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Anne Sexton: A Self-Portrait in Letters

4.21 of 5 stars 4.21 · rating details · 625 ratings · 15 reviews

An expression of an extraordinary poet's life story in her own words, this book shows Anne Sexton as she really was in private, as she wrote about herself to family, friends, fellow poets, and students. Anne's daughter Linda Gray Sexton and her close confidant Lois Ames have judiciously chosen from among thousands of letters and provided commentary where necessary. Illustr...more

Paperback, 433 pages

Published October 1st 2004 by Mariner Books (first published 1979)

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Jul 04, 2008 Ilze added it

It's difficult to give this book a rating because I couldn't finish reading it!! I tried my utmost and even passed the halfway mark, but her words and her emotions stayed with me and drained me.

In some of the letters you really get to know her as a happy person. Her relationship with the monk, for example, can only be said to have been a good one. But all her letters have a desperation about them that you just want to meet her in person and tell her that all will be fine. Take her time in Europ...more

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Jun 05, 2007 Molly rated it 2 of 5 stars

I had a severe love/hate relationship with this book. I was determined to get through it, but prolonged attempts at reading it would usually result in my throwing the book across the room. Sexton is a tremendous poet, but this collection of her letters brought her lesser qualities into plain view. Normally that's one of the things I appreciate about letter/journal collections, but in this case it worked against my opinion of her.

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Sep 15, 2011 tee rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: poets, favourites

I had this sitting on four stars because I just didn't feel as if I loved it but when reading it, I couldn't put it down. I so rarely find that in books these days; I always feel as if I am forcing myself to plod through them. So really, I'd rate this 4.5. I think maybe I expected a little bit more, I thought her letters might've been more interesting? I don't know what it was, maybe I was anticipating more diary-like revelations but she was quite restrained, particularly towards the end. I mean...more I had this sitting on four stars because I just didn't feel as if I loved it but when reading it, I couldn't put it down. I so rarely find that in books these days; I always feel as if I am forcing myself to plod through them. So really, I'd rate this 4.5. I think maybe I expected a little bit more, I thought her letters might've been more interesting? I don't know what it was, maybe I was anticipating more diary-like revelations but she was quite restrained, particularly towards the end. I mean, she was a flailing drama-queen, clingy and dependant, demanding and quite mad but she really did keep whatever madness was going on inside her head, inside. From what this collection portrays anyway, maybe there were more that we aren't privy to.

At the beginning, Anne writes with wild abandon - seemingly in love with almost everyone she pens a letter to. But it seems that they all reject her at some point which I thought was a bit sad, she certainly was demanding but really quite pleasant in her letters; affectionate, willing to accept constructive criticism on her work, vivacious and fascinating. Towards the end of her life, she hires a secretary who types her letters and the tone does change, though perhaps this has more to do with the sombre tone she seemed to take on after her divorce. Playful flirtatious notes give way to thank yous and business related queries.

I wish I had read this immediately after Middlebrook's biography of Sexton, I would have been able to remember what had been omitted and piece together what Anne refrained from talking about in her correspondence. I'm sure there were several affairs where letters must've been written that weren't included in this collection. I'm so nosy, I just want to crawl inside her skull and rummage around. But I'd certainly want to be able to climb back out before long. I can only presume that these letters were just a taste of Sexton and even then I sometimes felt like I was going a little mad myself reading them without rest breaks, so I can imagine that her whole, real life self would have been overwhelming for not only herself, but for those people in contact with her.

You know what made me the saddest about reading this? That we probably won't have many more books like this from the authors of our generation. "The collected emails of Aimee Bender", "The collected text messages of Jeanette Winterson"? IMAGINE if Winterson were only fifty years ago and we got to read her correspondence. I have one pen friend at the moment and I often think while I'm writing my letters to her how ashamed I'd be if I ever became an author and my shitty scrawlings peppered with "LOL"s and endless curse words went public (let alone the diagrams I doodle of food poisoning experiences). I might try harder from now on to write delightfully juicy, well-written letters just in case I ever grow talent, write books and people decide to nosy through my personal effects. I need a pen pal whom I can write to detailing how deranged my thought processes are and how much I hate everybody and everything. For the benefit of future generations who are as voyeuristic and nosy as I am.(less)

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Apr 22, 2013 Sara added it

I read most of the book, but can't bring myself to rate it. I had no previous knowledge of Anne Sexton's work, and must admit that I don't have the "poetry gene". I appreciate poetic language in the form of a well stated idea, I enjoy many song lyrics, but there is something about poetry that I just don't get. Anne Sexton got it, and her letters reveal a woman who rabidly pursued her art and actively sought to better her words in poetry. I deeply admire that quality in anyone, and fervently wish...more

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Feb 15, 2010 kate added it · review of another edition

I started this book a while ago and find myself picking it up from time to time. it's more revealing than I expected. her letters are manic, self absorbed - ups and downs of mood.

As I recall, Plath's letters were sterile, writing about the craft as if it were a self-negating chore of achievement. Nin wrote about living, loving, sex - how to become a writer by embracing life and Paris.

I'm having difficulty getting into the Sexton book because of her focus on herself and the way her mental state i...more

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Jun 10, 2011 Susan Katz rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: biography-memoir

I'm not sure I'd have wanted to know Anne Sexton personally, but it was wonderful to get this personal glimpse of her private self as presented to friends, family, and colleagues. Charm and craziness co-exist here, as well as intelligence and a passion for her art.

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Aug 31, 2012 Angela Wade rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: history, poetry, real-life

Really, really tough to rate this kind of book. I mean, it's someone's personal letters. I do appreciate that someone saw fit to publish them - they're insightful and help flesh out the woman/human behind the poems.

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Feb 21, 2012 Lisa added it

Anne Sexton: A Self-Portrait in Letters by Anne Sexton (2004)

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Jul 21, 2008 treva rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A collection of letters written by Anne Sexton, edited and annotated by her eldest daughter, Linda, and her closest living friend, the poet Maxine Kumin, illustrated with several photographs. While Sexton's poems are often tangled and mysteriously symbolic, her letters are often exuberant, unabashedly unfiltered, unedited, and wildly passionate. She tends toward words in all capitals, long strings of exclamation points and question marks, and ellipses. A refreshingly honest, often funny, and ver...more

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Oct 20, 2008 Anarda Nashai added it · review of another edition

What can I say, I fell in love with Sexton's work at sixteen. As a young poet, she was one of the first to inspire me...with her unruly and unapologetic style. With her poetry, she left the door open to her soul, which I thought was very brave and "awe-striking". She is the queen of confessionalism...and this book of her letters tells her story better than any autobiography ever has...in my opinion. A must-read for Sexton fans!

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Jun 16, 2008 Melissa rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is an interesting read, but if you are anything like me, you have to take a break from it every now and then or you will feel like you are going a little bit crazy yourself. It is a very intense trip throught the mind of a brilliant albeit very mental unstable woman.

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May 05, 2009 Skyelis Tyler rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: letters

gee. scary how much sense her madness makes to me. comforting, at the same time. one thing about her, though: this woman's a fucking machine of a writer! - and so tenderly humble.

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Apr 13, 2012 Danine rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I registered a book at BookCrossing.com!
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/11040265

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Jan 20, 2011 Adrianna rated it 5 of 5 stars

I found this book at Rhino Records, used, for $4.99. I was so thrilled and it's at my bedside, waiting to be finished.

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Apr 11, 2007 Magda rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I am wary of Linda Gray. Frieda Hughes is the eminently more trustable of the confessional-poet babies.

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May 19, 2013 William is currently reading it · review of another edition

Shelves: memoir, biography

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About Anne Sexton

Anne Sexton once told a journalist that her fans thought she got better, but actually, she just became a poet. These words are characteristic of a talented poet that received therapy for years, but committed suicide in spite of this. The poetry fed her art, but it also imprisoned her in a way.

Her parents didn’t expect much of her academically, and after completing her schooling at Rogers Hall, sh...more Anne Sexton once told a journalist that her fans thought she got better, but actually, she just became a poet. These words are characteristic of a talented poet that received therapy for years, but committed suicide in spite of this. The poetry fed her art, but it also imprisoned her in a way.

Her parents didn’t expect much of her academically, and after completing her schooling at Rogers Hall, she went to a finishing school in Boston. Anne met her husband, Kayo (Alfred Muller Sexton II), in 1948 by correspondence. Her mother advised her to elope after she thought she might be pregnant. Anne and Kayo got married in 1948 in North Carolina where it was still possible to get married before the age of 18. After the honeymoon Kayo started working at his father-in-law’s wool business.

In 1953 Anne gave birth to her first-born, Linda Gray. Two years later Linda’s sister, Joyce Ladd, was born. But Anne couldn’t cope with the pressure of two small children over and above Kayo’s frequent absence (due to work). Shortly after Joy was born, Anne was admitted to Westwood Lodge where she was treated by the psychiatrist Dr. Martha Brunner-Orne (and six months later, her son, Dr. Martin Orne, took over). The original diagnosis was for post-natal depression, but the psychologists later decided that Anne suffered from depression of biological nature.

While she was receiving psychiatric treatment, Anne started writing poetry. It all started after another suicide attempt, when Orne came to her and told her that she still has a purpose in life. At that stage she was convinced that she could only become a prostitute. Orne showed her another talent that she had, and her first poetry appeared in print in January 1957. She wrote a huge amount of poetry that was published in a dozen poetry books. In 1967 she became the proud recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Live or Die (1966).

In March 1972 Anne and Kayo got divorced. After this a desperate kind of loneliness took over her life. Her addiction to pills and alcohol worsened. Without Kayo the house was very quiet, the children were at college and most of Anne’s friends were avoiding her because they could no longer sympathize with her growing problems. Her poetry started playing such a major role in her life that conflicts were written out, rather than being faced. Anne didn’t mention a word to Kayo about her intention to get divorced. He knew that she desperately needed him, but her poems, and her real feelings toward him, put it differently. Kayo talks about it in an interview as follows: “... I honestly don’t know, never have known, what her real, driving motive was in the divorce. Which is another reason why it absolutely drove me into the floor like a nail when she did it.”

On 4 October 1974 she put on her mother’s old fur coat before, glass of vodka in hand, she climbed into her car, turned the key and died of monodioxide inhalation. She once told Orne that “I feel like my mother whenever I put it [the fur coat] on”. Her oldest daughter, Linda, was appointed as literary executor and we have her to thank for the three poetry books that appeared posthumously.
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“Anne, I don't want to live. . . . Now listen, life is lovely, but I Can't Live It. I can't even explain. I know how silly it sounds . . . but if you knew how it Felt. To be alive, yes, alive, but not be able to live it. Ay that's the rub. I am like a stone that lives . . . locked outside of all that's real. . . . Anne, do you know of such things, can you hear???? I wish, or think I wish, that I were dying of something for then I could be brave, but to be not dying, and yet . . . and yet to [be] behind a wall, watching everyone fit in where I can't, to talk behind a gray foggy wall, to live but to not reach or to reach wrong . . . to do it all wrong . . . believe me, (can you?) . . . what's wrong. I want to belong. I'm like a jew who ends up in the wrong country. I'm not a part. I'm not a member. I'm frozen.” — 227 people liked it

“Writers are such phonies: they sometimes have wise insights but they don't live by them at all. That's what writers are like...you think they know something, but usually they are just messes.” — 29 people liked it

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