The thing about . . .

. . . Anne Sexton's letters is that, even as she types a blue streak to her correspondents, spiraling up and down about her flaming inner life — " . . . sometimes I am a little crazy (withdrawn for a time and then flashing into a manic excitement, wild words, wild talking) . . . and yet not quite as crazy as all that — she thinks in poetry. Here is a fragment of letter from 1962, word for word, but unprosed:

At night the dump was lovely,

burning in gray and scarlet fires out over the water.

I r...