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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
Drawing
Blood
Without
Knife
Like
Kills
Knives
Sharp
Chinese
Tongue

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And within the house ashes are being stuffed into my marriage, fury is lapping the walls, dishes crack on the shelves, a strangler needs my throat, the daughter has ceased to eat anything.
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I hoard books. They are people who do not leave.
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I would sell my life to avoid the pain that begins in the crib with its bars or perhaps with your first breath when the planets drill your future into you.
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Frog has no nerves. Frog is as old as a cockroach. Frog is my father's genitals. Frog is a malformed doorknob. Frog is a soft bag of green.
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I tell you what you’ll never really know: all the medical hypothesis that explained my brain will never be as true as these struck leaves letting go.
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Images are probably the most important part of the poem. First of all you want to tell a story, but images are what are going to shore it up and get to the heart of the matter.
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it was my first doll that water went into and water came out of much earlier it was the diaper I wore and the dirt thereof and my mother hating me for it
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I put the gold star up in the front window beside the flag. Alterations is what I know and what I did: hems, gussets and seams.
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When I lie down to love, old dwarf heart shakes her head. Like an imbecile she was born old.
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Put your mouthful of words away and come with me to watch the lilies open in such a field, growing there like yachts, slowly steering their petals without nurses or clocks.
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I am torn in two but I will conquer myself.
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You who have inhabited me in the deepest and most broken place, are going, going
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Poets are sitting in my kitchen. Why do these poets lie? Why do children get children and Did you hear what it said?
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Come, my pretender, my fritter, my bubbler, my chicken biddy! Oh succulent one, it is but one turn in the road and I would be a cannibal!
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For I could not read or speak and on the long nights I could not turn the moon off or count the lights of cars across the ceiling.
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The town is silent. The night boils with eleven stars. Oh starry starry night! This is how I want to die.
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Images are the heart of poetry ... You're not a poet without imagery.
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Don’t worry if they say you’re crazy. They said that about me and yet I was saner than all of them. I knew. No matter. You know. Insane or sane, you know. It’s a good thing to know - no matter what they call it.
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