The Nonfiction Files is a weekly journal of my adventures reading my toppling piles of nonfiction books. I won't be posting reviews, but rather my thoughts about what I'm reading, while I'm reading it.
i am playing along with elizabeth.
i am currently reading Anne Sexton: A Biography by Diane Middlebrook. you can read my posts here and here.
synopsis from publisher:
anne sexton, who died at forty-five by her own hand in 1974, was, as she herself claimed, "the only confessional poet," and is one of the most widely read poets of recent decades. in this, the first biography, diane wood middlebrook reveals the rewards of ten years labor, unearthing the multiple truths of how anne sexton's deeply troubled life and powerfully candid work interacted. the result is a model of the biographer's art, a harrowing and uplifting tale of a gifted woman's life.
anne sexton grew up in a conventional middle-class massachusetts family, married in her teens, and worked for a while as a fashion model. her life displayed little to anticipate artistic achievement until after the birth of her second daughter, when she suffered a suicidal breakdown. her psychic identity was so severely threatened that even psychiatric intervention had little effect, until her therapist suggested one day that she might try writing poetry - an inspired idea, immediately acted on. sexton soon joined a writing group, which brought her into contact with her closest poetic friend, maxine kumin, and entry into the orbit of such poets as robert lowell, george starbuck, and sylvia plath, then living in boston.
from the day sexton began writing in 1956, her poetry and her inner life worked in tandem to give her eighteen years of wild productivity, which produced nearly a dozen books. among her achievements were a pulitzer prize for her third volume, live or die,fellowships, professorships, stardom in a performing musical group called anne sexton and her kind, attempt to write for the theatre, and a hectic emotional life which severely strained her husband, her daughters, and her lovers and friendss, including james wright, w.d. snodgrass, anthony hecht, tillie olsen, and others. in her later years she reached desperately toward religious belief.
middlebrook's story of anne sexton's life and work is a model of fairness and discernment. with special cooperation from the family, she has had privileged access to the records and testimony of sexton's principal psychiatrist and to the surviving family's records and memories, and has achieved a tender comprehension of sexton's life as a woman and keen insight into her work as a poet. anne sexton was the most bewitching and exasperating of women, as every page of this magisterial biography demonstrates. it is not a tale for children nor for the innocent, for sexton's complicity in her own self-destruction was the despair of her friends, to many of whom this biography will reveal more than they understood while sexton was alive.
my thoughts:
this part of the book covers 1963-1967. anne sexton is really coming into her own as a poet. two notable prizes among several are a traveling fellowship from the academy of arts and letters and the pulitzer. she got published in england, she raised her lecture fees, did several readings, published new works, and taught an experimental course to high school students on poetry. she even acquired a biographer during this time who followed her eveywhere. as her career was really taking off, her personal life got more complicated.
anne sexton continued to have affairs when she traveled. her marriage went through peaceful times and rocky times due to the affairs and her illness. the beatings from her husband seemed to have died down at this point and her children are pretty much living with her full-time. this section explores her relationship with her children. it was not at all healthy. it seems that she was continuing a cycle she experienced as a child. during the first two parts of the book, her nana (who really was a great-aunt) is mentioned, and how she and anne were really close. anne spent most of her free time with nana. they would read and knit, but she also spent a lot of time 'cuddling' with nana in her bed. the language isn't very explicit and the word is quotation marks. i wasn't really sure what to infer. was it molestation or just normal cuddling that a parent would do with a child, like holding her for comfort. i suspected the former but the language is ambiguous. however, this section refers to 'nana's abuse.' anne always felt safe with her nana. and she turns to her children looking for the same safety. the earlier chapters may hint at abuse from nana, but not openly. however, those same chapters do refer to therapy sessions where anne goes into a trance and recalls being molested by her father. those memories are in dispute. the biographer makes a point of saying that her therapist doesn't necessarily think that it really happened and of course mentions other family members who have said no way did that happen.
anne seemed to favor her daughter linda over joy. whenever kayo, her husband, would be away on business, anne would feel lonely and unsafe, so she would seek the shelter of her children's bed and play what she calls a game. she would lay her head on her daughter's chest and pretend to be a child, therefore, making her young child the adult. she did this from when they were a small age and up. it is mainly linda's bed she seeks. there was a disturbing recollection by linda, where she says that she thinks her mother masturbated while lying in her bed. linda would be still as a rock, pretending to be asleep.
during the year of 1964, her longtime therapist, dr. orne announced that he was moving to pennsylvania and that their sessions would be coming to an end. this was very traumatic for anne. she did eventually find a new therapist, and fell into an on-again, off-again sexual relationship with him. not sure those sessions were really helping her get well. (i would like to note that the relationship with dr. orne never was inappropriate. anne may have experienced transference, but dr. orne didn't play into any of her fantasies and maintained a proper patient-therapist relationship).
she befriended anne wilder, a female psychiatrist, who would become another of anne's "twins." they exchanged passionate letters and eventually began an affair. their first meeting was uncomfortable to anne, she didn't want to acknowledge the attraction they felt and denied any overtures she had made in letters. but ultimately, they found themselves traveling together and away from every day life, she gave in to her feelings. but once she was back home again, she distanced herself from anne, although they did continue to exchange letters.
sylvia plath killed herself in 1963, which had a profound effect on anne. it almost seemed like anne was jealous that sylvia died and she didn't. she was upset that her few correspondences with sylvia never gave any indication that she may have been feeling depressed or suicidal. she wrote a poem about sylvia (my first sexton poem) and while many criticized it, she was steadfast in her defense of it. anne began toying with the idea of suicide, resurrected her old friend. and i think this was really the impetus for working on her book, live or die. her first compilation of poems were all about death, with none on life. the book remained unbalanced so she put it on the backburner until she could write some live poems.
the more i read of anne sexton the more my initial comparison of anais nin comes to mind. anais engaged in copious affairs, including one with a woman and she had an incestuous relationship with her father. i find sexton fascinating in the same way i did nin. i certainly don't condone any of their behavior, but curiously, i don't feel any judgment towards them either. for anne, i feel sad that she was so messed up in her mind that she felt she needed to act out in order to not feel empty, to feel real. i don't envy her her life. she was very accomplished, but so very troubled. her art came from her psychosis. her mental illness informed her work. and it is great work. "wiser than the woman it came from."
i am curious to see what finally pushed her over the edge and made her use her 'kill me pills.' i also believe there is a divorce in there too. it would be interesting to see what finally dissolves a marriage of almost twenty years that survived constant affairs, several trips to the mental hospital and sexton not being a full-time mother. we shall find out in part IV.
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