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At six I lived in a graveyard full of dolls, avoiding myself, my body, the suspect in its grotesque house.

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
Childhood
Lived
Graveyard
Full
Grotesque
House
Dolls
Body
Suspect
Suspects
Avoiding
Six

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I love the word warm. It is almost unbearable-- so moist and breathlike.
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My husband sings Baa Baa black sheep and we pretend that all's certain and good, that the marriage won't end.
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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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Even without wars, life is dangerous.
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It is in the small things we see it. The child's first step, as awesome as an earthquake. The first time you rode a bike, wallowing up the sidewalk.
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The family story tells, and it was told true, of my great-grandfather who begat eight genius children and bought twelve almost new grand pianos. He left a considerable estate when he died.
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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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Every time I get happy the Nana-hex comes through. Birds turn into plumber's tools, a sonnet turns into a dirty joke, a wind turns into a tracheotomy, a boat turns into a corpse.
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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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Sometimes I fly like an eagle but with the wings of a wren
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I was the girl of the chain letter, the girl full of talk of coffins and keyholes, the one of the telephone bills, the wrinkled photo and the lost connections.
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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.
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All day I've built a lifetime and now the sun sinks to undo it.
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I grow old on my bitterness.
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I tell it stories now and then and feed it images like honey. I will not speculate today with poems that think they're money.
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The day of fire is coming, the thrush will fly ablaze like a little sky rocket.
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What's the point of fighting the dollars when all you need is a warm bed? When the dog barks you let him in. All we need is someone to let us in. And one other thing: to consider the lilies in the field.
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Death, I need my little addiction to you. I need that tiny voice who, even as I rise from the sea, all woman, all there, says kill me, kill me.
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I am stuffing your mouth with your promises and watching you vomit them out upon my face.
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God went out of me as if the sea dried up like sandpaper, as if the sun became a latrine. God went out of my fingers. They became stone. My body became a side of mutton and despair roamed the slaughterhouse.
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