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glimmerlikebolan's review
dark
reflective
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
4.5
pbraue13's review against another edition
4.0
I read this after reading "Rapture" by Carol Ann Duffy which is also about love and its complexities, but Anne Sexton's collection while about love is also about heartbreak and self-fulfillment. It's more melancholy and saddened with poems both about the ecstasy of loves embrace but also its ability to ruin someone completely. It also talks about, quite explicitly, about sex and masturbation which is quite ahead of the time when this poetry collection was written. Sexton is often held in conjunction with Sylvia Plath, and I can understand why as they both are depressed poets that write about death as longingly as they write about love and life. Yet, Sexton is more optimistic than Plath in many ways. If you want a poetry collection that makes you think this is the one for you.
casparb's review against another edition
I really loved this one it doesn't feel like the greatest Sexton qua sexton collection but it seems to me offers itself perfectly as a showcase of How She Does It, a possibility of getting into the technicals of the Sextonian composition. more more more
emilydugranrut's review against another edition
4.0
"I give you back your heart.
I give you permission —
for the fuse inside her, throbbing
angrily in the dirt, for the bitch in her
and the burying of her would —
for the burying of her small red wound alive —
for the pale flickering flare under her ribs,
for the drunken sailor who waits in her left pulse,
for the mother's knee, for the stockings,
for the garter belt, for the call —
the curious call
when you will burrow in arms and breasts
and tug at the orange ribbon in her hair
and answer the call, the curious call.
She is so naked and singular.
She is the sum of yourself and your dream.
Climb her like a monument, step after step.
She is solid.
As for me, I am a watercolor.
I wash off."
I give you permission —
for the fuse inside her, throbbing
angrily in the dirt, for the bitch in her
and the burying of her would —
for the burying of her small red wound alive —
for the pale flickering flare under her ribs,
for the drunken sailor who waits in her left pulse,
for the mother's knee, for the stockings,
for the garter belt, for the call —
the curious call
when you will burrow in arms and breasts
and tug at the orange ribbon in her hair
and answer the call, the curious call.
She is so naked and singular.
She is the sum of yourself and your dream.
Climb her like a monument, step after step.
She is solid.
As for me, I am a watercolor.
I wash off."
yara_aly's review against another edition
5.0
While reading this wonderful anthology, all I thought about was how could someone write so delicately and personally about love, relationships, the body, but then it's Anne Sexton, so yeah.
margarete's review against another edition
4.0
poems that just cut through you cleanly. still exploring work by women that examines bitchiness, wrath, and other emotions and subject matter that is ‘unbecoming’. interesting to contrast sexton with my adoration for plath—similar but very different, plath has a further veneer of composure, i feel, or rather some restraint and haughtiness, while sexton lays everything bare. more sexual, more taboo, for sure.