Ones and To Bedlam and Part Way Back. Ecstatic about her first opportunity to be published abroad, she wrote back immediately. The poet and critic Jon Stallworthy eventually became the editor there to work with Anne and they developed a sizable correspondence. When later travels led her to London in 1966, they finally met. The extension of her readership to a foreign audience symbolized the accelerating popularity of her poetry; eventually her work was to be translated into French, Italian, Chinese, Japanese, and Swedish.

  Selected Poems, published in London in 1964, was a Poetry Book Society choice, and as a result of its publication, she was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1965.

  [To Paul Brooks]

  [40 Clearwater Road]

  May 15, 1963

  Dear Paul,

  I’m sorry that I had to be short on the phone the other day but when you called I was just about to leave for my daughter’s violin lesson and it was impossible to explain to her that you are on my list as a very important person. I’m glad you like the review in The New Yorker (me, too!). Did you see the terrible one in the New York Times? Ann Ford hadn’t and I called it to her attention. She certainly is on the ball. And newsmen are shuttling in and out of here daily. I wish the publicity would sell books but it seems that few bookstores stock my books (I bet you’ve heard that complaint too many times to find it interesting).

  Paul, the reason I write is more specific. Oxford University Press is going to bring out selected poems from To Bedlam and Part Way Back and All My Pretty Ones. They want to include new poems; I have about ten new ones but frankly I would prefer not to include them because they are part of a book in process (Slow process) and I hate to commit them into book form elsewhere. I feel that both my books of poetry have a certain wholeness and continuity and I have told them this and they say “it would be sad to miss the chance of putting in something new if we could persuade you to allow us to.” If they do persuade me and I then later have a new book that I hope you will publish how will you feel about the ten poems that were included in the Oxford University Press publication? I’m sure there is a precedent for this or some type of copyright hitch or if there isn’t, I would think you have some feeling about it one way or the other. I am very pleased about Oxford University Press bringing out my work but Houghton Mifflin is my first love and I assure you I will respect your feelings about this.

  With all best wishes,

  All My Pretty Ones had been much praised when it was published in 1962. However, the review by James Dickey in the New York Times Book Review on April 28, 1963, roundly damned Anne’s poetic approach with the most cutting insults she had yet received:

  It would be hard to find a writer who dwells more insistently on the pathetic and disgusting aspects of bodily experience, as though this made the writing more real, and it would also be difficult to find a more hopelessly mechanical approach to reporting these matters than the one she employs … Her recourse to the studiedly off-hand diction favored by Randall Jarrell and Elizabeth Bishop and her habitual gravitation to the domestic and the “anti-poetic” seem to me as contrived and mannered as any poet’s harking after galleons and sunsets and forbidden pleasures.

  Characteristically, she paid more heed to this negative criticism than to the many positive comments; Anne was particularly perturbed because Dickey was a writer whose talent she respected. When the poet Gene Baro encouraged her to ignore Dickey’s review, she failed to take his advice to heart, and carried the clipping in her wallet instead.

  [To Gene Baro]

  [40 Clearwater Road]

  May 8, 1963

  Dear Gene Baro,

  Your letter is hard to answer because I don’t exactly know how to thank you for it or to tell you what it means to me. It came before I had read James Dickey’s review but I have been told about it from more than ten sources. So I was prepared in a kind of hopeless way. However, your letter gave me strength and maybe courage (if that word is not too old-fashioned).

  What do you do with a review like this? It certainly was not written for me to read … it was written for the readers of poetry (mostly poets themselves). If I were to listen to James Dickey I would stop writing. God, I don’t know. Funny thing is, I think he’s a pretty good poet and I suppose if I had written and told him so, the review would be tempered a bit … that’s the whole trouble with reviewing and so far I have not succumbed to writing reviews. Though God knows someone has got to do it and it can be a lonely road if you’re honest. I must say I am tired of being grouped with Robert Lowell and Snodgrass … I admire them separately but I really feel we’re all quite different. There are lots of other poets you could lump together with us. But all these idle thoughts are beside the point. All this is wrong; writing a poem is a lonely thing, each word ripped out of us … and you know … and then later on the wrong things start to happen; you get to be fashionable or “a new kind of orthodoxy” and the only way to prevent yourself from going sour or becoming an art climber is to go back to your desk.

  You know all this anyway. I know you know it because of your poems and your letter. Thank you so much.

  With my best wishes,

  [To Frederick Morgan]

  40 Clearwater Road

  May 17, 1963

  Dear Fred,

  If you are in New York and if (as I hope) I will have time to call you, you may see me before you read this letter. What all that means is, I’m in New York this coming week and have hopes.

  Meanwhile, or afterwards, here are five new poems. They are a mixed bunch but I have the feeling you will like some of them. For one thing, this is to let you know that I have not stopped writing and that The Hudson Review is and will always be my magazine. This has been a year of gathering together of feeling frighteningly beyond myself and of retreat. I have been working for sometime on a long poem that so far stinks. But that is the kind of frustration I experienced with “The Double Image” [TB] and although I do not think I can reach that level of passion, I am trying to work out the unsayable say on madness. But that is another poem. I sure as hell hope I will send it to you someday. Meanwhile, here are these. The first one really hits me. And I, as always, await your critical evaluation.

  In case we don’t meet, my news is news you’ve probably heard but that I’d like to share. Anne is off for Europe and God knows where for a year and all this with Kayo’s blessing. How in God’s name did I ever get such a wonderful husband? Our marriage (it seems so strange and almost trite to say) blossoms. Fifteen years and more in love. Oh well, you’d never know it from my poems … But perhaps in Europe I will write long and lost poems to him.

  Love to Rose and to you. And my best regards to Joe.

  Affectionately,

  Anne

  [To Jon Stallwotthy

  Oxford University Press]
>
  40 Clearwater Road

  May 27, 1963

  Dear Jon Stallworthy,

  How nice to hear from you! I look forward to our work together on the volume of my poems. And before I go any further, please let me say quickly how happy I am that you like my poems.

  The problem of asking Robert Lowell for a foreword seems almost insurmountable; to begin with, I dislike asking him for another “favor”. Therefore, when you write him please try to make it clear in some sort of gracious manner that you are asking and not I (this might make it easier for him to refuse and I want to give him every chance to do so). Now, secondly, I have some advisors (those poets who write as I write … you know, those sometime and then now and rather good poet-friends) tell me, advise me strongly, that it would do me great harm to have Lowell introduce me to the reading public of England—for then the critics would come forward with axes that were meant to chop Lowell’s head and not mine … thus, I would become more Lowell than Sexton … I would not be judged for the poems alone but for Lowell’s reputation as well as mine own (feeble though it be).

  However, you may ask him, using your own judgement for I am indeed grateful and happy that Oxford University Press wishes to bring out a volume of my poems. If you really think that a foreword by Robert Lowell would help (in the long run) instead of hinder, then, I suppose, you must write to him. […]

  Well, there it is and I don’t mean to put [you] in a difficult position about Lowell except to say that I do not wish to coerce him in any fashion (nor have I ever asked him in person for an opinion or a blurb or a say-so but let Houghton Mifflin do the rather ugly job for me). Would it be possible to just use what he had said about both my books without asking him to go to further trouble … or perhaps only asking him to go to not much more trouble … or perhaps only ask him to connect both of the statements he made for the two books. Oh well, maybe he won’t mind. I loathe things like this and, therefore, my natural reticence becomes obvious and even troublesome. […]

  Yours in haste, but happily,

  [To Robert Lowell]

  40 Clearwater Road

  June 6, 1963

  Dear Cal,

  My thanks to you and Elizabeth for all you did to make my New York trip not only easy but a pleasure. The dinner party was such fun and I will never forget the dinner table breaking! I hope that it was fixable and that you are back in one piece but I shall never forget the table in the midst of its earthquake with Kayo trying to hold it up and undoubtedly making things worse. It was a delight to get to know Stanley Kunitz and his wife and the Sweeneys were delightful and there was Kayo sitting next to Lillian Hellman (and not, I think, knowing who she really is, although of course, he knew who Marianne Moore was). No matter, everyone was charming and your apartment with that great window and those ladders up to books is intriguing.

  Cal, I do hope you will come out here and bring your bathing suit. The temperature in the pool is 84 and although it looks like the most extravagant toy we ever fell for, I have a feeling it is better therapy than going to the doctor’s (talking about extravagance and being in hock). If you would like to stay with us, we have a small room with a bed in it where we would be very happy to put you up. All you need do is let me know.

  I think I have finished the poem for Sylvia Plath and I think it is pretty good. I tried to make it sound like her but, as usual, this attempt was not fruitful; the spirit of imitation did not last and now it sounds, as usual, like Sexton. One of these days, I will learn to bear to be myself and to be as lifelike as a snapshot. I hope you will like the poem. And Kayo joins me in the hope of seeing you sometime this month.

  Love and thanks to Elizabeth,

  [To Brother Dennis Farrell]

  [40 Clearwater Road]

  August 2nd, 1963

  Dear Brother Dennis,

  I do not know where you are? Are you there? Or are you somewhere else? Well, I imagine this will find you somewhere … Your silence has been with me and I have let it have its say. I feel, as always, the same closeness to you which your silence makes into a kind of speech of its own.

  Words bother me. I think it is why I am a poet. I keep trying to force myself to speak of the things that remain mute inside. My poems only come when I have almost lost the ability to utter a word. To speak, in a way, of the unspeakable. To make an object out of the chaos … To say what? a final cry into the void.

  So much for that. The reason I mention it is that it has been on my mind what it is that writes a poem and what it is (so different) that writes a letter. Today I do both. One reason I am breaking the silence is that I have a poem to share. Maybe it will mean something to you, knowing me as YOU do.

  And also to say farewell as I leave on August 22nd, aboard the S.S. France for Paris, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Greece, Egypt, London, Spain, Portugal. I will be home for a month at Christmas. I am terribly afraid to go. Aug. 22 is like an execution date. But that will pass I guess.

  I think of you often and my love is with you wherever you are.

  Anne

  [To Nolan Miller]

  [40 Clearwater Road]

  Aug 5th, 1963

  Dear Wonderful Nolan!

  Your letter! And such a letter! I have been carrying it around with me but somehow not getting to answer. But now.

  So reassuring, places, friends, hotels! I have a small notebook which is holding all precious information and your letter goes into it. After reading it I thought perhaps we might indeed to go Vienna and to Holland and not miss Bruges and many things you mention.

  I like all the concrete details. And for being so “directive.” I need you to be directive (now at least).

  I forget if I told you. I am traveling with a next door neighbor, a friend, woman about 45 who is most sensible and ready to go along. Thus I will not be alone. Which is a good thing because I can barely cross a street in Boston alone … much less an Alp! We have both read and reread your letter which Sandy says is, indeed, better than a travel book. […]

  Everything seems wild, hallucinary! I can’t believe I am going, scared, the child says “stay” and the other says “go now”. And I listen mostly to the latter for she should have her say now and then. Long enough in this one town with fear keeping me at its gates … long enough the child in the woman’s body. Each day one day closer. Each day I drag a new root out of the ground. So this letter is all confusion but to say thanks for yours.

  If you think of anything after I have left my husband will forward mail.

  Love,

  Anne

  On August 22 Anne said goodbye to her friends and secretly put small letters under the children’s pillows. The family packed itself into the Thunderbird and began the drive to New York City, where the S.S. France was docked.

  Arriving at the harbor they boarded and rushed to find the tiny cabin below the water-line. Two narrow bunkbeds crowded the stateroom and there was an infinitesimal lavatory. Immediately Anne commandeered the lower bunk.

  When the “visitors ashore” gong sounded, the Sextons and Robarts filed down the gangplank onto the pier. As everyone cried, Anne and Sandy raced to the ship’s uppermost bridge and blew soap bubbles across the widening stretch of water.

  [To Linda Gray Sexton]

  [40 Clearwater Road

  August 21, 1963]

  Dearest Linda,

  I am writing to you tonight, the night before I leave. I have just been up to your bed talking to you for so long and about such important things. I was also talking to KITTY and telling her. And she knew! She knows and YOU know too, that I love you.

  All during the fall I love you. When the leaves change, when the frost comes, when the cover goes on the pool, when the Thanksgiving turkey is ready, when the stores put up their Christmas lights … I love you.

  I hope that you will enjoy your work at school, your violin, your friends … I hope too, that you will be grateful to everyone who helps take my place for this little while, to Nana, to Daddy (who will need yo
u) to Meme, to Mrs. Boylan, to Rita … even to Kitty.

  Don’t forget it, Linda, your Mother, me, loves you very much. And I won’t stop loving you ever.

  Mom

  XOXO

  [To the Sexton Family]

  [The S. S. France]

  Sunday, Aug 25, [1963]

  Dearest Family (my Kayo, my Linda, my Joy),

  Just a note, for the ship is ROLLING too much to do very well. For 24 hours I have been strangely accompanied by Mal de Mere [sic]. I make (just) the dining room and sit in a trance of despair and eat rolls and drink wine and PRETEND that things do not keep moving. Sandy is fine. We sit on deck chairs, altho cloudy, oyster gray ocean. Please call Maxine and read this to her as I have not the energy, but lots of love, to write to her on board. Martinis are 45¢ a drink (as I have said). I swallow them but listlessly. Please tell Max, tell the world that I have written a poem [“Crossing the Atlantic,” LD] the first day out (when it was smooth). Poem talks about a calm sailing, over a flat sea. The poem is, I think, pretty good … maybe for New Yorker even … but sea no longer calm so can’t work on it or even type it out. When you’ve got hold of a poem and can’t type it out, well, then it must be rocky … We sleep in darkness and daylight does not exist in here, wake at noon and have missed breakfast and today lunch. Strange! The ship, on stern, at night is glorious tho very windy and cold. Last night stood and watched the wake, booming barrels of foam, trailing out … ever, ever. And moon went in and out [of] black clouds and out it shone darkly, dangerously and the wide waters. I love the ship, really … but, well, you know. We can’t seem to make definite plans about itinerary until Paris. We will be there five days, prob Lux 2 and 3 of Sept and Brussels (how long Brussels … don’t know?) could, for fun of it peek into Am Ex office there to see if mail by chance.

  We think some of sending some clothes home … so if packages arrive don’t get excited … only our old clothes (or books). Have thought of throwing books into the wake, I am still lame from carrying them half the way on board! I assume you will share letters with the Robarts too. Tell Rita I use her lighter and think of her with each drag (even if she has given up smoking). It is coldish in Europe (here too) 65 in Paris (Anne, what you so stupid for with white, two, dress!?).