“I’ll put it out there: I am scarred by the nostalgic indicipherability of my own desires; I an engulfed by the intimidating unknown, pushed through darkness and dragged down by the irretrievable past sweetness of my memories.” ― Anne Sexton, Anne Sexton: A Self-Portrait in Letters

Come, my beloved, consider the lilies. We are of little faith. We talk too much. Put your mouthful of words away and come with me to watch the lilies open in such a field, growing there like yachts, slowly steering their petals without nurses or clocks. Let us consider the view: a house where white clouds decorate the muddy halls. Oh, put away your good words and your bad words. Spit out your words like stones! Come here! Come here! Come eat my pleasant fruits.

From the Garden by Anne Sexton

I think the trouble is that my mind, my thinking mind, is aggressive. I am a machine of ideas. I adore to think.

Anne Sexton, in a letter to W.D. Snodgrass, 11 January 1959, A Self-Portrait in Letters

The sun fell like a stone,

the earth poured into darkness

and the loneliness consumed me like an amorphous sludge; seeping into every pore of my mortal being.

Swallowed, snuffed like a candle

wrote the eulogy of my happiness; for how could one exist and belong in a world without the warmth of another?

then the sun rose with the urgency of a chest on a nervous breath

shining it’s citrine coloured beacon through my body thick with the treacle of involuntary solitude

and my cells once again found their respiration and my blood kept on cycling as the globe continued on turning,

when the sun rose I continued on living without another soul,

for who are we if we can’t live on without the warmth of another ?

I read to you / from The New Yorker, ate suppers / you wouldn’t eat, fussed / with your flowers, / joked with your nurses, as if I / were the balm among lepers, / as if I could undo / a life in hours / if I never said goodbye.

Anne Sexton, The Division of Parts

Death's in the good-bye.

Anne Sexton - https://goo.gl/y7pRKR

Whether you are pretty or not, I outlive you, bend down my strange face to yours and forgive you.

Anne Sexton, “All My Pretty Ones”

Anne Sexton, “The Fortress”

Anne Sexton, “Cigarettes and Whiskey and Wild, Wild Women”

‘And now, while Christ stays

fastened to his Crucifix

so that love may praise

his sacrifice

and not the grotesque metaphor,

you come, a brave ghost, to fix

in my mind without praise

or paradise

to make me your inheritor.’

- The Division of Parts, Anne Sexton

When they turn the sun on again I'll plant children under it, I'll light up my soul with a match and let it sing. I'll take my mother and soap her up, I'll take my bones and polish them, I'll vacuum up my stale hair, I'll pay all my neighbors' bad debts, I'll write a poem called Yellow and put my lips down to drink it up, I'll feed myself spoonfuls of heat and everyone will be home playing with their wings and the planet will shudder with all those smiles and there will be no poison anywhere, no plague in the sky and there will be a mother broth for all of the people and we will never die, not one of us, we'll go on won't we?

-Yellow, Anne Sexton.

On indecision, letting go, and leaps of faith

Marina Tsvetaeva tr. Elaine Feinstein “it’s not like waiting for the post” / Anne Sexton “For the Year of the Insane” / Sylvia Plath “Three Women” / The Good Place dir. Michael Schur / Raymond Carter / Louise Glück “Twilight” / The Good Place dir. Michael Schur / Nazim Hikmet tr. Deniz Perin “On Living” / May Sartin / @minuty

“I have kisses for the back of your neck.”

— Anne Sexton, excerpt from “Briar Rose (Sleeping Beauty)”, in The Complete Poems

I am alive at night. I am dead in the morning, an old vessel who used up her oil, bleak and pale boned. No miracle. No dazzle.

I’m out of repair but you are tall in your battle dress and I must arrange for your journey. I was always a virgin, old and pitted. Before the world was, I was.

— Anne Sexton, excerpt from “Moon Song, Woman Song”, in The Complete Poems  

Anne Sexton, from A Self-portrait in Letters

“The rest of my room is book shelves. I hoard books. They are people who do not leave.”

— Anne Sexton, A Self-Portrait In Letters

The Risk

El riesgo* Cuando una hija intenta matarsey la chimenea se desploma como un borrachoy el perro devora su propia colay la cocina hace estallar su impecable teteray la aspiradora se traga su propia bolsay el retrete se lava con sus propias lágrimasy la balanza del baño pesa el fantasmade la abuela y las ventanas,esos fragmentos del cielo, huyen como botesy el césped gira como una trotadoray la…

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