Customer Reviews (3)

Suffocating anguish and bursts of joy

Anne Sexton's final battles with her personal demons are documented here and it does not make for easy reading. The book opens with the poem Rowing and ends with The Rowing Endeth. In between are extraordinarily powerful poems about life, death, despair, the suicidal impulsive and mercifully about love too.

Referring to herself as Ms Dog, the author very honestly examines her psyche in poems like The Civil War, The Room Of My Life and The Witch's Life, a poem that continues a theme established by Her Kind in the first volume To Bedlam and Part Way Back and continued through The Black Art in All My Pretty Ones.

A poem like Courage overflows with hurt but has a transcendent quality too and the same duality or conflict becomes very clear in the poem After Auschwitz, where she declares: "Man ... / .../ is not a temple/but an outhouse", proceeding to curse mankind, before concluding with: "I say these things aloud./ I beg the Lord not to hear."

The Poet Of Ignorance is painful to read as the arresting image of an indestructible crab gripping the poet's heart becomes a metaphor for mental pain. This oppressive image is reiterated in The Dead Heart, where the tongue did the killing, a theme more delicately investigated in the next poem, Words.

The following one, The Sickness Unto Death, must be one of the bleakest poems in the English language in its seemingly casual wrestling with evil and utter despair. The line "My body became a side of mutton/and despair roamed the slaughterhouse" perhaps best encapsulates the unrelenting torment.

Mercifully, poems like Welcome Morning - a description of a burst of domestic joy - and The Big Heart - where the "fury of love" for friends and family rushes into her heart, show the other side of Sexton's intensity of feeling. The Awful Rowing Toward God was the last book to be arranged by the author herself and is not recommended for the fragile reader.

It chronicles a particularly agonizing search for meaning. But perhaps because of the intensity, some of the musical rhythm of her work from especially the two aforementioned books is missing here. There is still the conversational style, but it would appear that the large crab gripping Sexton's heart was squeezing very hard here, suffocating all but the most unquenchable outbursts of joy like Welcome Morning.

Suffocating anguish and bursts of joy
Anne Sexton's final battles with her personal demons are documented here and it does not make for easy reading. The book opens with the poem Rowing and ends with The Rowing Endeth and inbetween are extraordinarily powerful poems about life, death, despair, the suicidal impulsive and mercifully about love too. Referring to herself as Ms Dog, the author very honestly examines her psyche in poems like The Civil War, The Room Of My Life and The Witch's Life, a poem that continues a theme established by Her Kind in the first volume To Bedlam And Part Way Back and continued through The Black Art in All My Pretty Ones. A poem like Courage overflows with hurt but has a transcendent quality too and the same duality or conflict becomes very clear in the poem After Auschwitz, where she declares: "Man ... / .../ is not a temple/but an outhouse", proceeding to curse mankind, before concluding with: "I say these things aloud./ I beg the Lord not to hear." The Poet Of Ignorance is painful to read as the arresting image of an indestructible crab gripping the poet's heart becomes a metaphor for mental pain. This oppressive image is reiterated in The Dead Heart, where the tongue did the killing, a theme more delicately investigated in the next poem, Words. The following one, The Sickness Unto Death, must be one of the bleakest poems in the English language in its seemingly casual wrestling with evil and utter despair. The line "My body became a side of mutton/and despair roamed the slaughterhouse" perhaps best encapsulates the unrelenting torment. Mercifully, poems like Welcome Morning - a description of a burst of domestic joy - and The Big Heart - where the "fury of love" for friends and family rushes into her heart, show the other side of Sexton's intensity of feeling. The Awful Rowing Toward God was the last book to be arranged by the author herself and is not recommended for the fragile reader. It reflects the agonizing search for meaning that is so universal to the individual consciousness. But perhaps because of the intensity, some of the musical rhythm of her work from especially the two aforementioned books is missing here. There is still the conversational style, but it would appear that the large crab gripping Sexton's heart was squeezing very hard here, suffocating all but the most unquenchable outbursts of joy like Welcome Morning.

painful, but of great value
What to make of this sorid little book of verse? Its like watching someone disembowel themselves, draw up a schematic of what they should "really" look like, and then try, like Humpty Dumpty, to put themselves back together again.

Yet, somewhere here Anne Sexton reaches for something a little further from (and at the same time closer to) herself...namely, God. And that is what these poems are: Sexton wrestling with her God. A brief taste of what this text is like (from "The Sickness Unto Death" which is one of my favorite poems contained in the book)--

"I who was a house full of bowel movement,
I who was a defaced altar,
I who wanted to crawl toward God
could not move nor eat bread.

So I ate myself,
bite by bite,
and the tears washed me,
wave after cowardly wave,
swallowing canker after canker
and Jesus stood over me looking down
and He laughed to find me gone,
and put His mouth to mine
and gave me His air."

There is much to meditate on within the pages of "The Awful Rowing Toward God."When it comes to matters such as spiritual suffering, seeking, and pain, Mrs. Sexton seems to have had some experience. No doubt, this will not be everyone's cup of tea. Nevertheless, there is much of value here.

That is why I recommend this book. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

The Good, The Bad, And All The Pretty Ones
There are few people who can look at the world and see consistently either a dark paradise of pleasure, pain and perdition, or a sub-Eden of endless wonders and gratitude. It is hard to find such persons because the world in fact exists in both realms, the light and the dark. The inherent beauty of life and order and prosperity is conjoined to its bastard twin, the seemingly endless cycle of suffering, death and calamity. If one could surgically separate these two halves of the world, the aura, the spiritual connection left between them would be the poetry of Anne Sexton. Her poetry is careful to never appear too cheerful, yet it can never fully condemn the heart's need for gladness. There seems to be a desperate loathing for hope in her writing, yet the writing itself becomes redemption. Just as the separation of twins joined by birth cannot undo that certain duality unknown by those born alone, Anne Sexton seems to carefully choose which way to shift her weight as she sits on the fence.

The two-faced reality of living is a difficult burden for any of us to bear, but what drives us toward our conclusions is often unclear. This, of course, is what we have poets for. These lines from "With Mercy For The Greedy" define, at least for Sexton, the only ointment for the injuries of the world.
"This is what poems are:
With mercy
For the greedy,
They are the tongue's wrangle,
The world's pottage, the rat's star."

Her poetry is her confession of sin, her prayers of both petition and praise. The stanzas of her poems are the frontlines in her battle to choose a side. Sexton longs to touch the sweet, soft, white underbelly of the world, but consistently draws her hand back from the raised and prickling hairs on the back of the beast. She sees the wonders of the world, even acknowledges God, but as she writes, "need is not quite belief."

In All My Pretty Ones, Sexton does seem at times to step over the edge, completely, into either the bliss of ignorance or the dead man's walk of self-absorbed bitterness. Her poem, "The Hangman," is a heartbreaking picture of disappointed motherhood, in which a child is stricken near death, only to live on, cruelly.
"Supplied
With air, against my guilty wish,
Your clogged pipes cried
Like Lazarus."

Against her guilty wish. How many times have we wished for the beauty to die? How many times have we begged the eyes of the face of God to simply turn away? It is this kind of realism in Sexton's poetry that does not anger or hurt her reader, because she will not take a side. Indeed, she is not without her moments of joy.

"I Remember" is one of the few poems in this collection which lingers for its whole duration on the beautiful. At least in this collection, it is a rare moment. All of her images are of satisfied adventure, not perfect, but just right.
"...one day I tied my hair back
with a ribbon and you said
that I looked almost like
a puritan lady and what
I remember best is that
the door to your room was
the door to mine."

It is in the lines of these poems that one sees the spirit of a person torn in two. Sexton's poems are exploratory, consolatory, and reconciliatory. She seems to be trying constantly to make even the numbers of an impossible equation. If ever wandering spirits, lost and confused souls could communicate their frustrations, perhaps they would find their clearest voice in the words of Sexton's poems. As she writes in "Flight" of the streetlights which, "sucked in the insects who had nowhere else to go," Sexton's poetry seems to beckon the leftover auras of broken people to sit with her on the fence, in the hope that they will not have to chose a side after all, and perhaps instead there can be a middle place, a gathering of unhappy dreamers, all her pretty ones.

Moving tapestry of melancholy and acceptance
The magnificent title poem opens this second volume of Sexton's poetry and again showcases her innovative skill at weaving words, images and rhythm to gripping effect in its description of sorting through personal effects after the death of a parent. There's some quirky humour in A Curse Against Elegant Elegies, especially in the image of the surly preacher who shuffled into the yard "looking for a scapegoat." One of the most moving poems here is titled For Eleanor Boylan Talking With God, a lovely and touching description of a devout friend. And one of the saddest poems, The Truth The Dead Know, reveals the poet's feelings as she leaves church after the death of her father. The flowing structure of the poem and the resigned sense of finality are breathtaking; it reminds me of the music of Angels Of Light, especially the desolate landscape of Song For My Father on the New Mother album. The poem Old brilliantly juxtaposes the reality of a geriatric ward's needles, rubber sheets and tubes with a childhood dream of eating wild blueberries, whilst The Starry Night which opens with a quote by Vincent Van Gogh, reminds me of Sylvia Plath's Ariel and Don McLean's song Starry Starry Night. Other favourites of mine include Lament, In The Deep Museum and The Black Art which reminds me of the poem Her Kind from the first book To Bedlam And Part Way Back. All My Pretty Ones shows Anne Sexton at the height of her art and together with Bedlam, should be in every poetry lover's collection.

The best Sexton-- read it before you read the collected works
All My Pretty One is, in my opinion, the best of the Sexton works, even as it is also one of the most difficult to read for being sad.

When she says "Also, I am tired of all the dead" in the poem "A Curse Against Elegies", it is a measure of her strength as a poet how heavily that line reads. It should also not be forgotten (as it too often is about Sexton) how well this work depicts not only the sorrow, but the tentative steps towards something lighter:

"I cannot promise very much.
I give you the images I know.
Lie still with me and watch.
A pheasant moves
by like a seal, pulled through the mulch
by his thick white collar. He's on show
like a clown. He drags a beige feather that he removed,
one time, from an old lady's hat.
We laugh and we touch.
I promise you love. Time will not take away that."

All My Pretty Ones is also one of the poetry books that functions very well together as a book rather than as merely a collection of poems. Accordingly, even though many or most of these poems are available through other collections, I would advise you to read this as a single volume if you can find it. ... Read more

Product Description
Contains some of the best and most representative writing about Sexton's life and work
... Read more

Product Description
This is a survey of the poetry of Anne Sexton, from the standpoint of the special statement made in her poems. The study charts the development of that statement by a close reading of eight volumes in the order of their publication. ... Read more

Product Description
Focusing on Sexton's poems rather than on the life she led, this fresh critique of her work restarts the debate about her poetry thirty years after her death. McGowan argues that Sexton's poetry collections develop a three-way investigation into the possibilities of language to convey an individual's response to her own existence, to the project of defining love (by physical, human, and divine standards) and to the purpose of the aesthetic in our understanding of these entities. He charts the chronological development of Sexton's poetic aesthetic and provides a new interpretation of this major poet's work. ... Read more