Sexton, Anne (Vol. 8) | Sexton, Anne 1928–1974
Sexton, Anne 1928–1974
An American poet whose work is often termed "confessional," Sexton combines in her poetry self-realization with autobiography. Her first book of verse, To Bedlam and Part Way Back, was highly acclaimed for its candid discussion of mental illness as well as its powerful imagery. Sexton was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1967 for Live or Die. (See also CLC, Vols. 2, 4, 6, and Contemporary Authors, 1-4, rev. ed.; obituary, Vols. 53-56.)
[Anne Sexton's] poems have a beleaguered and desperate honesty about them. Short on thought, long on sensation, they flog the reader into feeling. Many [in All My Pretty Ones] are manifestly autobiographical, and almost all sound so. If Denise Levertov's poems are obsessed with the present moment, Anne Sexton's cannot escape the vertical pronoun: the "I" is everywhere. Yet she is faithful as a poet, faithful to her own feelings, to the terrible ambiguities of...
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