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

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I'm an empress. I wear an apron. My typewriter writes. It didn't break the way it warned. Even crazy, I'm as nice as a chocolate bar.
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Nature is full of teeth that come in one by one, then decay, fall out.
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You who have inhabited me in the deepest and most broken place, are going, going
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Inside many of us is a small old man who wants to get out.
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Yes I try to kill myself in small amounts, an innocuous occupation. Actually I'm hung up on it.
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Now I am going back And I have ripped my hand From your hand as I said I would And I have made it this far.
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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 Its mouth opens four times as out-of-date as a prehistoric monster, yet somehow man-made.
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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 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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Yes, I know. Death sits with his key in my lock. Not one day is taken for granted. Even nursery rhymes have put me in hock.
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Pulling off the fat diamond engagement ring, pulling off the elopement wedding ring, and holding them, clicking them in thumb and forefinger, the indent of twenty-five years, like a tiny rip leaving its mark.
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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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Not that it was beautiful, but that I found some order there.
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Put your ear down close to your soul and listen hard.
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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'll Vacuum up my stale hair, I'll pay all my neighbors' bad debts, I'll write a poem called Yellow and put my lips down to drink it up.
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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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Images are the heart of poetry ... You're not a poet without imagery.
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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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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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