Many a writer has said they write to save their lives. And many a writer has died by sui­cide. In few cas­es has the con­nec­tion been so direct as in that of the poet Anne Sex­ton. Encour­aged in 1957 by her ther­a­pist to write poet­ry to stave off her sui­ci­dal ideation, she even­tu­al­ly joined a group of mid-cen­tu­ry “con­fes­sion­al” poets based in Boston—including Robert Low­ell and Sylvia Plath—whose per­son­al pathos, fam­i­ly pain, and severe bouts of depres­sion pro­vid­ed much of the mate­r­i­al for their work. Despite Sexton’s tremen­dous career suc­cess at what began, more-or-less, as a hob­by, she became over­whelmed by her ill­ness and com­mit­ted sui­cide in 1974.

There are those who wish to debate whether so-called “con­fes­sion­al poets” were tru­ly tor­ment­ed indi­vid­u­als or navel-gaz­ing nar­cis­sists. This seems fair enough giv­en the will­ing self-expo­sure of poets like Plath, Low­ell, and Sex­ton, but it kind of miss­es the point; their loss­es and trans­gres­sions were as real, or not, as anyone’s, but we remem­ber them, or should, for their writ­ing. Instead I find it inter­est­ing to see their pub­lic selves as per­for­mances, what­ev­er the auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal con­nec­tions in the work. A for­mer fash­ion mod­el, Anne Sex­ton was par­tic­u­lar­ly adept at self-pre­sen­ta­tion, and as her fame as a writer increased—she won the Pulitzer Prize in 1966 and a suc­ces­sion of grants and awards through­out the sixties—her poet­ry became less focused on the strict­ly per­son­al, more on the cul­tur­al (she has become well-known, for exam­ple, for a sar­don­ic, fem­i­nist per­spec­tive in such poems as “Snow White and the Sev­en Dwarfs”). A good deal of her work was pure inven­tion, despite the illu­sion of inti­ma­cy.

Nonethe­less, the short, 1966 film “Anne Sex­ton at Home” (top, with Span­ish sub­ti­tles, con­tin­ued below) lets us engage in some voyeurism. It begins with Sexton’s irri­ta­tion, as she’s inter­rupt­ed by the dog. Then the film cuts away, the scene has changed, and she frankly acknowl­edges the poet’s voice as a “per­sona” (from the Greek for mask); her poems are “mon­sters,” into which she has “pro­ject­ed her­self.” When we cut back again to the first scene, Sex­ton con­fi­dent­ly reads her “Men­stru­a­tion at Forty.” And we cut away again, and Sex­ton, her famil­iar cig­a­rette nev­er far away, riffs on “fam­i­ly & poet­ry” as her hus­band Alfred tries to avoid the cam­era. We see the poet with her daugh­ter, their inter­ac­tions play­ful (and also a lit­tle dis­turb­ing). Through­out it all Sex­ton per­forms, seem­ing­ly pleased and enjoy­ing the camera’s atten­tion.

In the last part of “Anne Sex­ton at Home” (above), the poet reads per­haps her most explic­it work about her many sui­cide attempts, “Want­i­ng to Die.” In a brief intro­duc­tion, she says, “I can explain sex in a minute, but death, I can’t explain.” But the play­ful­ness drains from her demeanor, as she comes to the final two stan­zas:

Bal­anced there, sui­cides some­times meet,
rag­ing at the fruit, a pumped-up moon,
leav­ing the bread they mis­took for a kiss,

leav­ing the page of the book care­less­ly open,
some­thing unsaid, the phone off the hook
and the love, what­ev­er it was, an infec­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent

For Sylvia Plath’s 80th Birth­day, Hear Her Read ‘A Birth­day Present’

Josh Jones is a writer, edi­tor, and musi­cian. Fol­low him @jdmagness

Today we bring you one of the best-loved poems of W.H. Auden, “As I Walked Out One Evening,” read (below) by the poet him­self. Auden wrote the poem in 1937 and first pub­lished it in his 1940 vol­ume, Anoth­er Time. The poem is a vari­ant of the bal­lad form, made up of 15 rhymed qua­trains. It’s a med­i­ta­tion on love and the remorse­less­ness of time, told in three voic­es: the nar­ra­tor, a rap­tur­ous lover, and the reproach­ful clocks that speak back to the lover.

‘The years shall run like rab­bits,
     For in my arms I hold
The Flower of the Ages,
    And the first love of the world.’

But all the clocks in the city
    Began to whirr and chime:
‘O let not Time deceive you,
    You can­not con­quer Time

Auden made a num­ber of audio record­ings over the years, and we were unable to track down the time and place of this one. It may be a 1953 record­ing orig­i­nal­ly released by Caed­mon Records. “As I Walked Out One Evening” is includ­ed in the Ran­dom House audio col­lec­tion, Voice of the Poet: W.H. Auden.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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Note: Audio takes about 8 sec­onds to play…

Many Moons Ago, a poet­ry teacher of mine intro­duced me to the term “ter­mi­nal aes­thet­ic,” mean­ing a style that could go no fur­ther, hav­ing burned up all of its resources. It’s a great way to char­ac­ter­ize the poet Hart Crane’s ambiva­lent appraisal of his lit­er­ary fore­fa­ther, T.S. Eliot. Crane spent his poet­ry career try­ing to rem­e­dy what he saw as Eliot’s fail­ure to sal­vage any­thing from the mod­ern world but cramped despair in The Waste Land. As Crane put it, Eliot’s mas­ter­work was “so damned dead” and man­i­fest­ed “a refusal to see cer­tain spir­i­tu­al events and pos­si­bil­i­ties.” It’s prob­a­bly safe to say that near­ly every­one sub­ject­ed to Eliot’s por­ten­tous verse has felt this way at one time or anoth­er. But Crane felt it and per­se­vered; he tried to out-write The Waste Land with his own mod­ernist epic, The Bridge.

The poet’s opti­mism was total­ly at odds with his brief, painful life. As David Dud­ley summed it up recent­ly:

Crane’s short life was a train wreck—a teenage sui­cide attempt, fol­lowed by bit­ter estrange­ments from his moth­er, a Chris­t­ian Sci­en­tist, and his father, a well-to-do Cleve­land can­dy mak­er who dis­ap­proved of his son’s habits. Liv­ing as a semi-clos­et­ed gay man on the fringes of the cul­tur­al lime­light in New York and Europe, Crane had affairs with sailors, drank too much, got in fights, and couldn’t hold a job.

Crane’s depres­sion and feel­ings of fail­ure drove him to sui­cide in 1932, at age 32: he leapt into the Gulf of Mex­i­co from the steam ship Oriz­a­ba (most think; he left no note). His tomb­stone is inscribed with the words “lost at sea.”

That phrase also cap­tures how so many read­ers feel when faced with Crane’s roco­co verse. With its archa­ic (some would say pre­ten­tious) dic­tion, and obscure allu­sions nest­ed inside oblique ref­er­ences, the word “dif­fi­cult” may be an under­state­ment. But Crane’s work has had many cham­pi­ons, among them, Ten­nessee Williams. As an epi­graph to A Street­car Named Desire, Williams chose these lines from Crane’s “The Bro­ken Tow­er”:

And so it was I entered the bro­ken world
To trace the vision­ary com­pa­ny of love, its voice
An instant in the wind (I know not whith­er hurled)
But not for long to hold each des­per­ate choice.

The exquis­ite rhythms of Crane’s lines—Shakespearean by way of Eliot—lend them­selves so well to read­ing aloud. Above, then, we have the priv­i­lege of hear­ing Crane’s defend­er Williams read “The Bro­ken Tow­er” in his reedy, South­ern voice. Fol­low the text of the poem in the video as Williams reads. Both the audio above and that below—of Williams read­ing Crane’s hyp­not­ic “The Hurricane”—come from a near­ly-impos­si­ble-to-find 1960 LP from Caed­mon Records. Thanks again, Inter­net, and thanks to Don Yorty, who post­ed these videos.

Relat­ed Con­tent

The Bro­ken Tow­er, James Franco’s Docu­d­ra­ma On “Dif­fi­cult” Poet Hart Crane: A Pre­view

Mar­lon Bran­do Opens Up to Ten­nessee Williams

British Actors Read Poignant Poet­ry from World War I

Josh Jones is a writer, edi­tor, and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jdmagness