“I say Live, Live because of the sun,
the dream, the excitable gift.”
— Anne Sexton
Live
Maxine Kumin, her closest friend and colleague, in the foreword to Anne Sexton: The Complete Poems writes, “Time will sort out the dross among these poems and burnish the gold”. Of her posthumous works, many believed Anne Sexton lost the shrewdness she once possessed for craft. Her addiction to alcohol and prescription drugs mixed with her lifelong battles with depression and suicide amplified what seemed to be ramblings of the mind simply put on a page. Critics were not kind. Yet many years later, author Philip McGowen, in a footnote for his book, Anne Sexton and Middle Generation Poetry, shares the following insight from Paul Bové [16] to consider:
“[R]epresentation and articulation both break down when the poet successfully destroys enough of the traditional habits to encounter this mysterious limit of articulation. Perhaps all that the poet does finally enounter in this way is the failure of language which reduced him to fester and bodily expression, […] the poet moves beyond, transcends what the ordinary or habitual defines as life and at that moment is reduced to a non-verbal being. The necessary shared basis of language, its common referents, and significations, disintegrate. (From Destructive Poetics: Heidegger and Modern American Poet)
Anne Sexton offered an unfiltered view with sharp insight about her life with words. Words that once were an outlet in later years seemed to became obstacles. One thing is beyond question. Suicide must never be glamorized. Mental or emotional illness and creativity are also not equal. “We who are alive must make clear, as she could not, the distinction between creativity and self-destruction. The tendency to confuse the two has claimed too many women. […] To recognize that for a few years of her life Anne Sexton was an artist even though she had so hard a struggle against her desire for death is to fittingly honor her memory.” [17]
If you’re thinking about suicide, please read Are You Feeling Suicidal? or call 1-800-273-TALK (8255) in the U.S.! To find a suicide helpline outside the U.S., visit Suicide.org.