Anne Sexton

by Anne Sexton

  Oh hell. Not even the writer enough to fix up the unfinished. Oh hell. I wish, stupidly that someone but me would kill me and take the responsibility away … Oh hell … I wonder if I’ll send this or even the last one. And if I send them what right have I to do it. Is it mean? Selfish? True? Or however this, is it kind?

  No!

  Well, Anne

  is it fair to tell you this when what in hell can you do about it …

  Maybe I can go back to the thorazine. Or something … Maybe, god please, it’s all curable. If not … what can I do?

  In the fall, Claire S. Degener took over as Anne’s agent at the Sterling Lord Agency, entering right in the middle of the playwriting furor. Cindy and Anne were to become good friends in the years that followed; dealing with publishers, editors, and overseas agents, they almost always got exactly what they wanted.

  [To Claire S. Degener

  Sterling Lord Agency]

  [40 Clearwater Road]

  Nov. 16th 1964

  Dear Cindy:

  […] I am personally quite depressed about the play. It is beginning to go stale in my hands. Since you and I talked I made the cuts you recommended plus some you didn’t. Then The Charles Playhouse worked on the first scene and the very beginning which is a kind of prologue. Then I rewrote both. This worked very well and I would keep the play and continue this method except that they don’t really have the time. It would take me a year or over. I find that I love working with actors and a director. Ideas bounce all over the place. Probably I could do a hell [of] a lot to the play if I were willing to wait. The director told me I could really rewrite two assignments (he gave me one) and I think I can. However, that was only once and meanwhile the play hot in my hand, waiting and then, over the weeks, slowly getting cool.

  Believe me, Cindy, I’ve got a hell of a lot of discipline that I haven’t used up for this play … but I need a sounding board, a real director who wants this cut and the other added. I’ve even got patience, but my instinct tells me not to let it (the play) get stale with revision after revision (this being the ninth or the tenth). Perhaps I need a major revision. But I need someone to tell me. Right now I’m beginning to doubt the whole basis of the play (One, that the inaccuracy of memory fools us all forever; two, that the idea of Christ fools us all, twisting life into little jigsaw patterns, leaving us all at the ever-resurrection terror of “The Place.”) I think that’s what I mean, and then some.

  I think that’s so but God Damn it I meant to be (not disciplined or patient) but just more stubborn about getting a good play out of Daisy. I think she has a story to tell. I still think I could tell it. But right now I need someone to tell me how to make it better. So let’s take a chance that someone will. Who knows! Maybe magic hopes will work as well as discipline.?????

  I send a copy soon. What do you think???????

  Yrs,

  The Sextons’ first Dalmatian puppy, Clover, was hit by a car in November and died. The entire family mourned and immediately sought a new puppy to make up the loss. Within a matter of weeks Angel arrived.

  In December, the house in Newton Lower Falls ran out of closet space—or so Anne and Kayo told the girls. Actually they wanted to move to a better neighborhood and a better school system. They also hoped that a new house would be large enough to accommodate a live-in housekeeper. Even so, for Anne, the prospect of moving was traumatic. She had made a life for herself in Newton, having come to love her neighbors and her trees. But she forced herself to house-hunt.

  At first she liked nothing: no matter what qualities a prospective house offered, she rejected it summarily. Then, driving through Weston, Anne noticed a house of an odd olive color. Kayo stopped the car. They got out to look and fell in love with it.

  The day the moving men came, Anne lay on a sofa at the Robarts’ and sobbed for hours. But by the time spring came around and the swimming pool was installed, she had adjusted to the move. Nestled between tall swamp maples and a huge rock in the front yard, the modern colonial at 14 Black Oak Road became a symbol of safety and security.

  [To Anne Clarke]

  [40 Clearwater Road]

  Dec 10th, 1964

  Dear One,

  BEEP BEEP BEEP. I have tried to call you at least three times after nine at night (money!) and you are not there. Are you okay? I hope it means you are busy running around town. A class? Soon? Already? Work—any?

  Personally I’d give ten thousand bucks to be a psychiatrist and not a writer. I hate being a writer (when I’m not writing). It’s too fucking hard to write. I am very sterile now and don’t think I’m a writer at all. I’d rather be writing something bad than nothing at all!!

  So what [am] I doing? Well, I’m moving and you can just imagine what that entails emotionally as well as the whole damn house. Emotionally I’ve been very blue, dry, sterile. I go into the Charles Playhouse a little. They worked on the 2nd and 3rd scene of my play and gave me instructions to completely rewrite them which I did and did badly. Next monday, I hope, they’ll work on the rewrite. The play is a dead thing now and will not revive for rewrite of any kind. I have sent it to my agent to market in New York. Maybe she can do something. I give up on it. It actually bores me now and that may be my best estimate of it altogether. […]

  I have picked out papers for the house. It turns out everything I’ve picked is very dressy. I didn’t mean for that. I meant to pick things that were dramatic but now it ends up too formal. We have a nice front hall. Room for ten people to stand there all at once. So who has 10 at once[?] Not I! We have a wonderful front closet. Room for ten coats (all mine) and two new pair of boots I bought yesterday. I have shoe boots, high hell and flat (get that! for high-heel) I wore them to Dr. Deitz’s today and guess what today, for first time I lay on the couch. I’m still bewildered by it (the couch I mean). I had my boots on too … I’ve been complaining for months to him that therapy was no good and that we weren’t getting anywhere. So HERE WE GO. I’m starting to get into things—“where” ever that is. For years I heard I was too sick for couch, but I feel okay right now. If you want to know what I am (sick-wise)—as if you didn’t know—I finally got a word or two from him on it. I’m everything!!! Hysteric, manic, depressed, schitz (spellomg spelling) etc. It all boils down to him saying if I really wanted to know and work … a bit of a straddler I, on the fence, a fence sitter. A couch lier with boots on, boots with fur. […]

  Don’t ask me why I’m moving. I’ve forgotten. So I can get a Swedish maid or something equally silly. It’s not really silly, Anne, but I don’t know where all this money is coming from. We had advertised in the Stockholm newspaper for one (a mature woman) … What I need is a mother! WANTED … A RENTED MOTHER!! U.S.A.… That is how the ad ought to read. No answers as yet.[…]

  As you can see I can’t think of what to say. I’m drinking a beer to go with my cramps. I’m in a little flurry about having been “on the couch” à la Maxine, à la analysis, à la what I never did before. The minute I got there I started to cry. A very watery couch. I’m there to figure out why I want to kill myself. I think that’s a goal. I think it will be a miracle if I don’t someday end up killing myself. I’m right now hunting down miracles. It was pretty rocky last month but I didn’t want to depress you with my depressions. I lack contentment. No. I lack a mother.

  When are you going to send me some of that journal you kept in hospital? When are you going to send me something?

  Write anyhow.

  I love you as usual and as always.

  Anne

  [To Tillie Olsen]

  [14 Black Oak Road

  circa February 14, 1965]

  Dearly Tillie,

  Why don’t

  Your valentines received! Read! Loved.

  typewriters make little hearts?????

  AND YOUR NEW YEAR’S CARD FOR MY NEW HOME, MY NEW PLACE

  They (both cards, notes, actual things) mean a great deal. Something to treasure. Your note says you are not feeling well!! (But your
book is. Hooray for the book) (that is important too). How sorry I am to learn that you are not. Annie mentioned it too. All my catholic friends offer up their sickness to God. I wish that I might. Or that I could suggest you do so promptly. Maybe you could offer it up to the Muse. Or to Rilke. R. has some good (fine) things to say on the subject. (as for me, I’ve got nothing to say but LOVE) which is all right but not practical. When I hear you feel not well I say (simply) Oh shit!

  But that’s not very poetic.

  I have signed a lease with god that says I’m never very well

  spiritually or mentally or whatever they call it. This

  lease (I call it sickness unto death) is not actually very

  serious, but it leaves me crippled. The g.d. tranquilizers

  I started to take at M.G.H. this summer have completely

  stoppered any original idea. I haven’t had one since

  the first madness of the play took over (and that

  was before M.G.H.). Oh Tillie, dear one, I go

  on and on … We miss you, here in Boston

  town. My new home does not suit. It is

  grand, roomy (no pool) and all. My

  room is quite “public” with too many

  chairs for any real privacy!

  The letter from “Hannah”

  your New York friend

  gave me great happiness.

  Such as I—with

  majesty? And

  composure?

  Who?

  Me?

  (page other side)

  ///////// (those are little HEARTS) ie.

  [drawn by hand, some little hearts]

  Tillie, I did not see enough of you when you were here. What one denies oneself. [illegible] Heart grows stingy and will not allow. I don’t know why either. Oh well, I am awkward with people. Annie doesn’t know that. And to be sure, I am not awkward with Maxine. But she is my only sister, and it took years and years to have that happen. She is very solid in my life. I read, promptly, the Herzog section to her. And will show it to her too. I didn’t like the letters myself, but I liked the idea of the letters very much. As you know, both Maxine and I like Saul Bellow. It is even hard to dislike parts of his work that one might in some one else. I like Henderson the most. As I told you, once. To say, more true, I LOVE Henderson. I can not quibble bout the rest.

  I thought of sending you a valentine. I started and then I never did. There are no valentines good enough, I said.

  The winter has had little snow. Out here, where I live, there

  are Black Oak trees but since so much new building has been

  going on in this neighborhood there are no birds. When I

  hear a bird at someone else’s house I want to go out and

  kiss its throat. There is a fireplace in my writing

  room and lots of wood to burn. No view at all. No

  water. The kitchen is very sunny and I sit at the

  kitchen table often in the sun and muse. I haven’t

  written a poem since this summer, since M.G.H.…

  (have I been, unwittingly, lobotomized?)

  Please miss us. You are always here,

  in everyone’s heart.

  I’ll return Hannah’s letter when

  I can put down her compliments.

  Your valentine

  [To Anne Clarke]

  [14 Black Oak Road]

  day after valentines.

  65

  Anne dear, your Jet plane letter today, full of your exhaustions of the literary life and your mentions of the yellow note I wrote that you carried with you to class.

  I’m glad you liked my little note. It meant I love you.

  It still does.

  The music (Scott! [the Sextons’ new stereo]) is playing strong. I was just lying on the ouch (couch) in my room looking out casually and I saw with shock the roof, snow lined, shining in the moonlight. When I saw that it hurt. I felt this awful pain. Does that make sense. A winter roof in the snow.??? There it was, beautiful and terrible. I thought I’d tell you.

  It made me cry.

  I don’t dare walk outside where the sky must hurt even extra with its full load of stars. The sky outside must ring. Do you remember how winter snow nights could ring? You’d think the trees would fall to their knees with it all night long. Yet, they do not. And still the stars sustain such interest.

  Such thoughts!

  Kayo is away but a woman is here, a mother-like woman. She makes it okay which just goes to show how much Kayo is a mother-like man for me. I won’t hit myself with that. A simple fact. A baseball bat of a fact! (For hitting mostly).

  Rita [Ernst, her next-door neighbor from Newton] told me today that I’ve changed on thorazine. (Since M.G.H. thorazine). She says I’m more childlike. She also says that she bets I haven’t had one original idea since then. […] Rita right. No ideas. None. Of my own. NOT ONE.

  Dr. Deitz suggests today that I need brain wave test (what the name of that I forget momentarily). Eppileptic me? (sp. prob wrong). I had this thing happen again on Friday night. Out with Maxine to a play, intermission, great play, smoking and talking madly, happy, great etc.… and suddenly, as has happened before, a sudden blackness, things going around, the floor moving, things double, black, black, Maxine pushes me to ladies’ room … spirits of ammonia etc. and then heaving. All this within the space of three minutes. God, was I sick … Maybe the Flu. Feel less guilty if it the Flu. If it’s just in my head I tell you I feel pretty guilty … to inflict this on friend. This used to happen all the time during stress appointments with Doc Martin … or once in a while outside of his office. But not lately. Now again. Like lightning! Martin always said “no brain wave test. It isn’t THAT. It’s you!” So allright already, I said … But Deitz asks, “why all these hospitalizations and never even a test?” So I sez, so I don’t know? A terrible thing passing out stone cold or throwing up all over the place. I mean, it’s really disgusting (messy) (inconvenient) … IT IS! For them as well as for me … Funny, I mean, strangely funny tonight as I look out at snow moon roof, to think it might be a brain wave not a “mee—wave” […]

  I am not going to take anymore thorazine. I want to write poems!

  Listen, dear, lately I’ve been trying to tell Linda that she can hate me but she can’t be fresh! (As I did this I thought of you and your admonition that I not be sarcastic) It applies! As a mother I say NO to her … but as a child personally I don’t know how to say NO to me. Linda hasn’t figured out how to be angry and not fresh. She HAS got troubles. As I don’t know how to tell her. I don’t know either. Maybe two of us had better learn.

  Oh dear one! Even if the room is small. Still, dear Anne-one, the room is full! (is that too cryptic?) Oh. Tell me it’s plain!!! Tell me! It seems I’d rather die than think it wasn’t plain and just the way it is, it is, it is … IT IS. A small plain old fashioned room, rather small, not convenient or modern, pretty simple, pretty ordinary, old-used furniture … with room to sit, to sprawl, to talk, to BE … with a blast of love in it. A restatement. I HAVE ROOM. (restated now … ie. This room: But full of love) … Anne, the kind of a room I can make it. That only. But THAT with LOVE, with room ROOM ROOM for you

  always—Yr [illegible] friend Anne

  Dorianne Goetz wrote Anne from a mental hospital in June. She admired Anne’s work and identified with it.

  [To Dorianne Goetz,

  postcard]

  The June [1965]

  Dear Doris … Thank you so much for your note. I’m so pleased you like my work. I hope you can get a chance to see the new poem out in Harper’s this month (June) called “For the Year of the Insane” [LD]. It is only for a few people.

  I would like it if you could be one of them.

  I wish I were nineteen. Not that it’s better or worse to be me at 36 but it gives you so much more time to grow. Inside I’m only thirteen and outside I have wrinkles and a family and many who depend on me. How silly all this is when you are actually 13. That’s
what I mean “I wish.” Time to grow—it’s so needed.

  Hope you still find Hillside “a wonderful place.” I’ve been in so many that aren’t. But that’s another story … Please send poems. I’d like to see them—

  Best—

  Anne Sexton

  In 1965, Lois Ames wrote to Anne from Chicago; she complimented her on the poem “Sylvia’s Death” and inquired if Anne could aid her in her search for biographical material on Sylvia Plath. Lois thought that perhaps she had known Anne earlier, but could not recall the place or circumstance. Although Anne did not remember her, she did reply with what she later called “that neurotic letter.” They continued to correspond and met the following summer when Lois was in Boston.

  [To Lois Ames]

  [14 Black Oak Road]

  June 4th, 1965

  Dear Lois Ames:

  Your letter isn’t dated and the envelope is lost and … God knows, that letter has been here long enough!

  I meant to answer right off. But, somehow life/writing/my self got inbetween the answer.

  Can you forgive? Please try.

  Yes, Sylvia is dead. And already she has been dead too long. Many other friends seem to be becoming dead, too. I do not like this, parents, friends—God what next! One’s own children, I suppose. Yes, that would be the hardest to face, yet many do. I, luckily have not had this happen.

  About her death I know little—it is all gossip. It is certainly NOT gossip from her mother (who remains, hopefully, in the dark). The gossip-truth is that she killed herself, as she tried this once before one cannot be too surprised—by turning on the gas. And thus, she died. In England. […] After all she had the suicide inside her. As I do. As many of us do. But, if we’re lucky, we don’t get away with it and something or someone forces us to live. Her last poems are amazing. True-blue things! I wish I might write her to tell her how [I] admire and love them. But one can’t (altho I do in my poems) write to the dead.