Anne Sexton The Dark Side - 1142 Words

Caleb Winfrey Professor Harris English 102 27 July 2015 Anne Sexton: The Dark Side Mental illness is a taboo subject that has plagued people throughout time. Poet Anne Sexton was one of them. She struggled throughout her entire life, like many others have struggled. She was lost and depressed—misunderstood. Sexton’s childhood was surrounded by abuse. To cope, Sexton wrote poetry to describe her struggle with mental illness. Her verses express her feelings of helplessness as her life plunged into a downward spiral. Sexton poured her heart and soul into her writing, expressing her emotions on paper, resulting in raw, powerful, beautiful poetry. Although Sexton’s life ended prematurely, the impact of her writings on the reader opens a door to discussions about mental illness. It continues to help others cope with their own issues. Born November 9, 1928, in Newton, Massachusetts, Anne Gray Harvey was the daughter of a successful businessman. In 1947, at the age of 19, Harvey married Alfred Muller Sexton II, changing her name to Anne Sexton (Poets.org). Six years later, Sexton gave birth to her first child, Linda, to whom she passed down the same childhood abuse that she had received (â€Å"Anne Sexton’s Controversy†). The following year, at the age of 26, Sexton suffered her first mental breakdown and was admitted to a neuropsychiatric hospital after being diagnosed with postpartum depression. This marked the beginning of her life long battle with mental illness. In 1955,Show MoreRelatedAnalysis Of The Poem Starry Night 853 Words   |  4 Pagesentitled, â€Å"Vincent† and â€Å"The Starry Night†, written by Don McClean and Anne Sexton, respectively. While the poem â€Å"Vincent†, has a depressing tone to it, â€Å"The Starry Night†, by Anne Sexton, depicts Starry Night as having a more lively mood, which more accurately represents that of the painting, by Vincent Van Gogh. Within the poem â€Å"Vincent†, written by Don McClean, a sense of a depressing mood is created through the use of dark diction, detail and figurative language. Throughout his poem, McClean expressesRead MoreDoes Anne Sexton Want A Happily Ever After?1264 Words   |  6 PagesDoes Anne Sexton Want A Happily Ever After? A â€Å"Cinderella story† is a story in which people start out with a very unfortunate life and then become very wealthy by some type of luck. A Cinderella story is a type of myth, or fairytale. Poems sometimes add details to famous myths to reveal a meaning that is deeper than what was originally intended. The meaning of a true Cinderella story is that hard work always prospers and that the underdog always comes out on top. However in Anne Sexton’s versionRead MoreAnalysis Of Starry Night 882 Words   |  4 Pagesunderstand Van Gogh’s reason for painting Starry Night. One way that people have used to try to understand him is through ekphrastic poetry, which is poetry about a work of art, such as Anne Sexton’s ‘The Starry Night† poem and Don McClean’s â€Å"Vincent (Starry, Starry Night).† While â€Å"The Starry Night† by Anne Sexton depicts Starry Night as having an ominous mood, the empathetic mood in â€Å"Vincent (Starry, Starry Night),† by Don McClean, with its use of sympathetic diction, detail, and figurative languageRead MoreAnne Sexton Wanting to Die1574 Words   |  7 PagesAnne Sexton: An Analysis of â€Å"Wanting To Die† In â€Å"Wanting To Die†, Anne Sexton illustrates vividly an analogy that compares one’s desire to commit suicide and drug addiction. Though this poem may initially seem to revolve around the themes of death and suicide, there are several examples in the poem that can be referenced to drug addiction and the intentions of the drug user. In general, the tone of this poem is luridly depressing as it produces an imagery that is painstakingly dark and morbid. ItRead MoreThe Confessional Mode Of Poetry Essay1454 Words   |  6 Pagesit attempts to â€Å"transcend the self† and expose collective experience and embody the world outside the self (Waggoner, 506 qted in Lynn p43), a melting and â€Å"fusion of the private and the culturally symbolic† ( Rosanthal , 80 qted in Lynn p 43) . Anne Sexton (1928–1974) is one of the major American poets who had successfully achieved that sense of â€Å"fusion† while handling themes and issues that were percei ved, at that time, as social taboos. Sexton’s epoch-echoing poem, â€Å"Her Kind† published in 1960,Read More‘What Writers Tend to Demonstrate in Texts Which Explore Relationships Between Men and Women, Is That Women Have Always Been Relatively Powerless and the Victims of Society’s Double Standards’ Compare and Contrast the3734 Words   |  15 Pagesconstantly one of debate and controversy. For centuries women have struggled to exert any power or individual identity through times of male dominance. The novel The Great Gatsby as well as the play A Streetcar Named Desire and lastly the poetry of Anne Sexton, were all written during the 20th Century in America. Throughout the 20th Century, attitudes towards women in the USA were changing, the war had given an opportunity for women to realize and prove that they could look after the household withoutRead More Confessional Poetry Essay1738 Words   |  7 Pagesemotional problems that needed to be deal t with. Plath coped with these issues in her poetry after she was influenced by Lowell’s Life Studies. One of her most well-known poems, â€Å"Daddy,† illustrates her open and unbridled fascination with the dark side of divinity, as she commonly questioned her personal relationship with God within her poems: Not God but a swastika So black no sky could squeak through. Every woman adores a Fascist, The boot in the face,Read MorePoetry Is A Complex And Difficult Genre2823 Words   |  12 PagesPoetry is a complex and difficult genre: for some, it is a beautiful outlet for all intense emotions to run free, and for others, it is the bottom of the horrible barrel of literature and the bane of existence. But whichever side of the spectrum you are on, the fact remains that poets skillfully condense an intense amount of meaning into few words. Reading a poem the first time is an experience, the diction, imagery, and music washes over all of the senses at once, not allowing for much contemplationRead MoreCorrelations between Creativity and Mental Illness Essay1604 Words   |  7 Pagesshould be extremely careful HOWEVER not to automatically associate mental illness with great creative art. As many instances of great artists who suffered of painful mental illness show (from the novelist Virginia Woolf, to the poets Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, and Robert Lowell, to the great painters Vincent Van Gogh and Edward Munch), great art also requires patience, dedication, and constant self-control in order to organize creative material in a coherent fashion. Creativity is oneRead MoreThe Romantic Era Of Emily Bronte s Wuthering Heights2095 Words   |  9 Pagesmother, the children went to the Clergy Daughters School at Cowan Bridge in Lancashire. Brontà « learnt foreign languages, as well as school management. She wrote only one novel, which is Wuthering Heights. She was the greatest of her two sisters; Anne and Charlotte, although her writing record was meagre. Brontà « had an innovative style in writing, which conveys energy, emotion, and violence. All of these are shown in a great deal in her novel Wuthering Heights. After the novel s publication, her