Sexton, Anne

orig. Anne Gray Harvey

born Nov. 9, 1928, Newton, Mass., U.S.

died Oct. 4, 1974, Weston, Mass.

U.S. poet.

She worked as a model, librarian, and teacher. Her first book of poetry, To Bedlam and Part Way Back (1960), examines her mental breakdowns and subsequent recoveries with confessional intensity. She continued probing her personal life in All My Pretty Ones (1962) and Live or Die (1966, Pulitzer Prize). Her other works include the nonfiction collection No Evil Star (1985). She died a suicide. Several volumes of poetry were published posthumously.

* * *

▪ American poet

original name  Anne Harvey 

born November 9, 1928, Newton, Massachusetts, U.S.

died October 4, 1974, Weston, Massachusetts

      American poet whose work is noted for its confessional (confession) intensity.

      Anne Harvey attended Garland Junior College for a year before her marriage in 1948 to Alfred M. Sexton II. She studied with the poet Robert Lowell (Lowell, Robert, Jr.) at Boston University and also worked as a model and a librarian. Although she had written some poetry in childhood, it was not until the later 1950s that she began to write seriously. Her poems, which showed Lowell's influence, appeared in Harper's, The New Yorker, Partisan Review, and other periodicals, and her first book, To Bedlam and Part Way Back, was published in 1960. The book won immediate attention because of the intensely personal and relentlessly honest self-revelatory nature of the poems recording her nervous breakdown and recovery. Their imagery was frequently brilliant, and their tone was both sardonic and vulnerable. Her second book of poems, All My Pretty Ones (1962), continued in the vein of uncompromising self-exploration. Live or Die (1966), a further record of emotional illness, won a Pulitzer Prize and was followed by, among others, Love Poems (1969), Transformations (1971), The Book of Folly (1972), and The Death Notebooks (1974). Sexton taught at Boston University in 1970–71 and at Colgate University in 1971–72. She also wrote a number of children's books with poet Maxine Kumin, including Eggs of Things (1963), Joey and the Birthday Present (1971), and The Wizard's Tears (1975).

      Sexton died by her own hand. The Awful Rowing Toward God (1975), 45 Mercy Street (1976, edited by her daughter, Linda Gray Sexton), and Uncollected Poems with Three Stories (1978) were published posthumously. Anne Sexton: A Self-Portrait in Letters, edited by Lois Ames and Linda Gray Sexton, was published in 1977 and No Evil Star: Selected Essays, Interviews, and Prose in 1985.

Additional Reading

Diane Wood Middlebrook, Anne Sexton (1991), is a biography. Linda Gray Sexton, Searching for Mercy Street (1994), is her daughter's reflection on their relationship.

* * *