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  Anne Sexton

  A Self-Portrait in Letters

  Edited by Linda Gray Sexton and Lois Ames

  FOR ANNE—

  and for those who have lived with her words,

  in thanks for the joy and wisdom she brought

  to so many

  Contents

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  EDITORS’ NOTE

  Prologue: YOUNG (1928–1957)

  Chapter I: THE BUSINESS OF WORDS (December 1957–September 1959)

  Chapter II: ALL HER PRETTY ONES (October 1959–December 1962)

  Chapter III: SOME FOREIGN LETTERS (January–October 1963)

  Chapter IV: FLEE ON YOUR DONKEY (November 1963–May 1967)

  Chapter V: TRANSFORMATIONS (May 1967–December 1972)

  Chapter VI: TO TEAR DOWN THE STARS (January 1973–October 1974)

  Epilogue

  Image Gallery

  Index

  Acknowledgments

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  Long before they were ever written down, poems were organized in lines. Since the invention of the printing press, readers have become increasingly conscious of looking at poems, rather than hearing them, but the function of the poetic line remains primarily sonic. Whether a poem is written in meter or in free verse, the lines introduce some kind of pattern into the ongoing syntax of the poem’s sentences; the lines make us experience those sentences differently. Reading a prose poem, we feel the strategic absence of line.

  But precisely because we’ve become so used to looking at poems, the function of line can be hard to describe. As James Longenbach writes in The Art of the Poetic Line, “Line has no identity except in relation to other elements in the poem, especially the syntax of the poem’s sentences. It is not an abstract concept, and its qualities cannot be described generally or schematically. It cannot be associated reliably with the way we speak or breathe. Nor can its function be understood merely from its visual appearance on the page.” Printed books altered our relationship to poetry by allowing us to see the lines more readily. What new challenges do electronic reading devices pose?

  In a printed book, the width of the page and the size of the type are fixed. Usually, because the page is wide enough and the type small enough, a line of poetry fits comfortably on the page: What you see is what you’re supposed to hear as a unit of sound. Sometimes, however, a long line may exceed the width of the page; the line continues, indented just below the beginning of the line. Readers of printed books have become accustomed to this convention, even if it may on some occasions seem ambiguous—particularly when some of the lines of a poem are already indented from the left-hand margin of the page.

  But unlike a printed book, which is stable, an ebook is a shape-shifter. Electronic type may be reflowed across a galaxy of applications and interfaces, across a variety of screens, from phone to tablet to computer. And because the reader of an ebook is empowered to change the size of the type, a poem’s original lineation may seem to be altered in many different ways. As the size of the type increases, the likelihood of any given line running over increases.

  Our typesetting standard for poetry is designed to register that when a line of poetry exceeds the width of the screen, the resulting run-over line should be indented, as it might be in a printed book. Take a look at John Ashbery’s “Disclaimer” as it appears in two different type sizes.

  Each of these versions of the poem has the same number of lines: the number that Ashbery intended. But if you look at the second, third, and fifth lines of the second stanza in the right-hand version of “Disclaimer,” you’ll see the automatic indent; in the fifth line, for instance, the word ahead drops down and is indented. The automatic indent not only makes poems easier to read electronically; it also helps to retain the rhythmic shape of the line—the unit of sound—as the poet intended it. And to preserve the integrity of the line, words are never broken or hyphenated when the line must run over. Reading “Disclaimer” on the screen, you can be sure that the phrase “you pause before the little bridge, sigh, and turn ahead” is a complete line, while the phrase “you pause before the little bridge, sight, and turn” is not.

  Open Road has developed an electronic typesetting standard for poetry that ensures the clearest possible marking of both line breaks and stanza breaks, while at the same time handling the built-in function for resizing and reflowing text that all ereading devices possess. The first step is the appropriate semantic markup of the text, in which the formal elements distinguishing a poem, including lines, stanzas, and degrees of indentation, are tagged. Next, a style sheet that reads these tags must be designed, so that the formal elements of the poems are always displayed consistently. For instance, the style sheet reads the tags marking lines that the author himself has indented; should that indented line exceed the character capacity of a screen, the run-over part of the line will be indented further, and all such runovers will look the same. This combination of appropriate coding choices and style sheets makes it easy to display poems with complex indentations, no matter if the lines are metered or free, end-stopped or enjambed.

  Ultimately, there may be no way to account for every single variation in the way in which the lines of a poem are disposed visually on an electronic reading device, just as rare variations may challenge the conventions of the printed page, but with rigorous quality assessment and scrupulous proofreading, nearly every poem can be set electronically in accordance with its author’s intention. And in some regards, electronic typesetting increases our capacity to transcribe a poem accurately: In a printed book, there may be no way to distinguish a stanza break from a page break, but with an ereader, one has only to resize the text in question to discover if a break at the bottom of a page is intentional or accidental.

  Our goal in bringing out poetry in fully reflowable digital editions is to honor the sanctity of line and stanza as meticulously as possible—to allow readers to feel assured that the way the lines appear on the screen is an accurate embodiment of the way the author wants the lines to sound. Ever since poems began to be written down, the manner in which they ought to be written down has seemed equivocal; ambiguities have always resulted. By taking advantage of the technologies available in our time, our goal is to deliver a more satisfying reading experience than ever before.

  Editors’ Note

  Anne Sexton left a legacy of letters, poems, and books. In compiling this volume, we have sifted through over 50,000 pieces of paper, dating from her childhood through her death. She was an exceptional correspondent, one who wrote long letters nearly every day, complete with carbon copies. In addition, Anne saved a vast collection of memorabilia: boxes of pictures, scrapbooks, invitations, and dance cards—a documentary of her life.

  We could select only the best and most representative letters; nevertheless, we have tried to present a balanced picture of Anne’s life as we now understand it. In addition, we made an early decision to confine this book to Anne’s letters alone. Perhaps someday the exchanges which enriched her daily existence can be shared in the books of others.

  Our space limitations, as well as our concern for the general reader, led us to delete tedious or repetitive passages, such as travelogue, business details, or laundry lists. We have also omitted certain passages which might have been construed as invasions of privacy. Any editorial deletion is indicated by ellipses in brackets: […]. Anne often used ellipses as a type of punctuation; the hundreds of ellipses without brackets are hers, and should not be confused with our deletions.

  Many problems arose as our work progressed, not the least of which was that the letters were diffic
ult to read. While Anne’s erratic typing and myriad misspellings were a delight and a surprise, for the sake of clarity—but with real regret—we have removed all of them. The only exceptions made were misspellings of which Anne was aware; we have also retained her idiosyncratic punctuation. In addition, many of the letters we have included are not signed, because we worked primarily from the carbon copies Anne kept in her files.

  To aid the reader in locating poems mentioned in the text, the following abbreviations of Anne’s published books have been inserted in brackets: TB: To Bedlam and Part Way Back, 1960; PO: All My Pretty Ones, 1962; LD: Live or Die, 1966; LP: Love Poems, 1969; TR: Transformations, 1971; BF: The Book of Folly, 1972; DN: The Death Notebooks, 1974; AR: The Awful Rowing Toward God, 1975; 45: 45 Mercy Street, 1976.

  There are a few of Anne’s friends who have preferred to keep their correspondence with her private at this time. We respect those wishes, while we recognize the dimension each person has added to her life and to her work. In addition, we have changed the names of a few people to protect their privacy. The following names are fictitious: Dr. Constance Chase, Dr. Anne Clarke, Dr. Samuel Deitz, Dr. Florence Ehrhardt, Brother Dennis Farrell, Anne Gallagher, Jonathan Korso, Dr. Sidney Martin, Irene Rosenberg, M.S.W., Dr. Margo Schoen, Dr. Morton Stein, and Will Stone.

  All the letters extant in Anne Sexton’s estate have been preserved in their original form. Eventually they will be accessible to the public.

  LINDA GRAY SEXTON

  LOIS AMES

  April 1977

  Prologue

  Young

  1928–1957

  A thousand doors ago

  when I was a lonely kid

  in a big house with four

  garages and it was summer

  as long as I could remember,

  I lay on the lawn at night,

  clover wrinkling under me,

  the wise stars bedding over me,

  my mother’s window a funnel

  of yellow heat running out,

  my father’s window, half shut,

  an eye where sleepers pass,

  and the boards of the house

  were smooth and white as wax

  and probably a million leaves

  sailed on their strange stalks

  as the crickets ticked together

  and I, in my brand new body,

  which was not a woman’s yet,

  told the stars my questions

  and thought God could really see

  the heat and the painted light,

  elbows, knees, dreams, goodnight.

  “Young”

  from ALL MY PRETTY ONES

  Anne Sexton smiles out of childhood snapshots and portraits, but even so, her large green eyes convey the pain she would later put into words. When she grew older, she described herself as “a girl who was meant to be a boy, the unwanted third daughter”; her memories were of a childhood studded with physical and mental abuse. Yet her older sister Blanche saw Anne as a “much-loved child, over-indulged—the center of attention.” Whatever the reality, an early sense of rejection was to haunt Anne throughout her life and shaped much of her poetry.

  She was born Anne Gray Harvey on November 9, 1928, in Newton, Massachusetts, to a family which had thrived in New England since the 1600s. Having begun as middle-class merchants and farmers after their emigration from Britain, her ancestors had attained wealth and prominence by the early 1800s: Nelson Dingley, Anne’s maternal great-uncle, was speaker of the Maine House of Representatives and governor of Maine; her maternal grandfather, Arthur Gray Staples, served as editor-in-chief of the Lewiston Evening Journal, one of Maine’s largest newspapers, and published several books of his own essays.

  Mary Gray Staples Harvey, Anne’s mother, was born in 1902 in Auburn, Maine. She aspired to a literary career, attending Wellesley College, but her plans were cut short when she married Ralph Churchill Harvey in 1922. Born in 1900 to an upper-middle-class family in Chelsea, Massachusetts, he was a self-confident, handsome young businessman. His father was president of the Wellesley National Bank. Ralph Harvey attempted to enlist during World War I, but the army sent him home when they discovered he was only sixteen. After finishing high school, he began in the woolen business as sample boy, the lowest possible position. However, as the business boomed with wartime manufacture of uniforms and blankets, he rapidly advanced, soon becoming a road salesman. Shortly thereafter his sizable commissions enabled him to take on a partner and establish a business of his own. By the late 1930s, the R. C. Harvey Company was among the most respected woolen firms in Boston, and the onset of World War II capped its growth and development.

  In 1923, a year after their marriage, the Harveys’ first child, Jane, was born; Blanche followed in 1925 and Anne in 1928. The family first lived in Cambridge, moving later to Wellesley and then Weston. Anne’s happy memories centered on Squirrel Island, near Boothbay Harbor, Maine, where the Dingley, Staples, and Harvey clan summered in seven large five-story “cottages.” Built atop the shoreline granite with the wind at their back, these summer mansions were anchored into the rock by huge chains. The family lived skin to skin with the sea. From Arthur Gray Staples’ study in the “Aerie” the only view that met the eye was one rolling wave after another. Here on the island they built a library and organized their own literary magazine, Squirrelana.

  The Harvey residence in Weston was equally spacious. The new house glinted with huge windows and a long terraced green lawn spread from the corner of the fourth garage down to the very edge of the street. Its four stories were complete with maids’, cook’s, and butler’s quarters. Here Anne grew up.

  Despite her remembered unhappiness, there were moments of joy which she later tried to recreate for her own children. On Christmas, the Harvey children would wake at five in the morning and run to the bedroom window searching for Santa’s sleigh. Overhead Anne’s great-aunts jingled long strings of sleighbells and stomped through the attic in oversize galoshes, pretending to be reindeer. Her father, in his Abercrombie and Fitch Santa Claus suit, white mohair glued to his eyebrows and chin, stormed through the darkened house booming, “Ho, ho, ho, Merry Christmas!” The children raced through the early morning cold into the brightly lit living room, where aunts, uncles, cousins, and servants gathered around a huge balsam tree sparkling with candles and ornaments. Later, after the opening of presents, came Christmas dinner: silver platters heaped with cold lobster and shrimp were followed by rare roast beef, turkey, and floating island pudding. To end the day, the large family, strong in its traditions, held hands in a swaying circle and sang its own Christmas song like a hymn: “Christmas bells, Christmas trees/Christmas music on the breeze/Merry, Merry Christmas everywhere/Cheerily it ringeth through the air.”

  But Christmas never lasted long enough. Anne was a demanding child. She felt safest on home territory, and insisted that friends come to her house to play. “It was hard to be Anne’s friend,” Blanche recalls, “all of her followers were of the slave variety.” Even at this early age, she created her own dramatic works and cast herself in the starring roles. Often a source of family irritation, she was forever leaping from room to room with one purpose in mind—to be noticed. Her parents threw up their hands at Anne’s pranks. As she whirled through the house like a small dervish, the maid despaired of keeping her clean or tidy; the hems in her dresses mysteriously unraveled five minutes after she put them on. Constantly defying adult authority, she ate cake in her bedroom, threw rotten apples at the ceiling, and rummaged through Blanche’s dresser drawers in secret. Once she kidnapped one of her more docile friends and hid her in the bedroom closet overnight until a distraught mother telephoned in search of her lost child. Years later, Anne would describe tearing up Jane’s birthday five-dollar bill in a fit of jealousy; on this occasion Ralph Harvey punished her with his riding crop.

  Her recollections often centered on pain and physical humiliation. “Cripples and Other Stories” [LD] was explicit about her sense o
f shame and the conflicting messages she received from mother and father:

  Disgusted, mother put me

  on the potty. She was good at this.

  My father was fat on scotch.

  It leaked from every orifice.

  Oh the enemas of childhood,

  reeking of outhouses and shame!

  Yet you rock me in your arms

  and whisper my nickname.

  What Anne could not share with her parents or sisters, she discussed with her “Nana.” A spinster and retired newspaper editor, Anna Ladd Dingley had visited the Harveys throughout Anne’s childhood, and she became the gentle confidante of her great-niece’s early years. Anna and her namesake talked together and napped together under the blue blanket embroidered with Anna Ladd’s initials. This close friendship ended when “Nana” lapsed into senility and was carried by ambulance to a nursing home. Anne found the loss devastating.

  At school she was beset with further problems. Anne’s description of her early education is typically deprecatory: “I went to Wellesley public schools, then to private schools, then back to public. By the third grade my parents were told to give up on me. I’d never learn anything.” When she reached fifth grade, the school insisted that she repeat the year and she did. But the loss of familiar schoolmates left her feeling more isolated and unappreciated.

  At one point, her teachers and the school authorities urged Anne’s parents to get psychiatric treatment for her. When the Harveys indicated their reluctance to embark upon such a threatening course, the school warned them that Anne might experience emotional problems later in life. Mary and Ralph Harvey decided to wait.

  In adolescence, Anne’s disobedience developed into open rebellion. Constantly seeking love and approval, she turned to her girlfriends for support and to her many boyfriends for adoration. Determined to be a seductress, she practiced kissing—using her full-length mirror as a model. With an arm encircling the bedroom door, she took her own reflection into a deep and passionate embrace. In snapshots taken between 1940 and 1948 a beautiful young girl poses in fashionable and even provocative clothing; Anne’s flare for the dramatic had by now become a carefully cultivated style. Friends report that she dominated the dancing assemblies and cotillions: “The boys flocked to her like moths to a flame and the rest of us were left standing.” With the other girls dressed in demure tulle, Anne blazed across the dance floor in form-fitting red satin.