Anne Sexton
The Poet of Raw Shadows
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Anne Sexton (1928–1974), born Anne Gray Harvey in Newton, Massachusetts, was a confessional poet whose raw, visceral work carved a permanent niche in the gothic literary canon. A housewife turned Pulitzer Prize winner, Sexton began writing poetry in her late 20s after a mental health crisis, guided by her therapist to channel anguish into art. Her debut collection, To Bedlam and Part Way Back (1960), stunned readers with its stark exploration of madness, motherhood, and mortality, themes that align seamlessly with Gothic Dust Diaries’ brooding ethos.
Sexton’s poetry, like a gothic cathedral, is both beautiful and unsettling. In “Her Kind” (1960), she declares, “I have been her kind,” embodying a witch-like outcast, her words dripping with defiance and despair. Live or Die (1966), which won the 1967 Pulitzer, weaves domestic life with existential dread, as in “Wanting to Die,” where she muses, “But suicides have a special language.” Her later work, Transformations (1971), reimagines Grimm fairy tales with a macabre twist, turning “Cinderella” into a sardonic critique of happily-ever-afters, echoing GDD’s love for subverted folklore.
Her style—confessional yet theatrical—blends personal trauma (depression, suicidal ideation) with gothic imagery, evoking ghosts and graveyards. Sexton’s readings, often performed with her chamber rock group, Her Kind, gave her poetry a haunting cadence, like a spell chanted in the dark. Despite her acclaim, with over 10,000 copies of Live or Die sold by 1970 (Poetry Foundation), her life was shadowed by mental illness, culminating in her suicide in 1974 at age 46. Her letters and drafts, published posthumously in Anne Sexton: A Self-Portrait in Letters reveal a soul wrestling with light and shadow.
Sexton is a beacon of raw courage. Her willingness to expose her wounds mirrors the vulnerability of our own tales. As I write this amid my own shadowed path, Sexton’s voice urges us to confront our demons with ink. Seek her work in The Complete Poems or listen to her readings online to feel her chill. Let her unflinching verses ignite your quill at gothicdustdiaries.com.
“Her Kind” (1960)
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.
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