Anne Sexton

by Anne Sexton

  Enough of that. This just note to say I’m sorry for the hysteria of yesterday’s letter. Yesterday afternoon I broke the spell (sadness) and the security rules and went with a friend to the bookshop. God! Do I love bookshops. I went on a buying binge. I now own: The Exploration of the Inner World, a study of mental disorder and religious experience; The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir; Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis; Paul and Mary, two case histories by Bruno Bettelheim; Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters; Notebooks 1935–1942 by Albert Camus; Young Man Luther by Erik Erikson; Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller; Stanislavsky on the Art of the Stage; Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf by Edward Albee; The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers; The Inferno by Dante; A Season in Hell by Arthur Rimbaud; The Three Christs of Ypsilanti by Milton Rokeach; and The Crackup by F. S. Fitzgerald … How’s that. (In case you wonder what I’m reading) …

  love you

  Anne

  [To Galway Kinnell]

  [40 Clearwater Road]

  Feb 20th, 1964

  Dear Galway,

  Thanks for your letter about my poem on Sylvia Plath. I’m pleased that you liked it … I agree that perhaps I could have cut the last, if not the last two, sections with “our boy.” I thought of it … and then couldn’t. A poor excuse! But sometimes a poem says “stop fooling around with me. I’m okay the way I am.” That’s what this one did. So I listened and let it go its own way, a little flawed, perhaps a little overwritten, but belonging more to itself than to me.

  I notice that you have a book coming out this spring. I also noticed your very fine poem in The New Yorker. The ending of that poem is superb! Power and grace! Starting with section 5, I quite fell in love with it—true insight.

  Do you recall the lunch we had in Harvard Square after my book came out? I remember that you said that publishing was almost next to dirty … that to, for instance, have a poem in The New Yorker was next door to prostitution and a few things like that. I had the feeling, almost, that my book (the one you were holding) was also dirtied by publication.

  Well …? What happened? Your poem, in The New Yorker does not seem to me less a poem, less a true thing because it was printed there. I do not think so. I think it doesn’t matter where it is printed or if it is … the poem is the only thing that counts. It can be little affected by publication or criticism.

  I’m not arguing the point now … but just wonder if you remember what you said that day? Perhaps it was only the hangover you were suffering and I took it too seriously. I do have that bad habit, so female, of taking people at their word.

  … All this pretty trivial now …

  Do let me see a copy of your book. If that poem is any sample it ought to be powerful.

  Best wishes,

  Anne

  [To Anne Clarke]

  [40 Clearwater Road]

  thursday feb 27th, 1964

  Anne!

  […] So, you’re obsessional about stamps and stuff like that. I’m just a slob, myself … obsessional only when confronted with terror and then I make up little magical acts to save me … as how does one get on a J-bar lift when sking (that word!) (how spell it?) without being smashed on the rear, tumbledover, cracked on head, and left unconscious. How does one keep a plane in the air when everyone knows the engines could fail? How does a plane take off when everyone knows it is too heavy to be dragging up like a bird? how does one walk down the street and not look conspicuous and strange? how does one function at a party when you forget everyone’s name and want to hide in a corner? how does one ask directions in a strange city and then remember them if one has dared ask? how does one keep a car in control when this one has known a steering wheel to break off in your hand, or the brakes to fail? how does one prevent shaking while speaking in public? how does one walk over a high bridge when it might break in two? how does one swim in rough surf without being pulled under and drowned by panic? how does one go to sleep without pills? how does one live with the knowledge that death, their special death, is waiting silently in their body to overtake them at some undetermined time? how can this be done if there is no God? how does one not get struck by lightning when everyone knows it could and just might strike YOU? or tornados that suck you right up into a cloud?

  And of course I could go on. That’s about all that I can think of that really terrify me and thus I try useless little obsessional ways of handling terror. I.e., on J-bar lifts I had about five things: let one go by empty, get skis in line, look a J-bar straight ON, have Kayo follow directly behind to pick me up or push me out of the way if I fall; hang on tight, etc. in airplane pray when it takes off; drink while in flight, in fact drink before taking off, hang on hard to person beside me as if their arm were trunk, good solid trunk, of grounded tree.… On street, go fast, look like you knew what you were doing, count the steps, watch your feet … at party, don’t go or drink before going or look very pretty or only talk with your husband or drink more. With asking directions there is only one answer, take someone intelligent along with you. With car, forget it or drive faster or stop the car and talk to yourself … when not driving but riding, count the telephone poles … speaking in public, have a lectern, be quite drunk, be manic, be very well prepared. High bridge? run across it. Rough surf? almost drowned the last time I tried that. now stick to calm water … Sleep without pills? impossible. take pills! death? have fantasies of killing myself and thus being the powerful one not the powerless one. God? spend half time wooing R. Catholics who will pray for you in case it’s true. Spend other half knowing there is certainly no God. Spend fantasy time thinking that there is a life after death, because surely my parents, for instance, are not dead, they are, good god!, just buried. Lightning? wear sneakers, stay off phone. Tornado? retire to cellar to look at washing machine and interesting junk in cellar.

  How’s that? Neurotic? You bet. I don’t even know if it is obsessional, really. All, I know, very common fears anyhow. […]

  Love from me on this kind of sad sky-blue sun-struck snow day …

  The Boston Groundhog

  Anne

  [To Tillie Olsen]

  [40 Clearwater Road]

  March 1st, 1964

  Tillie dear,

  I thought I’d write you a note … because it is easier to type than to speak …

  I know that I’ve told you before … but I have just been sitting wound up in my red chair reading, first, “I Stand Here Ironing” and then “Tell Me a Riddle” … I know them so well … Strange, but I don’t think I have ever read anything over and over as often as “Tell Me a Riddle.” I keep looking for its secret. Not as a writer, looking for your artistic approach, but as a human who becomes increasingly aware … I mean, but how can I say …? I mean “Tell Me a Riddle” no matter on which page I might start (I don’t always read it in sequence) hurts my throat. I start to cry. Work not to cry. I read and then I talk back to it and I say “But you are not my life. I don’t understand you. I haven’t really lived you! Why do you hurt; why fill me with terror and beauty?” … It is so alive that now I have lived it. A very strange, wonderful quality. I really mean, Tillie, that nothing (poem, novel, story) I have read before or since has done this.

  Well, it still isn’t said. But the effort and the continuing need to say it to you IS. I think (though I have no idea by actual count) that this is the THIRD fan letter I have written you about the same piece of work. I’m not in the practice of “fan letters” … but I have this conviction that you, Tillie, must say it. No one else has. If you didn’t who would? You write beyond speech.

  Lovingly,

  Anne

  I enclose a copy of poem

  Although Anne had received word while in Europe that the Ford Foundation had awarded her a grant, unexpected problems cropped up. The grant was for a year’s residence work with a theater; she planned to revise and refine Tell Me Your Answer True with the $9,000 windfall. Anne wrote Anne Clarke on March 15:

  I have a huge research thing going
about my Ford grant for next year. It seems that they don’t think our theater in Boston is good enough for me to take residence in. Must answer their letter very well, with a lot of ammunition, or I’ll end up either not getting grant or committing myself to commuting to New York next year. Big problem.

  But by springtime the Ford Foundation had notified Anne that the fellowship was indeed hers, and on her own terms. Working with the Charles Playhouse in Boston, under the direction of Ben Shaktman, she spent many long hours rewriting Tell Me Your Answer True.

  [To Anne Clarke]

  [40 Clearwater Road]

  Monday March 23rd, 1964

  Anne my dearly,

  What’s up with me? I hardly know myself. Your letter, received this Saturday, seemed to take so long in coming. (Not a reproach—just a longing) … I would have called, or would now in fact if it were not for the sum of my last phone bill which readily tells me that I am obsessed with SOMEONE who lives in San Francisco. Thusly I learn restraint.

  About the Ford Foundation—all I can say is “FUCK” … I have spent the last two weeks dwelling on the damn thing and last night, after an entire week of false starts, I delivered (and I mean delivered) the letter to them. Research? Only research for my letter. The letter to convince them that, having received a grant from them this August (to start this fall of 1964 for a year—for a year’s residence with a professional resident company theater) and was about to be assigned to one—

  I can’t type. Under my present circumstances I am becoming a drunk. Not an alcoholic but a drunk.

  Listen. I got the grant. When I accepted it last summer I kind of told them I would if I could stay in Boston. Their letter of two weeks ago kind of said there is no good enough theater in Boston. Thus research. Why? To con them. To sell them me and to sell them Boston. In other words to lie. I am tired of lying. But lie I will. But it took such vast energy that I am now drinking away and away … I wrote it anyhow. And it does me in. Why not tell them to go to hell? Well, because I REALLY WANT TO WRITE A PLAY I COULD WRITE A PLAY AND IF I HANG AROUND A THEATER ANY THEATER I THINK I COULD LEARN ENOUGH TO WRITE ONE. In hope. The grant is for a YEAR’S RESIDENCE. A year? I hardly made two months in Europe. I am a burden to my left hand. That’s what. And further, but not only, the grant awards me the mighty sum of $9,000.00 for that year.

  So be it. I feel like hell.

  About Doc Martin leaving, about Doc Stein (Morton Stein … very well known Doc in his field of community mental health) I saw him twice and he said NO.

  He was really quite nice, but he said NO. I mean No to me. And if you don’t think I am tired of spilling my life guts out to these psychiatrists … oh annne! Jesus! Well, the NO was because he is always away for 3 months each summer and he doesn’t think I would last. He right. But I am so tired of hearing doctors say “really, Mrs. Sexton, I don’t know you at all” (this is after asking me some of the most personal questions i.e. “and what do you mean by ready for sex” and I blush and stammer “well, I guess I mean wet” … and then two sentences later they remind me they don’t know me.) … Anne! I don’t care about the questions about sex or childhood or the strange one that always asks “what is really wrong with you?” … no, I try sincerely to answer … But it really unhinges me to hear that they don’t know me at all.

  God, it seems to me that I know that too. And I feel so lonely and so vulnerable and strange in their little straight-backed chair. I feel so lonely. I feel worse—strange. And when I leave on my thin and bony legs, with my big feet and my awkward pocketbook I cry in the car. And I say to myself that the trouble with life is that people are strangers.

  Anne … people are strangers.

  I don’t know if I can go on spilling myself out to people—those strange strangers.

  As I may have said, I am not at home in myself. I am my own stranger. But to be reminded that the Doc doesn’t know me at all, finds me a stranger, is enough to dissolve all my feeling of personal identity.

  Maybe you know what I am talking about? Hope so. For God’s sake don’t listen with your right hand! I mean, be Anne—not Doc Clarke. I love both. But Anne-Anne is never my stranger. Not from the first glance.

  So there. I poured some of it out. Jesus, I want to call you. I feel lonely for the sound of your voice. […]

  I seem to be a ship that is sailing out of my own life.

  Sad today. Please forgive.

  I love you as always Anne

  In next letter write your private phone out again. I keep losing it. Letters from you I never lost. Notes for myself always lose

  [To Anne Clarke]

  [40 Clearwater Road]

  Wed April 8th in crying alley [1964]

  Oh Anne-Annie my dear, oh annnie my dear, I luv ya, I luv ya!

  Your letter came today. I feel guilty that I haven’t written lately. (Now don’t lecture me about that guilt. I’ve got a right to it. I feel guilty because I know full well that I have been running like little black sambo into smaller and smaller circles around my ego … and not writing you. I mean, I know how much your letters mean to me, I know how the heart leaps with joy when your envelope slips thru the letter slot. And you too. And I know it. So how come I can be so busy on my own ego that I don’t have time to write a letter for yours.? Thus, guilt. Not a big G but a tiny but annoying one) …

  Oh Dad, poor Dad, Ma’s sent you away and I’m feeling so sad … etc. Martin goes. Sooner than I thought! Oh too soon! My love goes too soon. My life is leaving me. I love him God damn it … he is my friend at court … July he goes. He told me last night tho I blocked my ears and sobbed, still he took my hands away and told me (though he held one hand because he is gentle and he loves me too in his way, his very real way). I went through one half a box of his kleenex and then thru another full one. By the time I left the office his waste basket was full of my tears, and also the tears that flow choked and ugly through the nose.

  At home I cried up one of our boxes. Today, so far, I have kept tears locked in, with the help of the 25 milligram Librium I am taking.

  He said, “Annie is in San Francisco and yet you don’t feel she has left you.” I said, “yes” but Anne writes, she is so alive that she vibrates from anywhere. (Doc Martin is not given to letter writing. But he said “you can call me just as you call Annie.” He even thinks I ought to come to Philadelphia to see him “see my office” as he puts it. I said “no.” I said I didn’t need to visit you to know you were alive in my life. He said that he too would be alive in my life. I said (with a great renewed sob) “but Annie’s dying TOO” (no I’m not romanticizing your illness. You may outlast us all. But you’re not exactly the healthiest dear-good-one-of-special-loves that I have.) … He said “What do you mean, TOO.” he said loudly “I am not dying” and I said “for me you are.”

  Well, no matter. It’s the feeling that counts. He is my mother-dad-Nana and when he goes part of my life goes. It’s the essence of mourning, I guess. Lord love a duck! (as one of my “dearest” says) what self-pity and what true sorrows.[…]

  However, thanks to you, thanks to Martin, thanks to Deitz, thanks to me and thanks to a lot of work on everyone’s part, I did not ax the appointment with him [Deitz]. He is more flexible. Not much about fees but somewhat. It will be 25 bucks for the two hours a week. If I need a third it will be less (how much less I blocked the minute I walked out of his office. Was it 20 or was it 10?) Also he will see me in any dire need anytime. Also phone calls are IN. Also “acting out” (in his opinion) can be a sign of growth, as against the little girl (me) who sat in the closet and stifled her feelings and didn’t dare have a tantrum but went underground. “Acting out” is just a temper and as such is a sign of greater freedom and growth that will lead finally to verbalizing (thus trusting enough) the feeling of “I don’t want to play that game. I won’t play that game.” So, you can see, he is pretty relaxed. He is a pretty relaxed guy and actually a message from my unconscious that he makes me feel at ease is that I don’t shake in his
office. I don’t feel transferred much … but that may be good. I would just as soon not be. (you might say how could you be transferred with one 3 appts. But you know me. I transfer fast, if at all.) […]

  About the little little whiz-bang piece (book, whatever) on psychiatrists. Don’t worry that one. Strictly a way of mastering the powerless patient syndrome. Also, and more importantly, a desperate attempt on my part to write something that will make me some money. You see, Annie, I can’t really afford Deitz’s fees. Unless I get Ford Grant (haven’t heard yet) or unless I cut out my cleaning woman (who is only 10 bucks a day 2 times a week), getting my hair done, give up drinking or eating out or baby sitters. In other words, drastically cut down on all luxuries … get it … needful luxuries like calling you and buying books. This book, if I write it (not with Max, she is ducking out. It is my theme, my idea etc. and she is busy writing a real novel … one she can put her name to[)]. Mine is no such thing. It is supposed to be funny and awful and a little nutty, i.e.… not literature but rather a cheap but possibly commercial thing, supplemented with cartoons and all. I don’t want my name on it. Not that my name isn’t good enough but the book isn’t good enough for my name (tentative titles: CRY NOW—PAY LATER OR A VOICE FROM UNDER THE CHURCH) …

  Want to collaborate? It is okay with me! You have a whiz-bang sense of humor and lots of “in” information. I suspect you’d have Plenty to say too! But let me remind you that it won’t be “great writing” for, frankly, I don’t know how to write prose and my humor is about on the teen-age level. Or, if you don’t wish to lend your art to this commercial and spiteful venture, then any hints, comments or stories you wish to contribute would be gratefully accepted.

  As soon as I can gather myself together, juggling two SHRINKS, Linda’s play that is put on this Fri, Sat, Sun … a telephone lecture I give Monday A.M. and probably 19 more boxes of kleenex … and get back to this wayward project I will write to you what I have written of it. As yet it is only notes, chapter headings, etc. (some of the best are (1) Comparison Shopping, (2) Casing the Joint, (3) What, no Garters?—or How the Hero is Dressed, (4) Getting to Know You, (5) Exits and Entrances, (6) Adventures in Acting Out, (7) The Big Cheat (positive transference), (7) The Fifty-Minute Hour and the One-Hundred-and-Eighty-Five-Minute Hour, (8) THE FEE, or Don’t Let Your Swimming Pool Show, (9) Etiquette for the Couch, (10) Low Overhead Operation (small kleenex boxes on the Shrink’s desk), (11) The Little King and Other Stories, (12) The Masturbating Secretary, (13) Prison Etiquette of Life Behind the Wall, (14) Legal Aspects of How to Outwit the Head Shrink (i.e., how to check out against their wishes and still be legal), (15) Taking a Dive, (16) The Rat-Fink vs. The Buddy, (17) Good night Sweet King, or Potions, Barbiturates and Tranquilizers, (18) The Mystery of the Missing Miltown, etc.