Anne Sexton

Poet

1928-11-09 – 1974-10-04

Anne Sexton was an American poet associated with confessional poetry and known for intensely personal verse. She received major literary recognition, including the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.

Quotes by Anne Sexton

We were fair game but we have kept out of the cesspool. We are strong. We are the good ones. Do not discover us for we lie together all in green like pond weeds. Hold me, my young dear, hold me.
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Taking into consideration all your lovelinesswhy can't you burn your bootsoles and yourdraft card? How can you sit there saying yesto war? You'll be a pauper when you die, soreboy. Dead, while I still live at our addresss.Oh my brother, why do you keep making planswhen I am at seizures of hearts and hands?Come dance the dance, the Papa-Mama dance;bring costumes from the suitcase pasted Ille de France, the S.S. Gripsholm. Papa's London Harness case he took abroad and kept i our attic laced with old leather straps for storage and hisscholar's robes, black licorice - that metamorphosiswith it's crimson blood. The Papa and Mama Dance
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CourageIt is in the small things we see it.The child's first step,as awesome as an earthquake.The first time you rode a bike,wallowing up the sidewalk.The first spanking when your heartwent on a journey all alone.When they called you crybabyor poor or fatty or crazyand made you into an alien,you drank their acidand concealed it.Later,if you faced the death of bombs and bulletsyou did not do it with a banner,you did it with only a hat tocover your heart.You did not fondle the weakness inside youthough it was there.Your courage was a small coalthat you kept swallowing.If your buddy saved youand died himself in so doing,then his courage was not courage,it was love; love as simple as shaving soap.
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I'd won the worldbut like aforsaken explorer,I'd lostmy map.
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And what of the dead? They lie without shoesin the stone boats. They are more like stonethan the sea would be if it stopped. They refuseto be blessed, throat, eye and knucklebone.
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The rest of my room is book shelves. I hoard books. They are people who do not leave.
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Those moments before a poem comes, when the heightened awareness comes over you, and you realize a poem is buried there somewhere, you prepare yourself. I run around, you know, kind of skipping around the house, marvelous elation. It's as though I could fly.
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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.
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Some women marry houses.
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Poetry led me by the hand out of madness.
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Many women are singing together of this: one is in a shoe factory cursing the machine, one is at the aquarium tending a seal, one is dull at the wheel of her Ford, one is at the toll gate collecting,one is tying the cord of a calf in Arizona, one is straddling a cello in Russia,one is shifting pots on the stove in Egypt,one is painting her bedroom walls moon color, one is dying but remembering a breakfast, one is stretching on her mat in Thailand, one is wiping the ass of her child,one is staring out the window of a train in the middle of Wyoming and one is anywhere and some are everywhere and all seem to be singing, although some can not sing a note.
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The grass as bristly and stout as chives and me wondering when the ground will break and me wondering how anything fragile survives
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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
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I am stuffing your mouth with yourpromises and watching you vomit them out upon my face.
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Only my books anoint me, and a few friends, those who reach into my veins.
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Saints have no moderation, nor do poets, just exuberance.
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As it has been said:Love and a coughcannot be concealed.Even a small cough.Even a small love.
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I am God, la de dah.
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Fee-fi-fo-fum -Now I'm borrowed.Now I'm numb.
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Death, I need my little addiction to you. I need that tiny voice who, even as I rise from the sea, all woman, all there, says kill me, kill me.
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