Quote

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.

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
First
Images
Important
Probably
Heart
Story
Going
Tell
Stories
Part
Firsts
Shore
Matter
Poem

More quotes by Anne Sexton

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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.
Anne Sexton
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What's missing is the eyeballs in each of us, but it doesn't matter because you've got the bucks, the bucks, the bucks.
Anne Sexton
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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.
Anne Sexton
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O yellow eye, let me be sick with your heat, let me be feverish and frowning.
Anne Sexton
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I am tearing the feathers out of the pillows, waiting, waiting for Daddy to come home and stuff me so full of our infected child that I turn invisible, but married, at last.
Anne Sexton
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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.
Anne Sexton
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If you meet a cross-eyed person you must plunge into the grass, alongside the chilly ants, fish through the green fingernails and come up with the four-leaf clover.
Anne Sexton
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The windows, the starving windows that drive the trees like nails into my heart.
Anne Sexton
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Suddenly I'm not half the girl I used to be. There's a shadow hanging over me . . . From me to you out of my electric devil.
Anne Sexton
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All the oxygen of the world was in them. All the feet of the babies of the world were in them. All the crotches of the angels of the world were in them. All the morning kisses of Philadelphia were in them.
Anne Sexton
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Let the light be called Day so that men may grow corn or take busses.
Anne Sexton
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stop the darkness and its amputations and find the real McCoy in the private holiness of my hands.
Anne Sexton
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I am not at home in myself. I am my own stranger.
Anne Sexton
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To love another is somethinglike prayer and it can't be planned, you just fallinto its arms because your belief undoes your disbelief.
Anne Sexton
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My death from the wrists, two name tags, blood worn like a corsage to bloom one on the left and one on the right.
Anne Sexton
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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.
Anne Sexton
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Let there be seasons so that our tongues will be rich in asparagus and limes.
Anne Sexton
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Home is my Bethlehem, my succoring shelter, my mental hospital, my wife, my dam, my husband, my sir, my womb, my skull.
Anne Sexton
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The fish are naked. The fish are always awake. They are the color of old spoons and caramels.
Anne Sexton
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If the doctors cure then the sun sees it. If the doctors kill then the earth hides it. The doctors should fear arrogance more than cardiac arrest.
Anne Sexton