To Bedlam and Part Way Back

by Anne Sexton

Anne Sexton's first collection of poems.

Genres: Poetry, Classics, American, Mental Illness, Feminism, Female Authors, Womens

67 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1960

About the author

Anne Sexton once told a journalist that her fans thought she got better, but actually, she just became a poet. These words are characteristic of a talented poet that received therapy for years, but committed suicide in spite of this. The poetry fed her art, but it also imprisoned her in a way.

Her parents didn’t expect much of her academically, and after completing her schooling at Rogers Hall, she went to a finishing school in Boston. Anne met her husband, Kayo (Alfred Muller Sexton II), in 1948 by correspondence. Her mother advised her to elope after she thought she might be pregnant. Anne and Kayo got married in 1948 in North Carolina. After the honeymoon Kayo started working at his father-in-law’s wool business.

In 1953 Anne gave birth to her first-born, Linda Gray. Two years later Linda’s sister, Joyce Ladd, was born. But Anne couldn’t cope with the pressure of two small children over and above Kayo’s frequent absence (due to work). Shortly after Joy was born, Anne was admitted to Westwood Lodge where she was treated by the psychiatrist Dr. Martha Brunner-Orne (and six months later, her son, Dr. Martin Orne, took over). The original diagnosis was for post-natal depression, but the psychologists later decided that Anne suffered from depression of biological nature.

While she was receiving psychiatric treatment, Anne started writing poetry. It all started after another suicide attempt, when Orne came to her and told her that she still has a purpose in life. At that stage she was convinced that she could only become a prostitute. Orne showed her another talent that she had, and her first poetry appeared in print in the January of 1957. She wrote a huge amount of poetry that was published in a dozen poetry books. In 1967 she became the proud recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Live or Die (1966).

In March 1972 Anne and Kayo got divorced. After this a desperate kind of loneliness took over her life. Her addiction to pills and alcohol worsened. Without Kayo the house was very quiet, the children were at college and most of Anne’s friends were avoiding her because they could no longer sympathize with her growing problems. Her poetry started playing such a major role in her life that conflicts were written out, rather than being faced. Anne didn’t mention a word to Kayo about her intention to get divorced. He knew that she desperately needed him, but her poems, and her real feelings toward him, put it differently. Kayo talks about it in an interview as follows: “... I honestly don’t know, never have known, what her real, driving motive was in the divorce. Which is another reason why it absolutely drove me into the floor like a nail when she did it.”

On 4 October 1974 she put on her mother’s old fur coat before, glass of vodka in hand, she climbed into her car, turned the key and died of monodioxide inhalation. She once told Orne that “I feel like my mother whenever I put it [the fur coat] on”. Her oldest daughter, Linda, was appointed as literary executor and we have her to thank for the three poetry books that appeared posthumously.

Reviews

[Bill Kerwin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Many of the poems in the long first section are haunting, most of them are accomplished, and a few--like "You, Dr. Martin" and "Her Kind"--are astonishingly forceful lyrics which every reader of poetry should know.

Sexton is still finding her voice here, and as a consequence much of the early part of this book is derivative--of Lowell and Snodgrass in particular--in ways that often dissipate the strength of her utterance.

In the short concluding second section, however--which consists of "For John, who Begs Me Not to Enquire Further," "The Double Image" and "The Division of Parts"--Sexton's mature voice is present in all its power and richness.

[Jonfaith · Rating 5 out of 5]

And we are magic talking to itself,
noisy and alone. I am queen of all my sins
forgotten. Am I still lost?
Once I was beautiful. Now I am myself

My encounters with this poet date back to the pandemic. She pulsates but privately. Unlike Plath or Sontag or god forbid Mailer or Vidal —Sexton wrought something dark and painful from suburban straits but didn’t make a parade of it. She’s weeping in the blackened kitchen at four am—just down the street from Updike’s Couples.

This collection sings hymns of the liminal when mothers care for their parents and then perhaps lose their emotional footing and wind up institutionalized. Ever her echoes stretch, back to the truth and in the false blossoms of something completely different.

[Steven Godin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brief collection of poems, all featured range from good to sublime. Some of my faves - 'The Road Back', 'The Exorcists', 'Elizabeth Gone', 'Music Swims Back to Me', 'Unknown Girl in a Maternity Ward', and 'Lullaby' which is included below.

It is a summer evening.
The yellow moths sag
against the locked screens
and the faded curtains
suck over the window sills
and from another building
a goat calls in his dreams.
This is the TV parlor
in the best ward in Bedlam.
The night nurse is passing
out the evening pills.
She walks on two erasers,
padding by us one by one.

My sleeping pill is white.
It is a splendid pearl;
it floats me out of myself,
my stung skin as alien
as a loose bolt of cloth.
I will ignore the bed.
I am linen on a shelf
let the others moan in secret;
let each lost butterfly
go home. Old woolen head,
take me like a yellow moth
while the goat calls hush-
a-bye.

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

Note: I read this collection as it appears in The Complete Poems: Anne Sexton. When I first started reading The Complete Poems, it quickly occurred to me that it's insane to read any poet in a 600 page effort. So I decided to break this up by the various collections within the overall Complete edition. I will from time to refer to the Maxine Kumin introduction, which does not appear in the individual collection To Bedlam and Part Way Back.

When I was younger, I recall not caring much for the "confessional" poets. I "confess," that's a silly stand, especially since confession and poetry so often go hand in hand. At its best, it's what makes poetry truer than truth. It strikes at the heart of the matter. Sexton was, especially after Plath's quick departure, the Queen. Up until now, I've only read a scattering of her poetry, and never a complete collection. "The Abortion," some Transformations poems, etc. As a poetic figure, she has often been a presence on the edge when it came to my readings (bios, memoirs, and poetry) on Plath and Lowell.

At the time The Complete Poems came out, Sexton's reputation, while solid, was not, as Kumin wrote at the time (1981), necessarily assured. Part of this was due to Sexton's late loosening grip on her craft, as drugs, booze and depression took their toll. Kumin tries to avoid any condemnation here, but reading in between the lines, she's not sure how Time will treat Sexton. But part of her disputed reputation was also wrapped up in gender. There's an undeniable squirm factor in some of Sexton's poems. Early in the Introduction ("How it Was"), in a startling pot-calling the-kettle-black paragraph, Kumin underscores this bias (which struck me as both hypocritical and dated):

The facts of Anne Sexton's troubled and chaotic life are well known; no other American poet in our time has cried aloud publicly so many private details. While the frankness of these revelations attracted many readers, especially women, who identified strongly with the female aspect of the poems, a number of poets and critics -- for the most part, although not exclusively, male -- took offense. For Louis Simpson, writing in Harper's Magazine, "Menstruation at Forty" was "the straw that broke the camel's back." And years before he wrote his best selling novel, "Deliverance," which centers on a graphic scene of homosexual rape, James Dickey, writing in the New York Times Book Review, excoriated the poems in "All My Pretty Ones," saying "It would be hard to find a writer who dwells more insistently on the pathetic and disgusting aspects of bodily experience..." In a terse eulogy Robert Lowell declared, with considerable ambivalence it would seem, "For a book or two, she grew more powerful. Then writing was too easy or too hard for her. She became meager and exaggerated."

Since I'm on her first collection, Lowell's assessment may hold up -- but I'm betting on Kumin's sense that Sexton had a good long run. Still, the snarkiness of Lowell (Mr. Life Stories) seems more personal than professional.

So why Sexton? Why now? Recently, I saw a cool Youtube video (see link below) that someone put together with Sexton reading to Peter Gabriel's "Mercy Street" (based upon a Sexton posthumous collection). That sort of spurred me on. And then there's the Mad Men factor. The poems, which are not to my mind dated, do however seem to capture a time and place that I can recognize. As memories come rushing in with age, it's a time that seems even closer, but at the same time, when looking at my kids, and how they see their world (a scary place), also seems remote. Finally, as I get older, I increasingly find something attractive about these damaged singers singing their damaged songs. Perhaps because we're all damaged, and poets like Sexton have the gift and ability to articulate that damage in a way that we all can identify with.

Now for the collection. I'm rating this collection 5 stars. It's a first collection, but a remarkable one. One GR reviewer (Bill Kerwin) has noted that the first section of To Bedlam and Part Way Back is somewhat derivative of other poets. Since I haven't read and compared, I can't comment on that (though I'm sure he's dead-on). Madness makes an immediate entry, with the collection's first poem, "You, Doctor Martin."

You, Doctor Martin, walk
walk from breakfast to madness. Late August,
I speed through the antiseptic tunnel
where the moving dead still talk
of pushing their bones against the thrust
of cure. And I am queen of the summer hotel
or the laughing bee on a stalk

of death.

Wow. Published a year before Ariel, I have to wonder how much influence Sexton had on Lady Lazarus. Plath is Plath. An exploding rocket of intensity. But with Sexton, you see the clinical details, the morbidity, all handled with great precision and power. A number of doctor, patient (poet) poems follow. Also some New England poems that have a great sense of place. Sexton's love of fairy tales, in "Her Kind," also makes an appearance:

I have gone out, a possessed witch,
haunting the black air, braver at night;
dreaming evil. I have done my hitch
over the plain houses, light by light:
lonely thing, twelve fingered, out of mind.
A woman like that is not a woman, quite.
I have been her kind.

Witches aside, that's some pretty brutal self analysis. Especially so, if you accept poem placement as being deliberate, the next poem, "The Exorcists" makes for one powerful follow up. "The Exorcists" is an abortion poem that makes for an unbearably sad read. It starts out with both confession -- and clinical details that suggest too much:

And I solemnly swear
on the chill of secrecy
that I know you not, this room never,
the swollen dress I wear,
nor the anonymous spoons that free me,
nor this calendar nor the pulse we pare and cover.

Sexton compounds this ordeal, with a lyrical account of the love affair that would lead the speaker to her room:

I was brown with August,
the clapping waves at my thighs
and a storm riding into the cove. We swam
while the others beached and burst
for their boarded huts, their hale cries
shouting back to and the hollow slam
of the dory against the float.
Black arms of thunder strapped
upon us; squalled out, we breathed in rain
and stroked past the boat.
We thrashed for shore as if we were trapped
in green and that suddenly inadequate stain

of lightening belling around
our skin. Bodies in air
we raced for the empty lobsterman-shack.
It was yellow inside, the sound
of the underwing of the sun. I swear,
I most solemnly swear, on all the bric-a'-brac

of summer loves, I know
you not.

Folks, that's about as loaded as it can get, and note that Sexton is also a master at line breaks, which ratchets things up well beyond the Heartbreak zone.

The second, and shorter section is comprised of only a few poems, two of which are pretty long. "The Double Image" seems aimed at exorcising the influence of Sexton's mother. Then again, it seems kind of circular. What is interesting, is the poem starts out with the line "I am thirty this November." Kumin, in her introduction, points out that Sexton's various suicide attempts usually occurred around the time of her birthday. Knowing that, and then entering the gallery of the "The Double Image," makes for an ominous read. Things get even more bizarre with "The Division of Parts," which also focuses on Sexton's mother, Sexton's relationship with her, and Christ's crucifixion. Sexton's identification with Christ is a complex one, and I'm not totally sure I've grasped it. She identifies with Christ, as Christ to some extent, and yet is apart. It's a juggling act that I believe works, but is damned near impossible for me to explain. Overall, a great read and highly recommended.

Sexton & Gabriel "Mercy Street": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Y5KEL...

[Magdalen · Rating 4 out of 5]

The bedlam and part way is the first collection of Sexton's poems I read and I must say I am impressed. She is witty and her writing is one of a kind. A lot different than I expected actually.
My personal favourites were The double image , Her kind , Elizabeth gone and For Johnny Pole on the forgotten beach
Looking forward to reading her other collections..

[Judy · Rating 5 out of 5]

My next to last book finished in 2022 is the first poetry collection by Anne Sexton. I became interested in this poet after hearing a talk with Lauren Groff, who said she reads Sexton's poetry before starting her writing for the day.

I did something different this time as far as reading poetry goes. I used to read a poem a day but often felt I had not really grasped each poem. So instead, I read one poem a week, once everyday. It was amazing how much more deeply I got into every poem's meanings, language, rhythms, etc.

I did indeed fall in love with Anne Sexton, with her honesty and openness about herself. These poems demanded that I look more curiously at my self, other women in my life, in literature and in the creative arts.

Anne had as many troubles as Marilyn Monroe, the creative woman I read about in the book before this one. They were of the same generation, born in the late 1920s and coming of age in the 1940s, achieving recognition in the 1950s. Both of them died young, though Anne lived for 46 years, Marilyn only 36. It would be another 20 years before feminism became widely influential in women's lives as to our place in life and society. But Anne was one who began fomenting the questions.

To Bedlam and Part Way Back contains 33 poems, written during her first breakdown and time spent in a mental institution. I began reading it in May, 2022. Thus I'd been with Anne Sexton everyday for over half the year. I am moving on to another poet but I will come back to the rest of the volumes in The Complete Poems of Anne Sexton soon.

[actuallymynamesssantiago · Rating 5 out of 5]

"I confess I am only broken by the sources of things"

Wow Anne Sexton. La compra de su Poesía completa (Lumen) fue mi impulso más grande del año, apenas lo editaron. Un montón de veces estuve a punto de comprar otras ediciones, incluso llegue a estar muy al borde de la de Linteo (carísima) pero desistí porque las traducciones venían escritas todas seguidas y no respetaban el orden visual del poema; acá pasa lo mismo, pero qué va a ser, Dios teda Dios tekita.
Otra de las razones por la que muchas veces me negué a comprarlo fue porque yo soy team Plath. Y en realidad eran medio amigas. En fin, es talentosísima. Premio Pulitzer, media pila.
Mientras que Plath está absolutamente arraigada —y cegada— por su subjetividad, Sexton te permite entrar, tiene en cuenta las barreras de las palabras, es coherente. Lo que no quiere decir que sea peor. Es muy íntima. Está más sobre la tierra.
Plath es hacer estallar una canica, Sexton es la canica, como un tesoro, y te hace buscarlo entre líneas.
Basta de compararla. Una última vez: usa el lenguaje igual que Elizabeth Bishop. Como sonido, materia. Y el contenido como Plath, confiesa. Una imaginería muy poderosa, casi objetiva. Tiene una forma de cortar el verso muy unapologetic, precisa, quisquillosa.
Ex
ce
len
te.

"You, Doctor Martin"

You, Doctor Martin, walk
from breakfast to madness. Late August,
I speed through the antiseptic tunnel
where the moving dead still talk
of pushing their bones against the thrust
of cure. And I am queen of this summer hotel
or the laughing bee on a stalk

of death. We stand in broken
lines and wait while they unlock
the doors and count us at the frozen gates
of dinner. The shibboleth is spoken
and we move to gravy in our smock
of smiles. We chew in rows, our plates
scratch and whine like chalk

in school. There are no knives
for cutting your throat. I make
moccasins all morning. At first my hands
kept empty, unraveled for the lives
they used to work. Now I learn to take
them back, each angry finger that demands
I mend what another will break

tomorrow. Of course, I love you;
you lean above the plastic sky,
god of our block, prince of all the foxes.
The breaking crowns are new
that Jack wore.
Your third eye
moves among us and lights the separate boxes
where we sleep or cry.

What large children we are
here. All over I grow most tall
in the best ward. Your business is people,
you call at the madhouse, an oracular
eye in our nest. Out in the hall
the intercom pages you. You twist in the pull
of the foxy children who fall

like floods of life in frost.
And we are magic talking to itself,
noisy and alone. I am queen of all my sins
forgotten. Am I still lost?
Once I was beautiful. Now I am myself,
counting this row and that row of moccasins
waiting on the silent shelf.

"Her Kind"

I have gone out, a possessed witch,
haunting the black air, braver at night;
dreaming evil, I have done my hitch
over the plain houses, light by light:
lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.
A woman like that is not a woman, quite.
I have been her kind.

I have found the warm caves in the woods,
filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves,
closets, silks, innumerable goods;
fixed the suppers for the worms and the elves:
whining, rearranging the disaligned.
A woman like that is misunderstood.
I have been her kind.

I have ridden in your cart, driver,
waved my nude arms at villages going by,
learning the last bright routes, survivor
where your flames still bite my thigh
and my ribs crack where your wheels wind.
A woman like that is not ashamed to die.
I have been her kind.

_________________________________

I used to move into the future and bring it all back
let it bleed through my fingers, a treasure in my hands
Now I creep out when there's no one about
'cause they put crosses on the doors to try and keep me out
The gardеn's overgrown
and I run in the middle of thе road

[Alan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Real poems by a speaker who is also a person. I had almost forgotten. This brook was so beautiful that parts of it brought me to tears. 3 or 5 of those were of gratitude: I'd almost forgotten that people were the things that wrote poetry; I'd almost forgotten the ridiculous presumptuous bravery it takes to even speak.

[Dorotea · Rating 3 out of 5]

Her poetry is highly personal, and I look forward to read more of hers. My best-loved poems of the collection are: Doctor Martin, The Double Image, and For John Who Begs Me Not To Enquire Further. The first two are easily found online, the latter not quite so, so here's my favourite excerpt:

Not that it was beautiful,
but that, in the end, there was
a certain sense of order there;
something worth learning
in that narrow diary of my mind,
in the commonplaces of the asylum
where the cracked mirror
or my own selfish death
outstared me.
And if I tried
to give you something else,
something outside of myself,
you would not know
that the worst of anyone
can be, finally,
an accident of hope.

[Pearl · Rating 5 out of 5]

What the fuck. This is not just some shit she just like ‘wrote’. This is some professional spiritual shit.

[kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

pain pain pain suffering but thank god

[Caspar "moved to storygraph" Bryant]

festive festive christmas day reading

[walkie talkie]: we can confirm it is a banger

[Karl Hallbjörnsson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Drulluflott. Eyrnamerkti óvenjulega margar blaðsíður miðað við standard ljóðabókalestur. Margt áhrifaríkt og ég varð oft snortinn. Stundum fannst mér hún yfrið óskýr í tali og þá fannst mér hún pínu missa mig, en það voru örfá ljóð þannig.

[Lola · Rating 5 out of 5]

Never knew i could love a person as hard and with so passion as i love Anne

[B Sarv · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am not a critic and surely out of my depth rating books by feminist poets of the 1960s and 70s, but I honestly enjoyed this collection of Anne Sexton's work. She was a tragic figure who struggled with mental illness. Her struggle was profound, but we can learn about it when we read about her struggles within her poetry. A prolific poetic genius, in my view, Anne Sexton brought a lot of pain and struggle to life in her work.

This was another book I inherited from my mother. I am so grateful that she held on to these books and that I was able to subsequently bring them into my library. This particular book has an inscription dated December 14, 1969. It was a gift from the woman who was the Onondaga Hill library director at the time when my mother was a Trustee of the library. My mother passed in 2004 and I learned that the lady who gave her the book passed in 2003.

Connected in life they grew apart, but the link is reborn in the longevity of the gift, which has now become a gift to me, because I got to read it.

I would recommend, specifically, the poems entitled, "The Lost Ingredient" and "The Double Image."

I hope you get to enjoy this book or at least the excerpts I recommend here.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 I don’t feel the need to write a full length review on this. I will say, I thoroughly enjoyed Sexton’s writing, and while there was a large divide between some poems—some very exciting, others not so much—these poems reflect the promise of a strong poet, ruthless and exact. Her rhyme schemes are very unique! I am very excited for her later work, particularly Live or Die, Love Poems, and Transformations. And now, some quotes:

“Once I was beautiful. Now I am myself,
counting this row and that row of moccasins
waiting on the silent shelf.”
-You, Doctor Martin

“I have ridden in your cart, driver,
waved my nude arms at villages going by,
learning the last bright routes, survivor
where your flames still bite my thigh
and my ribs crack where your wheels wind.
A woman like that is not ashamed to die.
I have been her kind.”
-Her Kind

“…I choose
your only way, my small inheritor
and hand you off, trembling the selves we lose.
Go child, who is my sin and nothing more.”
-Unknown Child In The Maternity Ward

“Not that it was beautiful,
but that, in the end, there was
a certain sense of order there;
something worth learning
in that narrow diary of my mind,
in the commonplaces of the asylum
where the cracked mirror
or my own selfish death
outstared me.”
-For John, Who Begs Me Not To Enquire Further

[Emily Green · Rating 4 out of 5]

Anne Sexton’s To Bedlam and Part Way Back, her first book, begins with “You, Doctor Martin,” and describes the life of a patient in a psychiatric ward. The experience is described with surreal details, such as the making of moccasins.
…I make
moccasins all morning. At first, my hands
kept empty, unraveled for the lives
they used to work. Now I learn to take
them back, each angry finger that demands

I mend what another will break tomorrow.
The speaker has lost control of her body through caring for others, and now must regain control by creating. Not for those she knows, but for others like herself.

As the speaker tells of her struggle back to life, she observes the presence of Dr. Martin, whose presence is omnipotent and that of a god among the other patients. The admiration and attraction to Dr. Martin wears no mask, “god of our block” the speaker calls him, and “prince of all the foxes.” The mention of the fox, a common character in fairytales, begins the comparison of the patients to children who are in his care. The patients are innocent, helpless, and simple.

The surreal situations and images created in the poem suggest the fear of being in the hospital and the terror of losing control. “Am I still lost?” the speaker asks in the final stanza. Such a question does not hint at healing, but at the continuing feel of not being able to regain herself.

“Music Swims back to Me,” originally published in Hudson Review, through the context of the rest of the book, can be assumed to take place in the psychiatric hospital. The confused speaker begins, “Wait Mister. Which way is home?” Lost in her illness, she is unsure how to regain the security of sanity of self. Being ill is similar to a child who has been lost after dark. What guides a person back? Throughout the book, Sexton’s speaker searches for sign posts which will lead her back to her home, in both the literal sense, as well as the metaphor of being able to function in everyday life.

Though the book ends with “The Division of Parts,” an exploration of the speaker’s mother’s death, “The Double Image” seems a much more appropriate ending poem, in part because it examines not just the relationship between the speaker and mother, but also between the speaker and her daughter, placing her in her place among the generations.

To Bedlam and Part Way back is not Sexton’s best book, but it does show promise and hint at her fantastical use of language which she will display in Transformations, All My Pretty Ones, and Live or Die. She is one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century, for my money.

[Manik Sukoco · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was Anne Sexton's first collection of poems. It is easy to understand why it made such a strong impression. It has a power in feeling and expression, a reaching beyond any restrait or limit - it is confessional poetry in which the poet seems to spare no one, least of all herself. Her whole enterprise in poetry began at the suggestion of her psychoanalyst and she was in the worlds of extreme emotion long before she began to write. Her descriptions of life in the asylum, including those of her fellow 'inmates' are striking. But the poems also include pieces involving her relations to family members, perhaps her mother first and above all, but also her father, and a beloved aunt of hers who she re-imagines the life of. Sexton's language is richly metaphoric and original. The feeling in reading her work is that she is a poet at the highest level, whatever objection one might have to certain kinds of sentiment she expresses i.e. She does not seem especially generous and forgiving of those closest to her. In one of the poems she speaks of herself as having been an unwanted third daughter. As a mother of two daughters she defines their lives and being too primarily in relation to her own needs.
Among the many outstanding poems there is the one which opens the book, 'You, Doctor Martin' which tells of her psychiatrist who each morning 'walks from breakfast to madness','Her Kind'in which the refrain 'I have been her kind' connects the poet with the 'witch' whose actions are described in the poem,'Some Foreign Letters' in which she in rereading letters her aunt wrote from Europe in the 1890's 'learns to love her twice', 'The Funnel' in which she tells the story of her great- grandfather who ' begat eight genius children and brought twelve almost new pianos'. This last poem concludes with the following stanza:

"Back from that great- grandfather I have come
to puzzle a bending gravestone for his sake,
to question this diminishing and feed a minimum
of children their careful slice of suburban cake."

Sexton is a writer whose sense of life's toughness, pain , difficulty, perhaps even impossibility is very great. She is not to be taken in large doses without danger of negative effect. But her power, daring and linguistic brilliance are unmistakable.

[Miguel Vega · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book of poems was absolutely amazing!

I first learned of Anne Sexton last quarter while studying the Confessional School of Poetry, and as she was categorized along with Sylvia Plath, I gave her a shot! Her themes in this book are sexuality, female empowerment, female captivity through the societal and the psychological. The way she sees herself a witch because that's how female longing and lusting was/is treated morphs the poems into incantations, pleasant to read and hear!

Favorites:"You, Doctor Martin", "Music Swims Back to Me", "Elizabeth Gone", "Said the Poet to the Analyst", "Venus and the Ark", "Her Kind", "For Johnny Pole on that Forgotten Beach", "Unknown Girl in the Maternity Ward", "Noon Walk on the Asylum Lawn," "For John, Who Begs Me not to Enquire Further," "The Double Image," "The Division of Parts".

[Velma · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am not a frequent consumer of poetry, and therefore not an expert on what makes a "good" poem, but I was stunned by the force and realism o some of the pieces in Sexton's first collection. I must say, I don't at all get the criticism lobbed by many that Sexton's work is too confessional. What the hell else is good literature, poetic or otherwise, but confessional?!?

I'd be interested in reading her collection 'Transformations' in future.

-------

My selection for Task #17 (A collection of poetry) on the BookRiot #readharder challenge 2015

[Drew · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are poems that delight me every time I pick up this collection: "Her Kind," "Music Swims Back to Me," "The Double Image." There are poems that I'd forgotten and so astonished me, like new: "The Farmer's Wife," "The Moss of His Skin," "The Division of Parts." And then there's "Ringing the Bells," a poem I keep meaning to memorize because it speaks to me so deeply, a poem that is already imprinted on my brain that I would do well to transfer to my tongue. For that one alone, I will always be in her camp.

[Sanpaku · Rating 4 out of 5]

8/10.
Some poems in the first part are subpar, with the less allegorical parts are uninspired, the more allegorical parts break the flow of the text far too often.
Overall great collection.

[June · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is lowkey Anne Sexton’s Born to Die. Poetry reflecting on her childhood, the birth of her child, her stay at Bedlam (well-known/infamous psychiatric hospital in London), and her mother’s death. Her poems could use more editing (debut poetry collection vibe), but I can’t help but steep myself in her use of language.

This is a perfect companion collection to Plath’s The Colossus. It is a perfect infusion of nature imagery for a poet who leans towards the dark arts and macabre.

Anne Sexton you will always be famous to me.

“My sleeping pill is white.
It is a splendid pearl;
it floats me out of myself,
my stung skin as alien
as a loose bolt of cloth.
I will ignore the bed.
I am linen on a shelf.
Let the others moan in secret;
let each lost butterfly
go home. Old woolen head,
take me like a yellow moth
while the goat calls hush-
a-bye.”
from Lullaby

“My business is words. Words are like labels,
or coins, or better, like swarming bees.
I confess I am only broken by the source of things;
as if words were counted like dead bees in the attic,
unbuckled from their yellow eyes and their dry wings.
I must always forget how one word is able to pick
out another, to manner another, until I have got
something I might have said…
but did not.”
from Said the Poet to the Analyst

[Natalie · Rating 3 out of 5]

more of a 3.5 charting 4 territory but not quite there. this was the first collection of poetry anne sexton published and you can tell. not because it’s bad. i love the way she writes. it’s so perfect. but having read the book of folly and her love poems first, i can tell this is early. this book is weirdly summer beachy vibes. she writes about the beach and summer a lot. so i guess i read this at a good time. she also writes a lot about her time in a psychiatric hospital in this one. it was good but i’m really out of my girl interrupted phase so they didn’t appeal to me too much. if i read this two years ago i would have went insane. this was really just the average collection of anne sexton poems that are for the most part good with a couple why did she write that ones. i thought i read a line in here that was really good like reaaallly good but i can’t find it so i’m actually really bummed about that and am gonna spend like 30 minutes trying to find it. my favorites were kind sir: these woods, said the poet to the analyst, the farmer’s wife, the expatriates, unknown girl in the maternity ward, what’s that, and the double image

[Ryann · Rating 4 out of 5]

And opening my eyes, I am afraid of course
to look — this inward look that society scorns —
Still, I search in these woods and find nothing worse
than myself, caught between the grapes and the thorns.

Finished within the volume, Anne Sexton: The Complete Poems

Favorite poems: “Her Kind,” “For John, Who Begs Me Not to Enquire Further,” “The Double Image”

Personal and aching, this, of course, reminds me so much of Ariel. I loved the poems about her mother and daughter, and the horror of sincerity there. Some of these poems have a voice that rings clear as a bell, and can’t be denied, which is why “Her Kind,” for example, remains so famous. I’m going to let myself sit with this collection for a bit before I move on to her next one.

[Jesse · Rating 5 out of 5]

TO BEDLAM AND PART WAY BACK, Anne Sexton’s debut poetry collection, is astoundingly brilliant in both subject and form. To think that she had no classical literary education and only began writing poetry at the suggestion of her psychiatrist proves what a singular talent she possessed. Compare any one of these poems to the cookie-cutter, MFA-polished drudgery that gets lauded in literary circles today and you’ll see why I despair at the state of modern poetry.

[amelie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Heartbreakingly beautiful, wow. I have finally found a deep love for a book of poetry. Every single one was so compelling and strong. Although my favourites were: You, Doctor Martin; Elizabeth Gone, Venus and the Ark, The Farmers Wife, Noon Walk on the Asylum Lawn, and The Double Image which was just incredible.

[charlie · Rating 5 out of 5]

changed my life

[elena · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5
i'm currently working through all of sexton's works and this was such a great a great start. i really admire how honest she is about her dealings with grief and mental illness.

[léonna marie · Rating 5 out of 5]

if my mom ever dies i'm killing everyone