Pages 2-4 in "The Complete Poems of Anne Sexton".

[acreofbones.livejournal.com]

It is the courage to make a clean breast of it in face of every question that makes the philosopher. He must be like Sophocles's Oedipus, who, seeking enlightenment concerning his terrible fate, pursues his indefatigable inquiry, even when he divines that appalling horror awaits him in the answer. But most of us carry in our heart the Jocasta who begs Oedipus for God's sake not to inquire further...

From a letter of Schopenhauer
to Goethe, November 1815.

You, Doctor Martin.

You, Doctor Martin, walk
from breakfast to madness. Late August,
I speed through the antiseptic tunnel
where the moving dead still talk
of pushing their bones against the thrust
of cure. And I am queen of this summer hotel
or the laughing bee on a stalk

of death. We stand in broken
lines and wait while they unlock
the door and count us at the frozen gates
of dinner. The shibboleth is spoken
and we move to gravy in our smock
of smiles. We chew in rows, our plates
scratch and whine like chalk

in school. There are no knives
for cutting your throat. I make
moccasins all morning. At first my hands
kept empty, unraveled for the lives
they used to work. Now I learn to take
them back, each angry finger that demands
I mend what another will break

tomorrow. Of course, I love you;
you lean above the plastic sky,
god of our block, prince of all the foxes.
The breaking crowns are new
that Jack wore. Your third eye
moves amoung us and lights the separate boxes
where we sleep or cry.

What large children we are
here. All over I grow most tall
in the best ward. Your business is people,
you call at the madhouse, an oracular
eye in our nest. Out in the hall
the intercom pages you. You twist in the pull
of the foxy children who fall

like floods of life in frost.
And we are magic talking to itself,
noisey and alone. I am queen of all my sins
forgotten. Am I still lost?
Once I was beautiful. Now I am myself,
counting this row and that row of moccasins
waiting on the silent shelf.

Anne Sexton

Comments

[iatrogenicmyth.livejournal.com]

I love this poem, of course.

Though lately, I have come to feel skeptical about the poets who made mental illness (whether depression or mania or psychosis) seem beautiful, who gave birth to a generation of Plath-wannabes. There is really nothing beautiful or poetic about mental illness.

Peter Kramer's book "Against Depression" has a wonderful section where he talks about the memoirs he was sent about depression after his landmark book "Listening to Prozac," how all of them seemed to romanticize what it is like to be severely depressed in a way that memoirs about, say, cancer do not.

Look at the words she uses: "queen of this summer hotel" [about a psychiatric unit!]; "magic talking to itself" ... etc. She even makes the chronic psychiatric patients seem romantic: "I speed through the antiseptic tunnel /where the moving dead still talk / of pushing their bones against the thrust / of cure." Even the "once I was beautiful" makes madness seem alluring, as when it is treated, she is "[just] herself" again.

But, then, this is the woman who plotted suicide with Sylvia Plath, both of them seemingly deluded into believing that suicide is the ultimate artistic expression. I don't know. I've read Sexton's biography and much of it could be cut-and-pasted into my own biography, and yet I have emerged with an entirely different perspective.

But, perhaps this is why I stopped writing poetry despite the pressure from various teachers and professors to become a professional poet [is there such a thing, anymore? or are all poets just professors who happen to get published once in a while?]

//in a jaded mood tonight

[acreofbones.livejournal.com]

[https://users.livejournal.com/-spiderwebs/]

I don't know about you personally, but from my point of view...when writers have a mental illness, sometimes writing/artistic expression and their illness go hand in hand. the two cannot be severed. often times, people with mental illnesses are severely creative and can see/experience things in way other ("sane") people cannot. It is both gift and curse. I cannot personally image how different my writing would be if I did not have my own mental illness. You seem to think they romanticize it, but in truth it is a point blank expression of it. The mind is a strange thing, and sometimes a "warped" one finds inspiration where others cannot.

[iatrogenicmyth.livejournal.com]

You have absolutely no idea what I've been through.

Please don't make assumptions about my life and what I do or do not know about mental illness.

[https://users.livejournal.com/-spiderwebs/]

I'm sorry if you misread what I wrote as an attack on you, I thought I made it very clear when I stated "I don't know about you personally, but from my point of view"

[toast-is-lovely.livejournal.com]

i have come across this post 2 yrs later (as you can see) whilst clicking on the sexton tag. Just felt like i had to second what you've stated. I think the poets who glorify it are perhaps almost taking comfort in the artistry rather than in the "truth". Of course like all inspired work it manages to strike some tingling chord of the experience, some aspect at least...but i too can't help but wonder what a poetics of complete honesty about this subject (like some death or cancer poetry) would sound like, and how much it would touch us.
the fear might be sounding too sobering and emo.

La poet

[binahboy.livejournal.com]

Marvellous to find this here. Been a while I had read it. This is one singular work that adds dimension nad pulls sexton apart from many other female poets. She is of course a poetess.

cheers