Quote

I can only sign over everything, the house, the dog, the ladders, the jewels, the soul, the family tree, the mailbox. Then I can sleep. Maybe.

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
Sleep
Maybe
Mailbox
Family
Mailboxes
House
Ladders
Soul
Jewels
Everything
Sign
Dog
Tree

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The stars are pears that no one can reach, even for a wedding. Perhaps for a death.
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No matter whose bed you die in the bed will be yours for your voyage onto the surgical andiron of God.
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The grass as bristly and stout as chives and me wondering when the ground will break and me wondering how anything fragile survives
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One of my secret instructions to myself as a poet is Whatever you do, don't be boring.
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The beautiful feeling after writing a poem is on the whole better even than after sex, and that's saying a lot.
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One can't build little white picket fences to keep nightmares out.
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life is a trick, life is a kitten in a sack.
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Saints have no moderation, nor do poets, just exuberance.
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I would like to bury all the hating eyes under the sand somewhere.
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The future is a fog that is still hanging out over the sea, a boat that floats home or does not. The trade winds blow me, and I do not know where the land is the waves fold over each other they are in love with themselves sleeping in their own skin and I float over them and I do not know about tomorrow.
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Why are all these dolls falling out of the sky? Was there a father? Or have the planets cut holes in their nets and let our childhood out, or are we the dolls themselves, born but never fed?
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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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Today is made of yesterday, each time I steal toward rites I do not know, waiting for the lost ingredient, as if salt or money or even lust would keep us calm and prove us whole at last.
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Cinderella and the prince lived, they say, happily ever after, like two dolls in a museum case never bothered by diapers or dust, never arguing over the timing of an egg, never telling the same story twice.
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Not that it was beautiful, but that I found some order there.
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I am teaching... This year it's kind of like having a love affair with a rhinoceros.
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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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Today God gives milk / and I have the pail.
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Jesus saw the multitudes were hungry and He said, Oh Lord, send down a short-order cook.
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I love you. You are closest to my heart, closer than any other human being. You are my extension. You are my prayer. You are my belief in God. For better or worse you inherit me.
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