Wanting to Die (Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Anne Gray Harvey
- First Published: 1964
- Type of Work: Lyric
- Genres: Poetry, Lyric poetry
- Subjects: Love or romance, Suicide, Death or dying, Life and death
The Poem
“Wanting to Die” is a short poem in free verse that divides its thirty-three lines into eleven tercets (three-line stanzas). Because it is written in the first person and is conversational in form, this poem has been described as one of Anne Sexton’s literary suicide notes. Because it presents a speaker attempting to explain to a sympathetic listener why she wants to kill herself, some critics have also suggested that it reads like a discussion between Sexton and her psychiatrist. The use of the first person in a poem often causes readers to assume that the...
[The entire page is 1410 words long]
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