The 20th Century American poet, Anne Sexton once said, “Poetry should be a shock to the senses. It should almost hurt.” Sexton displays this belief through her writing style and set of controversial themes, which unquestionably shocked critics at times. Many of Sexton’s poems reflect on her personal struggles with mental illness and her numerous encounters with suicidal feelings. Sexton became known as a confessional poet because of her autobiographical style of writing. The main themes of her poetry are depression and death. “Wanting to Die”, “The Truth the Dead Know”, “The Abortion”, and “The Starry Night”, are all examples of Sexton’s writing that portray her central poetic themes. Through the use of vivid visual imagery, especially natural …show more content…
Sexton wrote her second book, All My Pretty Ones, during a very hard time in her life. “During the years of her apprenticeship as a poet, Sexton herself had lost a beloved great-aunt and both of her parents to premature deaths; and her own chronic illness, punctuated with suicide attempts, had felt like a death threat miraculously survived”(Middlebrook 3). Poems such as "The Truth the Dead Know," "The Starry Night," and "The Abortion" within this book, are “elegies or eloquent evocations of these losses” (Middlebrook 3). All My Pretty Ones and her next book Live or Die contained some of Sexton’s best and most notable poems. Both books focused on Sexton’s curiosity with living or dying as Sexton continuously struggled with her depression and contemplated suicide. In the 1970s, as the very lonely Sexton became addicted to drugs and alcohol, she reached her mental breaking point. After finishing what she planned to be her last book, Sexton sat inside her car in her closed garage until she killed herself by carbon monoxide poisoning. Sexton’s death did not come as a shock to many because she left behind books full of warning signs with the majority of her poems written in a depressive mindset with a central theme of death. One critic said that, “Sexton’s poetry saved her as long as saving was possible” (Levertov …show more content…
In the second stanza, Sexton drives from the funeral to the Cape to “cultivate” herself or deal with her grief. She describes the images she sees on the cape such as the sun shining from the sky and uses a simile to describe the sea that “swings in like an iron gate”. The scenery, unlike Sexton’s emotions, are very lively and happy and the usage of this imagery makes the reader understand that the world was still turning even through the speaker’s life had just stopped due to her loss (Johnson 3). The end of the second stanza concludes with “in another country people die”, which brings back the poem’s theme of death and returns the poem to a more dismal tone showing that she cannot escape death or her grief. In the third stanza, Sexton addresses a loved one who is with her. Despite the wind falling like stones from “white hearted water” or the grief hitting her, her loved one touches her and she realizes that unlike the dead, she is not
Millay is associating death with happiness. This unlikely comparison allows the reader to become relaxed about the hardships the author was facing in the earlier passages of the poem. As the earth gave way and Millay sank softly and perfectly six feet under the ground, the reader celebrates as if a runner was finally crossing the finish line. Comparing death to a successful situation is an unusual way of looking at the end of life. Yet, this view of death is a positive outlook and is quite wonderful as opposed to other literary views of death such as "death: the gatekeeper of hell who has conquered the Earth." Millay makes the reader believe that the sinking earth is more of a pair of open hands waiting to hold the weary soul of man. Death is a chance of catching up on that sleep that you never quite caught up on. Another image that Millay gives the reader is that of a mother embracing her child. Mother Earth welcomes home her tired child and allows him to rest his head upon her soft breast. She runs her hands through his hair and lays them on his brow as to cool him off. She whispers her tired child to sleep through the sweet and friendly sound of rain.
Sexton, Anne. The Complete Poems: Anne Sexton. N.p.: Houghton, 1999. Print. There are moments in our life when we need to have courage and hope.
Sexton was a pioneer. As member of the "confessional school" of poetry that arose in America in the early '60s, she helped put an emphasis in American culture on revelation that continues today.
I have chosen to write about Virginia Woolf, a British novelist who wrote A Room of One’s Own, To the Lighthouse and Orlando, to name a few of her pieces of work. Virginia Woolf was my first introduction to feminist type books. I chose Woolf because she is a fantastic writer and one of my favorites as well. Her unique style of writing, which came to be known as stream-of-consciousness, was influenced by the symptoms she experienced through her bipolar disorder. Many people have heard the word "bipolar," but do not realize its full implications. People who know someone with this disorder might understand their irregular behavior as a character flaw, not realizing that people with bipolar mental illness do not have control over their moods. Virginia Woolf’s illness was not understood in her lifetime. She committed suicide in 1941.
Brooks’ uses the symbol of death many times in her work. According to author Harry B. Shaw, the sheer frequency with which death appears in Miss Brooks’ poetry indicates its importance in her thinking (Shaw 48).
Many people may look at the same painting and all come away with their own understanding. Every person has their bias and preconceptions that will influence their personal experience. In this paper we will discuss how Anne Sexton described in a short poem her experience of viewing Vincent Van Gogh’s painting The Starry Night. We will observe how Anne Sexton’s poem based on Van Gogh’s painting speaks about death in darkness as the painting seems to emphasise the light in the darkness.
While thinking of death, thoughts of grief, despair and worry arise. Perhaps this is a product of the darkness often times portrayed of death from contemporary literature, movies, and music. Movies such as “Schindler’s List” and music such as Neil Young’s “Tonight’s the Night” are just a few examples of entertainment that show the darkness and finality of death. These forms of medium only present the idea, as no one who wrote them actually experienced death and therefore the dark thoughts associated with it are ambiguous. In “712 (Because I Could not Stop for Death)”, poet Emily Dickinson also shows the darkness associated but she has a different view of death. She writes from the standpoint of a narrator
The third decade of the twentieth century brought on more explicit writers than ever before, but none were as expressive as Anne Sexton. Her style of writing, her works, the image that she created, and the crazy life that she led are all prime examples of this. Known as one of the most “confessional” poets of her time, Anne Sexton was also one of the most criticized. She was known to use images of incest, adultery, and madness to reveal the depths of her deeply troubled life, which often brought on much controversy. Despite this, Anne went on to win many awards and go down as one of the best poets of all time.
Death can both be a painful and serious topic, but in the hands of the right poet it can be so natural and eloquently put together. This is the case in The Sleeper by Edgar Allan Poe, as tackles the topic of death in an uncanny way. This poem is important, because it may be about the poet’s feelings towards his mother’s death, as well as a person who is coming to terms with a loved ones passing. In the poem, Poe presents a speaker who uses various literary devices such as couplet, end-stopped line, alliteration, image, consonance, and apostrophe to dramatize coming to terms with the death of a loved one.
Kasdano, Michelle. "Poetry: The Legacy of Anne Sexton." Helium (2007). Web. 31 Aug 2011. .
Dickey is a mastermind at truly evoking mental images and feedback from the reader through his brilliant writing style. By the end of the poem, the reader has felt as if he or her has ridden on a roller coaster of a keen portrayal of the reality of death, the sentiment felt by those left behind by the dead, and also the power of faith. The ending line of the poem now makes sense to the reader. The son has come down from his father. He has accepted the fact that his father will die and can now be at peace with it.
At a glance, the poem seems simplistic – a detailed observance of nature followed by an invitation to wash a “dear friend’s” hair. Yet this short poem highlights Bishop’s best poetic qualities, including her deliberate choice in diction, and her emotional restraint. Bishop progresses along with the reader to unfold the feelings of both sadness and joy involved in loving a person that will eventually age and pass away. The poem focuses on the intersection of love and death, an intersection that goes beyond gender and sexuality to make a far-reaching statement about the nature of being
However, she also portrays pregnancy in a negative light by associating it with death and weakness. In this poem, the speaker connects whiteness with death. That connection is evident when she says that the flowers “cast a round white shadow in their dying” (“Moonrise” 6), emphasizes a falling pigeon’s white fantail, and mentions a dead “body of whiteness” (...
...eliefs help ease the passing of a loved one, assuring themselves that there is a life after death and that it is assuredly better than this one. On the other hand, death, for some, is an escape from their troubles. They wish it upon themselves because they believe they have no other options. Then there is the most despicable act of murder. The man who believes he possesses the right to strip someone of his or her own life. Once the illusion is broken that there is only one interpretation to the poem, there is no looking back. Wordsworth forces the reader to experience the different sides of death no matter how different or repulsive they may be. However, Wordsworth writes the poem so that each experience comes from the same eight lines of metrical verse. Death, to Wordsworth, is all encompassing, no matter who is involved; eventually it reels everyone into its web.
Death is a natural and inevitable part of life. Everyone will experience death, whether it is of a loved one or oneself. In W.H. Auden’s poem “Funeral Blues” (1003), he describes such a catastrophic event and the drastic effect that it has on his life. It is interesting how people choose to accept this permanent and expected event, death. Similarly, Emily Dickinson has written many poems about death, such as “The last Night that She lived” (843), which describes a family waiting for a woman or girl to die and the dreary and depressed mood that exists within the household. Mourning is considered a perfectly healthy reaction when someone who is deeply loved and cared about passes on, and this is illustrated in “The Memory of Elena” (1070-71) by Carolyn Forche. She writes about the events following a funeral and also flashes back to the actual moment that a wife has watched her husband die. W.H Auden’s “Funeral Blues,” Carolyn Forche’s “The Memory of Elena,” and Emily Dickinson’s “The last Night that She lived” are all poems which share death as their subject matter, but differ in the fact that they discuss death in a unique style with a variety of literary devices to make them more effective.