Anne Sexton: The Complete Poems is the source of all the poems I quote except "An Obsessive Combination," which is from Selected Poems of
Anne Sexton.
This problem of resisting confession is depicted metaphorically in two poems called "The Operation," one by
Anne Sexton and one by W.D.
married--John Davidson, Dimitrie Anghel, Vachel Lindsay, Marina Tsvetayeva, Benjamin Fondane, John Berryman; divorced--Sara Teasdale,
Anne Sexton, Ion Stratan; separated--Sylvia Plath; single--Thomas Chatterton, Heinrich von Kleist, Gerard de Nerval, Georg Trakl, Hart Crane, Cesare Pavese, Irina Andone, George Vasilievici.
The title is from a line in a poem by
Anne Sexton (1928-1974): 'For John, Who Begs Me Not to Enquire Further,' in which she asserts that the "the worst of anyone can be, finally, an accident of hope." Skorczewski (English, Brandeis U.) relates in chronological order the poet's struggles with mental illness, creativity, and sexuality.
There was John Berryman (Pulitzer 1965, suicide 1972);
Anne Sexton (Pulitzer 1967, suicide 1974); Theodore Roethke (Pulitzer 1954, accidental swimming pool drowning 1963).
A Flint inquest heard that Lydia
Anne Sexton, who was a heavy smoker,died when she set fire to her bed and she inhaled the toxic smoke.
Moore (The End of the Affair, The Hours, Far from Heaven) has signed on to play Burroughs' mother, a poet "'with delusions of
Anne Sexton," in the film adaptation of Running with Scissors.
Stone quotes from
Anne Sexton's "Cinderella" (405-406), which appears in its entirety in the poetry section (325-328).
It is as if one were at a reading where Tennyson listened to
Anne Sexton with mystified astonishment, Allen Ginsberg performed for Walt Whitman, and Yeats eavesdropped on W.