The Complete Poems by Anne Sexton
"The Complete Poems by Anne Sexton" is a comprehensive collection that showcases the work of the influential American poet Anne Sexton, known for her confessional style and exploration of personal themes. Sexton began her prolific writing career later in life, producing a significant body of work, often publishing poetry collections every couple of years. Her poetry encompasses a diverse range of forms, including long poems, elegies, lyrics, narratives, and even reimagined fairy tales, reflecting her varied artistic interests.
The collection was assembled posthumously by her daughter, Linda Gray Sexton, who faced the complex task of curating works from multiple sources, including unpublished drafts and original verse that had been stored in various archives. "The Complete Poems" not only includes familiar pieces from Sexton's earlier collections but also features poems that were previously unavailable to the public. Through her poetry, Sexton sought to navigate and articulate her identity, revealing the struggles with mental health, personal relationships, and her experiences as a suburban woman. The depth of her work invites readers to engage with her complex inner world and the poignant themes she grappled with throughout her life.
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The Complete Poems by Anne Sexton
First published: 1981
The Work
Anne Sexton was an extremely prolific poet, especially considering that she started writing in the middle of her life. Once she got started, Sexton published books of poems every two years and sometimes as often as every year. All of the books share Sexton’s enthusiasm for confession, but many of the books present different types of poems: long poems, elegies, lyrics, narratives, reworked fairy tales, poems for children.
Even three years after her death, books of original verse continued to be published, as Sexton had arranged before her suicide. Afterward, one of her daughters, Linda Gray Sexton, wrestled with the difficult task of assembling poems from books (including books published in Great Britain but not in the United States), poems in myriad draft forms, and poems that appeared complete but were unpublished. The result was The Complete Poems.
In Searching for Mercy Street (1994), Linda Gray Sexton mentions that almost all of her mother’s literary papers and poems are stored in the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas in Austin and have been there for some time. The collection includes drafts and revisions that are not in The Complete Poems. The Complete Poems includes some poems not present in Anne Sexton’s many books.
Sexton strove in her poetry to understand her identity; she also wished to present herself as the witty, urbane woman of the suburbs who controls her madness, her abortions, her affairs, even her suicide attempts. One cannot believe that she controlled these things; Searching for Mercy Street makes clear how desperate Anne Sexton truly was.
Bibliography
Christian Science Monitor. LXXIV, January 27, 1982, p. 15.
George, Diana Hume. Oedipus Anne: The Poetry of Anne Sexton. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1987.
Library Journal. CVI, November 15, 1981, p. 2240.
Middlebrook, Diane Wood. Anne Sexton: A Biography. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1991.
Nation. CCXXXIII, November 21, 1981, p. 533.
National Review. XXXIII, December 11, 1981, p. 1491.
The New Republic. CLXXXV, November 11, 1981, p. 33.
The New York Times Book Review. LXXXVI, October 18, 1981, p. 3.
Sexton, Anne. Anne Sexton: A Self-Portrait in Letters. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977.
Wagner-Martin, Linda, ed. Critical Essays on Anne Sexton. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1989.