The best of her poems capture the religious doubts many of us have endured in our spiritual journey. Other poems seem to offer genuine insight into mental illness and its causes. Some of her poems, ones Ive previously cited on this blog, for instance, are among my favorite poems. Simply put, I prefer Anne Sexton in small doses. In small doses they provide blessed relief from pain in large doses they result in hallucinogenic nightmares. Stop, before I slash my wrists!! Perhaps, though, it was more like taking pain pills. At times I felt exactly the way I used feel when listening to Alana Morissettes Jagged Little Pill. At times I found it difficult just to continue reading. Unfortunately, reading Selected Poems of Anne Sexton did not produce the same feeling. The experience empowered me to re-examine my own life, to discover my own symbols, and to re-discover the themes of my own life. Reading Richard Wrights complete poems last week, despite the hours it consumed, I was impressed with how good it felt to be immersed in his poetry, in his life. If the truth be told, though, at the moment I am looking to the Zen poets for solace, and perhaps their calm reflection on life and death has biased me against Sextons railings against a merciless world that often asks more of us than we are capable of giving. If I were looking for a poetic guide to the unknown, at least a Christian guide, I would prefer John Donnes holy sonnets or Gerard Manly Hopkinss poems. I fear she may well be rowing in the wrong direction.
#Chains of fury pomes full
I know sometimes people feel like shit, Ive felt that way myself at times lately, but how does one feel like a house full of bowel movement? It may make sense to destroy yourself bite by bite, but canker after canker? For me, at least, this all becomes too melodramatic, too hysterical, to be believable.Īs much as I am moved by Sextons poems, I wouldnt want to use her rowboat as my pilot ship to God. God is even in Hitler, the Satan of the modern world? He must be if the Holy Spirit is everywhere, right? Surely thats an assertion that tests our very faith. The narrator becomes a mutton to Jesus lamb, and the slaughterhouse is filled with despair. Who wouldnt be struck by images, metaphors and symbols like these? The sun becomes a latrine, polluting all. I who was a house full of bowel movement, I’ve got to have something to hold on to. I saw only the little white dish of my faith I could not touch what did not belong to me. Now, Sexton had great taste in borrowing the title of Kierkegaard’s work, and it fits nicely with the idea of sin that pervades her poems: Why is it the God my typewriter believes in rather than the God I believe in? What kind of God does her typewriter believe in? A melodramatic God that looks good on the page? Very intense,/ like a wolf at a live heart, I begin to question the very essence of these poems. When Sexton says In ∿renzy, I am, each day,/typing out the God/my typewriter believes in./Very quick. Who hasnt asked the universe, perhaps best represented by those cold, distant stars, why am I here? And such doubts ultimately lead to the more basic question, whos responsible for my life, for this feeling of emptiness that comes at the end of each day? Eh? This is the ending that I most fear, a meaningless death after a long meaningless life.
Instead of living we reflect, like the moon reflects the sun, on the day that has passed. At night, awake or asleep, this lifetime seems like a dream, insubstantial. Though we struggle to survive each day and to build a meaningful life the sinking sun seems to represent the end of things. The coldness in the air, the aura of ice suggests to me the loneliness and isolation that all of us have felt throughout life, but the ultimate isolation is that of death. Personally, I prefer Sexton’s poems like: They are necessary and inevitable, perhaps, but they are not sufficient to carry me across to the other shore. The truth is that angst and anger are not enough, can never be enough. Perhaps thats part of the problem I have with the poems. There is an angst and anger in these poems that threatens to overwhelm not only Sexton but you, the reader. The God she describes in these poems is not your mothers, or your fathers, God.
They are in-your-face poems, challenging your very perception of Christ. There is undoubtedly power in these poems. In the best poems her use of images remind me of the metaphysical poets in their use of unusual, disparate, images, while her rhetoric reminds me of Walt Whitmans, with its repetition of key phrases and cataloging. In some ways, they are my favorite of her poems. Anne Sextons religious poems present some particular problems for me.
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