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missmim's review
4.0
Toward the end of her life, Sexton's poetry gets a little embarrassing, but when she's on, she's on and her early-to-mid poems are quite masterful considering she came to poetry as a grown woman with crippling mental illness.
maryehavens's review
5.0
So many thoughts - I really wanted to post after thoughtful reflection but close enough to when I finished it. Alas, life got in the way and I’m about 2 days hence and some of the emotion has died out.
I’m grateful for the introduction by Maxine Kumin because it really framed this entire collection. It was a bit morbid moving towards her death date but I know it would have been terrible not knowing when her final days were. As I got closer, each poem had more weight; a “this is what she was thinking three months before her death” kind of weight.
I’ve always loved Anne Sexton’s poetry. I don’t remember when I was first introduced to her but I remember “The Kiss”, “The Ballad of the Lonely Masturbator”, and “Us”. Her imagery blew my mind!! Looking at the collections, I guess I read “Love Poems” in its entirety and that’s likely the only collection I read.
As I read each collection, I had to make frequent graphic novel pauses to get my mind out of the oppressive “Sexton funk” that you inevitably get trapped in. I started wondering what level of medication (or not) Sexton was on for the poems I really understood and loved. Did I love and get her more when she was lucid or not? How depressed was she when she wrote Love Poems? What does that say about my own sanity? I started playing “how suicidal am I?” And would start wishing for that escape. And then something would happen - I would get scared, the adrenaline would surge, and I would regret my temporary wish. How could I be so stupid? A deep sadness would settle: Anne Sexton likely never felt that adrenaline surge to pull her back to reality.
Sexton dabbled with all sorts of ways to combat her depression, religion being one of them. I don’t particularly care for her depictions of Jesus, being religious myself, but the parts where she feel God has abandoned her are agony. In fact, she states “This loneliness is just an exile from God” in one of her unpublished fragments. Just agony. I feel so much sadness from this statement.
At the same time, Sexton gave us this line: “Oh you brown bacon machine” when referring to a hog. How ahead of her time is that??
I’m very glad that I own this book, have marked my favorites, and am done. It was beautiful, it was visceral, and it’s over. I love it, but it breaks my heart.
I’m grateful for the introduction by Maxine Kumin because it really framed this entire collection. It was a bit morbid moving towards her death date but I know it would have been terrible not knowing when her final days were. As I got closer, each poem had more weight; a “this is what she was thinking three months before her death” kind of weight.
I’ve always loved Anne Sexton’s poetry. I don’t remember when I was first introduced to her but I remember “The Kiss”, “The Ballad of the Lonely Masturbator”, and “Us”. Her imagery blew my mind!! Looking at the collections, I guess I read “Love Poems” in its entirety and that’s likely the only collection I read.
As I read each collection, I had to make frequent graphic novel pauses to get my mind out of the oppressive “Sexton funk” that you inevitably get trapped in. I started wondering what level of medication (or not) Sexton was on for the poems I really understood and loved. Did I love and get her more when she was lucid or not? How depressed was she when she wrote Love Poems? What does that say about my own sanity? I started playing “how suicidal am I?” And would start wishing for that escape. And then something would happen - I would get scared, the adrenaline would surge, and I would regret my temporary wish. How could I be so stupid? A deep sadness would settle: Anne Sexton likely never felt that adrenaline surge to pull her back to reality.
Sexton dabbled with all sorts of ways to combat her depression, religion being one of them. I don’t particularly care for her depictions of Jesus, being religious myself, but the parts where she feel God has abandoned her are agony. In fact, she states “This loneliness is just an exile from God” in one of her unpublished fragments. Just agony. I feel so much sadness from this statement.
At the same time, Sexton gave us this line: “Oh you brown bacon machine” when referring to a hog. How ahead of her time is that??
I’m very glad that I own this book, have marked my favorites, and am done. It was beautiful, it was visceral, and it’s over. I love it, but it breaks my heart.
bibliorey's review
4.0
i actually finished this like 2 days ago but i did not enter it in goodreads. i loved some of the collections and i love how it’s categorised to its own themes
sloatsj's review
5.0
I originally gave this four stars because Anne Sexton is far from perfect and there are poems of hers (esp. Transformations) that I don't like that much but then again, when she's on, it's pretty much as close as I'm ever going to come to smoking crack. Really, I love how she can pile on the similes as if they were college students piling into a phone booth.