Robert Lowell

Maxine Kumin

William De Witt Snodgrass

John Holmes

Sylvia Plath

Anne’s self-portrait

Early life Early life Anne Sexton (Anne Gray Harvey, born Nov. 9, 1928, Newton, Mass., U.S. died Oct. 4, 1974, Weston, Mass.), major American poet. The youngest of three daughters born to prosperous parents Mary Gray Staples and Ralph Harvey, she had a difficult relationships with them and, in fact, was brought up by her unmarried aunt "Nana" (Anna Dingley), who lived with the family during Anne's adolescence. According to Sexton's biographers, Anne felt that her parents were hostile to her and feared that they might abandon her. Her aunt's later breakdown and hospitalization also traumatized her.EducationEducationIn 1945 she was sent to Rogers Hall, a boarding school in Lowell, Massachusetts, where she began to write poetry and to act. After graduation she briefly attended what she called a "finishing" school and spent only one year at Garland Junior College.FamilyFamilyShe eloped with and married Alfred Muller "Kayo" Sexton, II, on August 16, 1948 at age nineteen and they remained together until 1973. In 1953 and 1955 she gave birth to her two daughters Linda Gray and Joyce Ladd, and those events provoked series of her first mental breakdowns, after which her children were sent to live with her husband’s parents. Linda Gray Sexton (born July 21, 1953) now is an American writer and one of Sexton’s biographers. She wrote her memoirs of growing up with her mother, Searching for Mercy Street: My Journey Back to My Mother, Anne Sexton.The first steps in literatureThe first steps in literatureAs a part of therapy Anne Sexton was advised by her psychiatrist, Dr. Martin Orne, to write poetry. Sexton began taking courses in John Holme's poetry workshop at the Boston Center for Adult Education, and her talent was immediately recognized. She received a scholarship in 1958 to the Antioch Writers' Conference, and later that year she was accepted into Robert Lowell's graduate writing seminar at Boston University, where she met and became friends with Sylvia Plath, Maxine Kumin, and George Starbuck.

Career Career After graduating from Garland Junior College Ann Sexton worked as a fashion model at the Hart Agency. Sexton's poetic career was encouraged by her mentor W. D. Snodgrass, whom she met at the Antioch Writer's Conference in 1957. His poem "Heart's Needle" proved inspirational for her in its theme of separation from his three-year-old daughter. Sexton began writing letters to Snodgrass and they became friends . In 1960 she published her first important collection of poetry in confessional style, To Bedlam and Part Way Back, and she began teaching poetry at Harvard and Radcliffe. She found early acclaim with her poetry; a number were accepted by The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine and Saturday Review. She worked side by side with M. Kumin and they wrote four children’s books together. Also she taught at Boston University, worked at the American Place Theatre, and conducted poetry workshops in her home.Throughout the 1960s Sexton published several collections of poetry, but she also suffered from severe depressions, attempted suicide, and was hospitalized on occasion.Style of writingStyle of writingAnne Sexton was a ‘Confessional’ poet . ‘Confessionalism' is a style of poetry that emerged in the United States during the 1950s. It has been described as poetry "of the personal," focusing on extreme moments of individual experience, including previously taboo matter such as mental illness, sexuality, and suicide, often set in relation to broader social themes.AwardsAwardsPulitzer Prize for Poetry ( Live or Die in 1967), Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Arts, US & Canada and other distinctions .DeathDeathDespite a successful writing she lost her battle with mental illness and committed suicide. On October 4, 1974, Sexton had lunch with Kumin to revise galleys for Sexton's manuscript of The Awful Rowing Toward God. On returning home she put on her mother's old fur coat, removed all her rings, locked herself in her garage, and started the engine of her car, committing suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning. She is buried at Forest Hills Cemetery in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts.

I am not lazy. I am on the amphetamine of the soul.

I am, each day, typing out the God

my typewriter believes in. Very quick. Very intense, like a wolf at a live heart.

Not lazy. When a lazy man, they say,

looks toward heaven, the angels close the windows.

FrenzyAnne Sexton

Selected BibliographyPoetry45 Mercy Street (1976)All My Pretty Ones (1962)Live or Die (1966)Love Poems (1969)Selected Poems (1964)The Awful Rowing Toward God (1975)The Book of Folly (1973)The Complete Poems (1981)The Death Notebooks (1974)To Bedlam and Part Way Back (1960)Transformations (1971)ProseAnne Sexton: A Self-Portrait in Letters (1977)