Poetry Appreciation Group - August: Anne Sexton
On Wednesday 24 August, the SCWC Poetry Appreciation Group looked at the writing of American poet Anne Sexton (1928-1974).
Sexton offers the reader an intimate view of the mental health challenges and emotional anguish that characterised her life. Writing in the 1960s, she made the experience of being a woman a central issue in her poetry, and though she endured criticism for bringing subjects such as menstruation, abortion, drug addiction and attempted suicide into her work, her skill as a poet transcended the controversy over her subject matter.
The group noted the parallels with Sylvia Plath, another brilliant imagist US poet writing on similar subject areas.Sexton came to poetry on the advice of her doctor and she enrolled in a poetry workshop in Boston in 1957. Three years later she published her first book of poetry and in 1967 she won the Pulitzer prize for poetry.
Though not a religious person, a number of the poems the group looked at included religious imagery, as well as acid critiques of war and what became known as the military-industrial complex (the Korean War 1950-53 and the US Viet Nam war 1955-75).
While all of her writing showed clever and sometimes exhaustingly quick shifts of imagery, it was those poems with a stronger sense of place that appealed most to the group. In her poem 45 Mercy St, the poet seeks her family home and her history along the river that flows through Boston.
Where did you go?
45 Mercy Street,
with great-grandmother
kneeling in her whale-bone corset
and praying gently but fiercely
to the wash basin,
at five A.M.
The Poetry Appreciation Group meets on the fourth Wednesday of each month at Wollongong Library or by Zoom. New members are always welcome. Next month: Polish poet and nobel prize winner, Wislawa Szymborska.
Please contact Judi Morison to find out more.