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The tongue, the Chinese say, is like a sharp knife: it kills without drawing blood.

Anne Sexton

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Anne Sexton
Age: 45 †
Born: 1928
Born: November 9
Died: 1974
Died: October 4
Poet
Writer
Newton
Massachusetts
Anne Gray Harvey
Blood
Without
Knife
Like
Kills
Knives
Sharp
Chinese
Tongue
Drawing

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Those moments before a poem comes, when the heightened awareness comes over you, and you realize a poem is buried there somewhere, you prepare yourself. I run around, you know, kind of skipping around the house, marvelous elation. It’s as though I could fly.
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Sometimes the soul takes pictures of things it has wished for, but never seen.
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I leave you, home, when I'm ripped from the doorstep by commerce or fate. Then I submit to the awful subway of the world.
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I am crazy as hell, but I know it. And knowing it is a kind of sanity that makes the sickness worse.
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Earth, earthriding your merry-go-roundtoward extinction,right to the rootsthickening the oceans like gravy,festering in your caves,you are becoming a latrine.
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Sometimes I fly like an eagle but with the wings of a wren
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This is what poems are: with mercy for the greedy, they are the tongue's wrangle, the world's pottage, the rat's star.
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Our checks are pale. Our wallets are invalids. Past due, past due, is what our bills are saying and yet we kiss in every corner, scuffing the dust and the cat. Love rises like bread as we go bust.
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Thumbs grow into my throat. I wear slaps like a spot of rouge.
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Jewels! Today each twig is important, each ring, each infection, each form is all that the gods must have meant.
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And the aura of you remains, remains, remains...
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O starry night, This is how I want to die
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I think I've been writing black poems all along, wearing my white mask. I'm always the victim ... but no longer!
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I said, the poets are there I hear them singing and lying around their round table and around me still.
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Of course the New Testament is very small. Its mouth opens four times as out-of-date as a prehistoric monster, yet somehow man-made.
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My safe, safe psychosis is broken. It was hard. It was made of stone. It covered my face like a mask. But it has cracked.
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