by Anne Sexton
Creative Writing of Poetry
Raising of the Unconscious
This is a rather fancy title and yet quite accurate for the type of work I have been trying to do. That does not mean one forgets form and plot and what makes a good line, and how to end—It means that I have ceased to say words like “cliché”, “there is no news in that”, but to instead try to show them a method for bringing up strange juxtapositions and of course, I could go on and on about the various methods I have tried.
I could add that I am very fond of my students—even the difficult ones and they are THERE. However, I feel very fed by this kind of teaching and I don’t think it is an ego feeding; I think it is an attempt to give back what a few teachers and the Muse have given me.
A few months ago I spoke with President Silber and said I thought I was his only “part-time professor” and his reply was adamant. “You can be full-time any time you want to be”. I want to be! (Of course at the same salary; but that goes without saying) and I do hope you can find room for me to teach that second course within the department.
All best,
Professor Anne Sexton
[To Brian Sweeney]
14 Black Oak Road
April 25, 1974
Dear Sweeney,
I do not know Suzanne Blake’s paper in The National Times. Is it a good one or a hatchet job? Thank you for sending me clippings that I would never see otherwise—how interesting that Tennessee Williams has ever read me, much less wanting to call his autobiography, Flee, Flee This Sad Hotel.
As for me—you asked how I am, and I’d say that I’m writing pretty consistently and dating pretty consistently—but there is no one special.
So sorry about King Nixon. He is our anathema but perhaps, only perhaps, will be thrown out.
Love to you, Sweeney,
Anne
P.S. In truth I’m a little sad.
[To D. J. Enright
Chatto Windus Ltd.
London, England]
14 Black Oak Road
May 16, 1974
Dear D. J. Enright,
I want to thank you so much for explaining the necessity for cutting The Death Notebooks. I am sorry not to be more of a commercial venture for you but what will be will be. Strangely enough in the States I am a rather commercial venture for Houghton Mifflin.
If “O Ye Tongues” [DN] must go, then let’s just plain unhook it from the book—most especially if it makes (along with “Praying on a 707” [DN]) the 64-page limit. I feel grateful that I have the Chatto & Windus imprint and can most certainly “bear” with your requirements at this point in time when poetry sales have sunk to such an untimely low. By all means schedule it for next year’s program.
May I add that I am an admirer of your own work and hope that such a plight does not exist when you publish it.
With all best wishes,
In the year before she died, Anne began a friendship by letter and telephone with the poet and novelist Erica Jong. They met only twice. The second time was the summer of 1974 when Anne journeyed to New York City to make a record for Caedmon, Anne Sexton Reads Her Poetry.
[To Erica Jong
(first handwritten page missing)]
[14 Black Oak Road
June 1974]
There! That’s better. You probably can’t read a word of that terrible scribble. I haven’t written anyone by hand for about ten years—but I wanted the imprint, the touch.
Well, at any rate we met at a reading and it can’t be helped. I only want to say … that isn’t the real me, the woman of the poems, the woman of the kitchen, the woman of the private (but published) hungers. Perhaps you knew that? Perhaps I didn’t seem like a goddamn show off at all.
No matter. I hope we can meet and talk privately. I never get down to New York (if I can help it) but do you ever come to Boston? Or rather would you come to Boston—I’d love to have you come out here to Weston and we could sit over beer or martinis or whatever (tea too if you prefer) and talk and talk. If you like we could put you up for the night. (Do you remember when you were little and were making or trying to make a new friend and you say “can you come over to play?”) That’s what I’m trying to say only I’m using up more words.
I loved your first book. I, further, love your second book. You tell it true. (I just read it yesterday.) I’ll make up some comment for the publishers but right now I want to assure you that it’s the goods and you must take heart and have the courage! You have some of Neruda’s power, some of mine or Plath’s or whoever. Don’t dwell on the book’s reception. The point is to get on with it—you have a life’s work ahead of you—no point in dallying around waiting for approval. We all want it. I know, but the point is to reach out honestly—that’s the whole point … I keep feeling that there isn’t one poem being written by any one of us—or a book or anything like that. The whole life of us writers, the whole product I guess I mean, is the one long poem—a community effort if you will. It’s all the same poem. It doesn’t belong to any one writer—it’s God’s poem perhaps. Or God’s people’s poem. You have the gift—and with it comes responsibility—you mustn’t neglect or be mean to that gift—you must let it do its work. It has more rights than the ego that wants approval. When you come here (I hope you’ll come here) I’ll show you something Ted Hughes wrote me about “reviews”. I have it over my desk. It’s pretty damn good and helps one take heart. But my point is—if you can feel you are in touch with experience, if you’ve (so to speak) stuck your finger into experience and have got it right and can put it down so that others (even other experience tellers) can comprehend their own lives better, can crawl in closer to the truth of it, then you must get on with it! And keep right on. The awful blocks—and I’ve had them—must be undone[,] for the listener awaits. The listener (reader) waits trembling on the sore hole of his own abyss and he needs you!
Enough. Christ, I sound like a preacher. I’ve never even thought this out before. But here I sit in my kitchen with the winter sun coming in through the window. The sugar bowl, fat sugar, squatting in front of me and beside me, pasted up on the refrigerator is someone’s letter. It says (in only one line) “Thank you, Anne Sexton, for the poetry of your life”.
Erica Jong, thank you for the poetry of your life.
with love from my kitchen to your kitchen,
[To Claire S. Degener]
[14 Black Oak Road]
June 27, 1974
Dear Cindy and Joan,
This note is primarily a business one but, Cindy, it was good to have that conversation about far more important matters such as what is the Meaning of Life; Men, Women and Children; One’s destiny, fulfillment and onward to the universal unconscious. Not being a philosopher I feel the best I can come up with is a poem or a story where philosophy might be found without my awareness of its presence—after all, I am only a mere writer of poems and a few stories and a bad play. One does what one can.
ENOUGH!
Re: “The Bat (To Remember, To Remember)”
I in my innocence but with a certain instinct think this could interest a really fine movie director and be made into a damn good movie by the right script writer, director, actors, etc. and there could be dough in it as well (it is hard to forget money all the time when one is scratching in the dirt for a treasure chest.) […]
The major thrust of these remarks is that I hate to think of the three stories sleeping somewhere in your offices, and if you do not have the energy to market them I will have to summon up my own.
Re: The Awful Rowing Toward God
(1)I have sold “Riding the Elevator Into the Sky” [AR] to The New Yorker, “Rowing” [AR], “The Children”, and “Courage” [AR] to Mundus Artium, and “The Sickness Unto Death” [AR] to a small English magazine Contrasts.
(2)Do you wish to market the remaining ones to, for instance, Mademoiselle and its ilk—Vogue? Harper’s Bazaar? Cosmopolitan (ugh) and places like that. Do not bother with Esquire because my arch enemy Jame
s Dickey would vomit on the manuscript if he were in any way forced to publish it.
(3)I am happy to market them myself and wish to rather get on with it for certain places that don’t pay but have an immense circulation and can deal with the editors, etc. well.
Re: Present Work.
I actually have finished another book but am glad to have the time to reform the poems, rewrite and delete. I have it in mind to call it 45 Mercy Street and see no reason why I can’t. Do you? I absolutely cannot call it The Life Notebooks because I think I have yet to write that book. So much for the unwritten.
End of business letter. Hope I have not bored you to death. And just to add to the ghastliness of it all, I think I need a reply in writing or I’ll never remember all your answers.
Love, love, love,
[To Linda Gray Sexton]
[14 Black Oak Road]
July 3, 1974
July 3rd—looking forward to that WONDEROUOUS [sic] DATE, July 21st when first child, a wonder of a daughter came bursting forth into the world. (In other words happy birthday, in other words, my God! That Linda Gray, that Linda Pie, that stringbean has become that surprising age 21!!!!!!!!!! TWENTY ONE! WOW! ZAP! YIKES! ZOOM! POW!
What does a mere mother do upon such an occasion? Aside from two pairs of very pretty panties (we Sextons always seem to find ours in rags and tatters it would seem.) Well, my darling in her age of ages, what I can I offer up to the gods in thanks for such a woman as you have become, true fighter, true to trust your instinct for right and wrong, a hard worker who can’t even afford ketchup in her first apartment/work on her own?
I would tear down a star and put it into a smart jewelry box if I could. I would seal up love in a long thin bottle so that you could sip it whenever it was needed if I could. Instead I, who am lost in stores, and have further lost the Caedmon catalogue, give you bucks. I worked hard for them and I’m sure you realize what kind of work that is—
It would be nice to start them in your OWN saving account to withdraw at will for ketchup by the case or a diamond if it’s your present wish, or any damn thing that Linda Gray Sexton who is twenty-one years old might want to do with it, them, dem bucks. I wish they were six million bucks—even more I wish they were stars that would buy you the world. But mothers can’t give the world (nor fathers, nor even husbands, lovers or children)—the world sometimes just happens to us, or if we begin with more wisdom than your muggy had, we might help ourselves happen to the world. I feel that wisdom in you and I offer a prayer to it and to its growth.
Dearest pie, today nominated and legally named my literary executor (because I know you know the value, the potential of what I’ve tried in my small way to write, not only in financial potential for your future income, but maybe, just maybe—the spirit of the poems will go on past both of us, and one or two will be remembered in one hundred years … And maybe not.)
You and Joy always said, while growing up, “Well, if I had a normal mother …!” meaning the apron and the cookies and none of this typewriting stuff that was shocking the hell out of friends’ mothers … But I say to myself, better I was mucking around looking for truth, etc … and after all we did have many “night-night time has come for Linda Gray” and “Goodnight moon” to read and “Melancholy baby” for your tears.
Forgive. Muggy gets sentimental at the thought of Linda pie, little girl, baby, growing and now grown (in a sense although we never stop growing and learning and most learning comes from the hard knocks). Could you possibly keep the amount of this million bucks titled stars to yourself? It is between you and me although the love with which it’s given could be plain to a perceptive observer …
KETCHUP DIAMONDS RECORDS BOOKS? Who knows, only Linda.
In happy moods, Anne filled the house with the sound of Ella Fitzgerald and danced from room to room. She loved every note, every phrase, every soft croon. When she heard that Ella and Count Basie were giving a concert on Cape Cod she was determined to go, and convinced the Boston Globe to sponsor her review of the performance. The Globe provided Anne and a friend with tickets and hotel lodgings, free of charge.
[To Robert Taylor]
[14 Black Oak Road]
July 22, 1974
Dear Mr. Taylor,
Here is my review of the Ella Fitzgerald-Count Basie concert. I hope you like it. The emphasis is all on Ella because that’s where I wanted it to be. When we spoke on the phone, you said I had 1200 words, and I have counted them faithfully and could easily write five more but thought you might need the space.
I enclose the hotel bill for me and my secretary. I hope it is not too steep. Because of the amount I did not feel it would be fair to charge you mileage for the drive.
If you do like this rather unorthodox review, then I hope there will be another occasion to repeat the effort.
Sincerely yours,
[To Erica Jong]
[14 Black Oak Road]
July 31, 1974
Dearest Erica,
So glad that your dinner party liked me, and of course I do remember saying, “Keep your fuck zipped up until I ask for it!” and I am glad it was of some use. It was wonderful to see more of you, and I’m sure all our lives we’ll keep in touch because there is a bond—one of those special ones, and I feel very close to you although our meetings and communications have not been many. There is a vulnerability we share—the warmth, the hunger.
Glad that you could get to know Cindy, and I would take her advice if she steers you toward Sterling and don’t worry, they’ll do well by you. As a matter of fact, they’ll probably both be in on it.
I am sad to hear that you and Allan had marital crisis, and I hope the “try again” will work. It is more hell than you could imagine to be on the loose and “dating” is obnoxious. And the men are all what I call “fraidy cats” and it makes it even worse if you’re some sort of famous woman because it makes them more afraid or else more enticed and is based on a false assumption. There are many times when I wish I had not left my husband or that at least I had left him for somebody, and although that would have engendered guilt on my part, it might be easier than this madness. You are right when you say that women have transcended so much and that men have not. I can only acquiesce numbly when you say you feel “such a deep hunger in myself”. My brain waves keep telling me that this is simply disgusting and debasing, but there it is, and I am sunk into a mire this past week of utter despair.
Enough! Your Whitman poem is really fine and makes me feel guilty for the assorted poems I send because gloom is cheap, yet one writes what one must. And Oh, God, I would so much rather write for joy and affirmation and have done so only to sink now into this morass.
The enclosed poems come from a 1976 (probably) publication entitled 45 Mercy Street which is kind of a jumble of a book but does deal with my divorce and a deep love affair that ended in disaster […]
I hope the film Fear of Flying is going well, and I can’t wait for the next novel that answers the questions the novel poses.
Take care, dear one—dear, dear friend.
Love,
[…]
[To Nolan Miller]
14 Black Oak Road
[August 7, 1974]
Dearest Nolan,
Hosannas for hearing from you. My news is many new books and I’ll enclose a biographical data sheet just to let you see the progression of things like becoming a full professor at Boston University and three honorary degrees, etc.
I have just gotten a divorce. The most unfortunate part of it is that I did not divorce him for anyone else. But so it goes. Glad to hear of your fine time in the decent city of London.
Mark Strand is no more “bonded” to The New Yorker than I am. It only means they get first look at everything.
Quickly, quickly I am sending you two new poems from a forthcoming book (February 1975) entitled The Awful Rowing Toward God, and please forgive the condition of the submitted two poems, but in order to expedite this, I must send you one that i
s xeroxed.
Love to you, dear Nolan, and welcome back to the beheading
of our King [President Nixon],
Rise and Steven Axelrod of the University of Southern California visited Anne in the summer of 1974. Later, they wrote asking significant questions about the evolution of Anne’s work, and sent an article they had written.
[To Rise and Steven Axelrod]
14 Black Oak Road
September 10, 1974
Dear Rise and Steven,
I so enjoyed reading your article on my work as well as the other review and poem—the poem by the way gets my compliments and admiration. I found your article very insightful although perhaps in places hopeful where I am merely ignorant. How does a poet in 1974 admit they have not read Blake and thus the parallels are perhaps only Jungian. I do think there is somewhere a “visionary mode” in my work, but I’m usually unaware of it until it comes to me. I have read Christopher Smart, at least Jubilate Agno and that surely did influence “O Ye Tongues” [DN] but I feel that having never attended college, I am way behind in the important reading I should be doing.
Steve, I don’t mind my work being called “confessional” yet I can see why Snodgrass can easily be “domestic”. In Lowell’s class he did speak of Snodgrass, W. C. Williams, but the Williams and Pound that you quote to me I’m not to this day familiar with [.] Although I’ve tried a bit at the Cantos, I found myself becoming bored. Of course I do know Elizabeth Bishop and Emily Dickinson. I do not know how I feel about such an old poem as “Live” in Live or Die. The poems stand for the moment they are written and make no promises to the future events and consciousness and raising of the unconscious as happens as one goes forward and does not look backward for an answer in an old poem. I guess of all my old poems “The Truth the Dead Know” [PO] and the two last stanzas of “The Touch” [LP] have the most meaning for me to this day although that is just a passing thought, and I could change my mind in five minutes.
It was so nice to meet both of you, and I wish we could have had longer and certainly if I am in LA, I will let you know. And of course if you are here, I hope you can find more time to share with me.