Anne Gray Harvey was born in Newton, Massachusetts, on November 9, 1928. She married to Alfred Muller Sexton at age 19, after attending to Garland Junior College for one year. Later on at age 25, she gave birth to a daughter and after a year Sexton was distinguish with a “postpartum depression” and has suffered her first mental breakdown. It took her awhile to recover from it. Sexton had her second child at age 27 but following that year she suffered another mental breakdown and was hospitalized. In addition, in the same year she attempt to suicide on her birthday. While she was getting her treatment to recover her mental emotions, Sexton’s doctor encouraged her to attend an interest of writing a poetry. So as she started to writing poems,“in 1957 she enrolled in a poetry workshop at the Boston Center for Adult Education.” Along with the workshop she met her close friend Maxine Kumin where she describes her “belief that it was the writing of poetry that gave Sexton something to work toward and develop and thus enabled her to endure life for as long as she did.” Anne Sexton tried her best to stay strong in life and fight over her illness over writing poems. Throughout her lifetime she also was abused by his husband and lost her parents that made her not have a faith in life. However, her work was extremely famous throughout her lifetime and she received many honors and awards, including “the Frost Fellowship to the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Radcliffe Institute Fellowship, the Levinson Prize, the American Academy of Arts and Letters traveling fellowship, the Shelley Memorial Prize, and an invitation to give the Morris Gray reading at Harvard.” Even though she gained lots of improvements by writing poetry to encourage herself to live in life. But at age 46, she couldn’t battle her mental emotions anymore and end up committing suicide.
Citations:Â
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/anne-sexton
https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/anne-sexton
http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/s_z/sexton/sexton_life.htm
Anne sexton no doubt had a tough life. the way you wrote about her, captured the strong woman that she was to withstand her mental issues for the period of time that did. i also like that you spoke about the fact that she did try to get help by seeking professional council and writing
Anne Sexton was a really interesting poet she has written some great poetry yet went through many situations in life. I like how you described her life and related her work with it.