OTHER STUFF (occasional)

“Talk to me about sadness. I talk about it too much in my own head but I never mind others talking about it either; I occasionally feel like I tremendously need others to talk about it as well.” Anne Sexton

I love Anne Sexton's work her detail and biography, I would have liked to have met her

Wilhelm Hammers

“That’s what I do: I make coffee and occasionally succumb to suicidal nihilism. But you shouldn’t worry — poetry is still first. Cigarettes and alcohol follow.” ― Anne Sexton

Well 3 out of five ain't bad and I stopped drinking and smoking years ago now . . . . . . .  ha ha ha 

I adore the work of Sexton and as is so often the case I admire the work of alcoholics . . . . . . 

Witch’s whistle with death skull and rat’s foot, probably 1800 - 1899, Europe

Her Kind

Anne Sexton, 1928 – 1974

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.

This is a dull and difficult time of year somehow . . . . .yesterday the anniversary of my father's death 32 years ago now (he had been the oldest person Harefield's Hospital's Prof Magdi Yacoub had done open heart surgery on at the time, having had to wait until he was 77 to be operated on thanks to Thatcher's cuts to the NHS [ring any bells?]  and whilst initially he did well he went down hill and did not make the recovery, after three months he passed away). . . . . . today is also the day Anne Sexton decided to commit suicide . . . . . . . it has resonance this chilling month when the warmth calms down and dullness and damp hang somewhere near . . . . . 

Anne Sexton photographed by Gwendolyn Stewart, 1973

 Yesterday marks the 44th anniversary of Anne Sexton’s suicide.

(9 November 1928, Newton, MA – 4 October 1974, Weston, MA)

“All I wanted was a little piece of life, to be married, to have children. I thought the nightmares, the visions, the demons would go away if there was enough love to put them down. […] But one can’t build little white picket fences to keep the nightmares out.”

–Anne Sexton, interviewed for the Paris Review, shortly after winning the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1967

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I have always admired her work and struck resonances in me that I don't quite understand . . .beyond mere words it is often so with poetry, don't you find?

“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.” 

 – Anne Sexton, from The Complete Poems; “Her Kind”