Anne Sexton

Many fairy tales are used to teach children lessons. “Little Red Riding Hood” provides a clear object lesson on why not to talk to strangers. However, fairy tales can be more subtle than that and teach less obvious (and violent) lessons. In “Beauty and the Beast”, by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont, and “Little Thumbling”, by Charles Perrault, courage is one potential lesson that stands out. The title characters of both stories display courage through their actions, giving children an example to learn from. Of course, courage comes in more than one form, but the courage in these two stories shares many features. “Beauty and the Beast” and “Little Thumbling” present courage as an important virtue that helps both courageous people and others by helping or protecting them.

In the poem Old by Anne Sexton, the narrator is presumably in a hospital setting as she says she is afraid of “needles” and tired of “rubber sheets”, “tubes”, and “faces that I don’t know”. This choice of setting is most likely a result of Sexton’s own stays in mental hospitals because of her depression and addiction troubles. After the setting is established the narrator says that she thinks “death is starting” and that is starts “like a dream”. Dreams are seen as a positive thing where people experience their inner most desires. By equating death to a dream, Sexton is saying that she sees death as a place of peace and solace from unhappiness. The suicidal tendencies expressed in the poem as well as the narrative voice remind me of conversations

Anne Sexton was an American poet born on November 9th, 1928 in Newton, Massachusetts and raised in Weston. Her family was successful economically wise and Sexton was raised in a middle-class environment; however, Sexton’s relationship with her parents were extremely strained and perhaps abusive; her father was an alcoholic. It was suggested that Sexton may have been sexually abused by her parents and felt that they were hostile to her. As such, Sexton sought refuge in her close relationship with Anne Dingley, her maiden great-aunt, as an escape from her broken family, which further lead to Sexton’s traumatization after Dingley’s mental collapse and subsequent hospitalization. After the birth of her first child in 1953, Sexton

Anne Sexton believed that the most interesting poetry was written out of personal experience. Everything she had been through, her hospitalization, her affairs, her insanity, the loss of her parents, and great-aunt, gave her things to write about. She uses poetry as one of her outlet. She writes out her problems. Her writing was a part of her therapy.

In the confessional poem "Us," Anne Sexton uses a tightly constrained metrical form, metaphors, repetition, paradox, ambiguity, and allusion, typical literary devices of the postmodernist movement. The imagery is focused mainly on the human body, in particular on the body of a woman who initially loses her identity by the hand of her man, and eventually gets rid of all the useless and tight trappings, by living a meaningful life.

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.

else is more important than fear. The poet of pain, Anne Sexton wrote “Courage.” Anne Sexton is known for her work as being “intensely personal” and as well turning “wounds into words.” As like the famous, controversial novel, “To Kill A Mockingbird” Atticus and his children have courage within the racist and close minded town of Maycomb. Sexton’s poem “Courage” shows that a person is born with it, and either that person learns to grow with it and live by it or let it suffocate from being weak and avoiding chances and risks. This poem gradually leads to an acceptance of death after a life of courageous moments.

Throughout the Earth’s vast history, women who have defied or who have simply not adhered to society’s standards have been literally and metaphorically burned at the stake. These kinds of women have been ostracized, demonized, and called all kinds of names simply for not fitting a uniform criterion. This exclusion of female outcasts is what Anne Sexton focuses on in her poem “Her Kind.” In it, she elaborates on the idea that society naturally shuns and persecutes all women that are deemed undesirable or nonconforming. Put simply, in Anne Sexton’s “Her Kind,” imagery, repetition, and syntax reveal the author’s theme on societal views regarding female identity.

‘Cinderella’ 'Cinderella' is a poem written by Anne Sexton stating that fairytales are unrealistic. Sexton includes various effective language features in her poem such as metaphor, simile and sarcasm to emphasise how preposterous fairytales truly are. This poem argues that fairytales are outrageous and untrustworthy. Firstly, Sexton uses a lot of similes to express how perfect or horrible someone or something genuinely is.

Author Anne Sexton who is considered who is considered one of the great America authors wrote during the contemporary period. Particularly, his/her work titled “Again and Again and Again” written in 1928 we can see evidence of the characteristics, themes and style identified with the contemporary movement which was extant in America letters between 1945 and 1975. As a representative of suck a movement, Anne sexton then remains one the most identifiable and iconic writers of his/ her time.

The first two stanzas of the poem are indicative of the reparations of war. The speaker, a military man who is somewhat critical of war, starts off by telling the maiden, “Do not weep…for war is kind/Because your lover threw wild hands toward the

In stanza 2, the author says, “Little souls who thirst for fight/ These men were born to drill and die/ The unexplained glory flies above them/ Great is the battle-god, great, and his kingdom/ A field where a thousand corpses lie/ “. These lines, along with many others, discuss how sad the War is, and what the War is really like on the deathly battlefield.

Michealangelo, perhaps the most gifted sculptor and painter of all times, once said that "geniuses stand on the shoulders of other geniuses." As Michelangelo built upon the brilliance of his predecessors, Anne Sexton does the same in her collection of poems entitled Transformations. She renovated fairy tales as told by the Brothers Grimm by adding her own life experiences and view of contemporary culture, hammering away until she built an entirely new art form. Anne Sexton has had a notable effect upon the literary genre of fairy tales through this shocking transformation of classic tales.

“Wanting to Die,” by Anne Sexton was a poem written in 1964 in her book, Live or Die, just ten years before she killed herself. During this time, Sexton’s poetics was highly controversial in society because of the introduction of confessional poetry. Sexton often wrote about her own personal feelings and anguish as she struggled with mental illness and the wish to kill herself. Alicia Ostriker put it best when she said, “What is most distressing about Sexton, I think, is her quality of unresignedness. She writes more fiercely than any poet in our time about physical and mental bliss and the holiness of the heart's affections” (Ostriker 11).

Continuing on into the second stanza, Sexton transitions into writing about the courageousness of adulthood. It is implied that Sexton is writing about adulthood because she is no longer writing about the lighthearted aspects of childhood. Moreover, Sexton begins to explore the courage it takes to survive in the adulthood life. Ultimately, Sexton is talking about the courage it takes to survive adulthood. In lines 18 and 19 Sexton writes, “You did not fondle the weakness inside you / though it was there.” Sexton also writes in lines 22 through 25,”If your buddy saved you / and died himself in so doing, / then his courage was not courage, it was love;”. These lines from the poem exemplify the hardships that adulthood brings and the courage