  Poetry
This week: Anne Sexton Edited by: Stormy Lady  
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Portrait Of An Old Woman On The College Tavern Wall
by Anne Sexton
Oh down at the tavern
the children are singing
around their round table
and around me still.
Did you hear what it said?
I only said
how there is a pewter urn
pinned to the tavern wall,
as old as old is able
to be and be there still.
I said, the poets are tere
I hear them singing and lying
around their round table
and around me still.
Across the room is a wreath
made of a corpse's hair,
framed in glass on the wall,
as old as old is able
to be and be remembered still.
Did you hear what it said?
I only said
how I want to be there and I
would sing my songs with the liars
and my lies with all the singers.
And I would, and I would but
it's my hair in the hair wreath,
my cup pinned to the tavern wall,
my dusty face they sing beneath.
Poets are sitting in my kitchen.
Why do these poets lie?
Why do children get children and
Did you hear what it said?
I only said
how I want to be there,
Oh, down at the tavern
where the prophets are singing
around their round table
until they are still.
On November 9, 1928 Ralph Churchill Harvey and his wife Mary Harvey welcomed daughter Anne Gray Harvey into their family. The couple had three daughters, Jane, Blanche and Anne. Anne often felt as though she was the odd child out and was always craving the attention her older sisters seemed to get. The family moved to Wellesley Massachusetts when Anne was six years old. Anne attended public school for most of her education, she was sent to Rogers Hall at the age of seventeen. Rogers Hall was a preparatory school for girls, the family had hoped the school would help Anne develop into a proper woman and tame her wild ways. It was during Anne’s time at the school that started her writing poetry. After some controversy with a poem Anne had published in the yearbook, Anne left the school and attended Garland School in Boston, a finishing school for women.
While attending Garland Anne met Alfred Muller Sexton II. The two fell in love and eloped, they moved to Hamilton, New York. The move was short lived though as Alfred was unable to make a living supporting him and his new bride and the two moved back to Massachusetts. Once they couple was back in Massachusetts, Alfred joined the naval reserve and was shipped to Korea and Anne did some modeling for the Hart Agency. Anne gave birth to her daughter Linda Gray Sexton in July 1953. When Alfred came home from Korea, the couple bought a house not far from Anne’s parents farm.
In 1954, Anne began struggling with spouts of depression and started seeking professional counseling. In 1955 Anne gave birth to her second child Joyce Ladd Sexton and though these were very happy times Anne’s battle with depression worsened. Her mental state finally lead to attempt suicide, which put her in psychiatric hospitalization. While undergoing treatment she found her way back to her poetry and using it as a therapeutic release. Feeling better, Anne enrolled in John Holme’s poetry workshop and met fellow writer Maxine Kumin. Her recovery was short lived and in May 1957 Anne once again tried to end her life. Her poetry was her outlet and she wrote through another hospitalization and back to a happy state in her life. She was offered a scholarship to Antioch Writers' Conference. It was there where Anne met W. D. Snodgrass. The following year Anne enrolled in Robert Lowell's graduate writing seminar at Boston University. During this seminar she met Sylvia Plath and George Starbuck.
In 1959, Anne published the first of her books of poetry, “To Bedlam and Part Way Back.” Following her first book, she published “All My Pretty Ones” in 1962. Anne then worked on four children's books with Maxine Kumin. Anne then toured Europe and attended lectures but her time overseas was cut short as once again her mental health was failing. In 1964 Anne was sent to see a new doctor who started her on thorazine, in hopes to control her on depression and avoid hospitalization. Anne published her Pulitzer-prize winning book, “ Live or Die,” in 1966. Two years later Anne was awarded honorary Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard becoming the first woman ever to join the 187-year-old chapter. Then in 1969 she published “Love Poems” followed by a play “Mercy Street.” Anne started teaching a poetry seminar at Boston University, which led her to be a lecturer at the University and eventually awarded a full professorship in 1972.
Even with all of Anne’s success she couldn't stop the demons inside her and relapsed into a deep depression in 1973. Anne was hospitalized three times and Alfred filed for a divorce. With everything closing in on her Anne still managed to publish “The Death Notebooks” and finishing the editing of “The Awful Rowing Toward God.” She also laid out the arrangement of poems she was going to use for 45 Mercy Street. On October 4, 1974 after returning home from a poetry reading at Goucher College Anne Sexton commit suicide.
It Is A Spring Afternoon
by Anne Sexton
Everything here is yellow and green.
Listen to its throat, its earthskin,
the bone dry voices of the peepers
as they throb like advertisements.
The small animals of the woods
are carrying their deathmasks
into a narrow winter cave.
The scarecrow has plucked out
his two eyes like diamonds
and walked into the village.
The general and the postman
have taken off their packs.
This has all happened before
but nothing here is obsolete.
Everything here is possible.
Because of this
perhaps a young girl has laid down
her winter clothes and has casually
placed herself upon a tree limb
that hangs over a pool in the river.
She has been poured out onto the limb,
low above the houses of the fishes
as they swim in and out of her reflection
and up and down the stairs of her legs.
Her body carries clouds all the way home.
She is overlooking her watery face
in the river where blind men
come to bathe at midday.
Because of this
the ground, that winter nightmare,
has cured its sores and burst
with green birds and vitamins.
Because of this
the trees turn in their trenches
and hold up little rain cups
by their slender fingers.
Because of this
a woman stands by her stove
singing and cooking flowers.
Everything here is yellow and green.
Surely spring will allow
a girl without a stitch on
to turn softly in her sunlight
and not be afraid of her bed.
She has already counted seven
blossoms in her green green mirror.
Two rivers combine beneath her.
The face of the child wrinkles.
in the water and is gone forever.
The woman is all that can be seen
in her animal loveliness.
Her cherished and obstinate skin
lies deeply under the watery tree.
Everything is altogether possible
and the blind men can also see.
Lullaby
by Anne Sexton]
It is a summer evening.
The yellow moths sag
against the locked screens
and the faded curtains
suck over the window sills
and from another building
a goat calls in his dreams.
This is the TV parlor
in the best ward at Bedlam.
The night nurse is passing
out the evening pills.
She walks on two erasers,
padding by us one by one.
MY sleeping pill is white.
It is a splendid pearl;
it floats me out of myself,
my stung skin as alien
as a loose bolt of cloth.
I will ignore the bed.
I am linen on a shelf.
Let the others moan in secret;
let each lost butterfly
go home. Old woolen head,
take me like a yellow moth
while the goat calls hush-
a-bye.
Thank you all!
Stormy Lady
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The winner of "Stormy's poetry newsletter & contest" [ASR] is:
The Princess was leaving the castle forever,
She rode upon her black horse so proud.
She pulled her cloak up around her. It wasn't humid
like it was earlier but it was night now and she felt a chill.
Her father wanted her to marry a Lord three times her age.
She loved another and she was going now to be with him forever.
She rode past a hollow tree.
It wouldn't be long now. She would be at Unicorn Island.
A howl of a wolf startled her but she
had no fear. A wolf wouldn't hurt her, not this night.
The forest was spooky but it wasn't haunted.
A bright light. She was here! Unicorn Island.
This is where no evil people could enter like her father, his guards
and her dreadfullintended ugly Lord of the Manor that she hated.
Fairies were flying, unicorns were playing about and gnomes-
lived here, too. It was night but here it was day time.
Rainbow waterfalls, mountains and woods were all around.
Good creatures of fantasy lived here. Mermaids, dragons, fairies
no trolls, white deer who were gentle beasts, unicorns all lived here.
Beautiful Unicorn Island. Where peace and kindness could be found.
A handsome man ran up to her to to hold
her in his arms as he kissed her gently. Unicorn Island.
Here they could live forever in peace away from her mean father.
This man had been a knight but was now banished from the knight hood.
A new day on the horizon. A cute large cottage-
was now the Princess and her knight's new home. Here, happiness
would abide. The heroine and her knight could live-
here in peace and nothing or no one could hurt them. Paradise for a couple in love
Honorable mention:
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Poetry: March 05, 2014 Issue [#6197]
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