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The Death Notebooks
Despair and the manifestations of death are discussed by the modern woman poet.
56 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1974
14 people are currently reading
1211 people want to read
About the author
Anne Sexton
149 books2,492 followersAnne Sexton once told a journalist that her fans thought she got better, but actually, she just became a poet. These words are characteristic of a talented poet that received therapy for years, but committed suicide in spite of this. The poetry fed her art, but it also imprisoned her in a way.
Her parents didn’t expect much of her academically, and after completing her schooling at Rogers Hall, she went to a finishing school in Boston. Anne met her husband, Kayo (Alfred Muller Sexton II), in 1948 by correspondence. Her mother advised her to elope after she thought she might be pregnant. Anne and Kayo got married in 1948 in North Carolina. After the honeymoon Kayo started working at his father-in-law’s wool business.
In 1953 Anne gave birth to her first-born, Linda Gray. Two years later Linda’s sister, Joyce Ladd, was born. But Anne couldn’t cope with the pressure of two small children over and above Kayo’s frequent absence (due to work). Shortly after Joy was born, Anne was admitted to Westwood Lodge where she was treated by the psychiatrist Dr. Martha Brunner-Orne (and six months later, her son, Dr. Martin Orne, took over). The original diagnosis was for post-natal depression, but the psychologists later decided that Anne suffered from depression of biological nature.
While she was receiving psychiatric treatment, Anne started writing poetry. It all started after another suicide attempt, when Orne came to her and told her that she still has a purpose in life. At that stage she was convinced that she could only become a prostitute. Orne showed her another talent that she had, and her first poetry appeared in print in the January of 1957. She wrote a huge amount of poetry that was published in a dozen poetry books. In 1967 she became the proud recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Live or Die (1966).
In March 1972 Anne and Kayo got divorced. After this a desperate kind of loneliness took over her life. Her addiction to pills and alcohol worsened. Without Kayo the house was very quiet, the children were at college and most of Anne’s friends were avoiding her because they could no longer sympathize with her growing problems. Her poetry started playing such a major role in her life that conflicts were written out, rather than being faced. Anne didn’t mention a word to Kayo about her intention to get divorced. He knew that she desperately needed him, but her poems, and her real feelings toward him, put it differently. Kayo talks about it in an interview as follows: “... I honestly don’t know, never have known, what her real, driving motive was in the divorce. Which is another reason why it absolutely drove me into the floor like a nail when she did it.”
On 4 October 1974 she put on her mother’s old fur coat before, glass of vodka in hand, she climbed into her car, turned the key and died of monodioxide inhalation. She once told Orne that “I feel like my mother whenever I put it [the fur coat] on”. Her oldest daughter, Linda, was appointed as literary executor and we have her to thank for the three poetry books that appeared posthumously.
Her parents didn’t expect much of her academically, and after completing her schooling at Rogers Hall, she went to a finishing school in Boston. Anne met her husband, Kayo (Alfred Muller Sexton II), in 1948 by correspondence. Her mother advised her to elope after she thought she might be pregnant. Anne and Kayo got married in 1948 in North Carolina. After the honeymoon Kayo started working at his father-in-law’s wool business.
In 1953 Anne gave birth to her first-born, Linda Gray. Two years later Linda’s sister, Joyce Ladd, was born. But Anne couldn’t cope with the pressure of two small children over and above Kayo’s frequent absence (due to work). Shortly after Joy was born, Anne was admitted to Westwood Lodge where she was treated by the psychiatrist Dr. Martha Brunner-Orne (and six months later, her son, Dr. Martin Orne, took over). The original diagnosis was for post-natal depression, but the psychologists later decided that Anne suffered from depression of biological nature.
While she was receiving psychiatric treatment, Anne started writing poetry. It all started after another suicide attempt, when Orne came to her and told her that she still has a purpose in life. At that stage she was convinced that she could only become a prostitute. Orne showed her another talent that she had, and her first poetry appeared in print in the January of 1957. She wrote a huge amount of poetry that was published in a dozen poetry books. In 1967 she became the proud recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Live or Die (1966).
In March 1972 Anne and Kayo got divorced. After this a desperate kind of loneliness took over her life. Her addiction to pills and alcohol worsened. Without Kayo the house was very quiet, the children were at college and most of Anne’s friends were avoiding her because they could no longer sympathize with her growing problems. Her poetry started playing such a major role in her life that conflicts were written out, rather than being faced. Anne didn’t mention a word to Kayo about her intention to get divorced. He knew that she desperately needed him, but her poems, and her real feelings toward him, put it differently. Kayo talks about it in an interview as follows: “... I honestly don’t know, never have known, what her real, driving motive was in the divorce. Which is another reason why it absolutely drove me into the floor like a nail when she did it.”
On 4 October 1974 she put on her mother’s old fur coat before, glass of vodka in hand, she climbed into her car, turned the key and died of monodioxide inhalation. She once told Orne that “I feel like my mother whenever I put it [the fur coat] on”. Her oldest daughter, Linda, was appointed as literary executor and we have her to thank for the three poetry books that appeared posthumously.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 60 reviews
April 6, 2025
Mrs. Sexton went out looking for the gods.
Her prelude to the masterful collection, "The Awful Rowing Toward God," Sexton here in her Death Notebooks, reads like a mystical vision, containing within itself, both dark and light.
With her dry wit, her sarcasm, her consciousness seems to take in everything, taking the divine within herself, embracing the dark and the light simultaneously. She writes her own psalms.
Her prayers are as honest as her confessions:
I pray that my typewriter, ever faithful, will not break
even though I threw it across the hospital room six years ago.
She has a poem titled, "God's Backside," a "Mary's Song," and "Jesus Walking." A sequence of "Furies." Ancestral healing: Mother/Father references. As well as the spiritual refrain, for the collective: Forgive us, Father, for we know not what we do.
Her consciousness feels split: between Christopher, her Imaginary brother, her twin, the interrogator in her head and her holy consciousness, an Awareness.
Across the world
bombs drop
in their awful labor.
Often there are wars
but the shops stay open
& sausages are still fried.
Her prelude to the masterful collection, "The Awful Rowing Toward God," Sexton here in her Death Notebooks, reads like a mystical vision, containing within itself, both dark and light.
With her dry wit, her sarcasm, her consciousness seems to take in everything, taking the divine within herself, embracing the dark and the light simultaneously. She writes her own psalms.
Her prayers are as honest as her confessions:
I pray that my typewriter, ever faithful, will not break
even though I threw it across the hospital room six years ago.
She has a poem titled, "God's Backside," a "Mary's Song," and "Jesus Walking." A sequence of "Furies." Ancestral healing: Mother/Father references. As well as the spiritual refrain, for the collective: Forgive us, Father, for we know not what we do.
Her consciousness feels split: between Christopher, her Imaginary brother, her twin, the interrogator in her head and her holy consciousness, an Awareness.
Across the world
bombs drop
in their awful labor.
Often there are wars
but the shops stay open
& sausages are still fried.
August 30, 2015
This was my gateway drug to the work of Anne Sexton, the book that led me to read all her poems, her chatty letters, her second-rate children's stories (co-authored by Maxine Kumin), her daughter's troubled memoir, Diane Middlebrook's great biography... Going back to this collection now, I'm fascinated anew by what amounts to an extended, irreverent, searching, heartfelt, jaded conversation with God. Sexton's Psalms alone could serve as the basis for a post-apocalyptic religion. I'm in her church. All blasphemers welcome.
May 17, 2025
4/10.
It starts out extremely repetitive.
It continues by being extremely repetitive.
It stops being repetitive with the penultimate poem (Hurry Up Please It's Time), which is also, unsuprisingly, the best poem in the collection.
It ends by being extremely repetitive, but at least the last poem actually implements it properly.
It starts out extremely repetitive.
It continues by being extremely repetitive.
It stops being repetitive with the penultimate poem (Hurry Up Please It's Time), which is also, unsuprisingly, the best poem in the collection.
It ends by being extremely repetitive, but at least the last poem actually implements it properly.
June 29, 2023
anne wanted to die and killed herself in the car and abused her child and wrote this poetry collection with beautiful words and beautiful thoughts and beautiful frustration and it's so awful the way this has appeared in my life. depression is boring, i think
December 7, 2013
"I have ink but no pen, still
I dream that I can piss in God's eye.
I dream I'm a boy with a zipper.
It's so practical, la de dah.
the trouble with being a woman, Skeezix,
is being a little girl in the first place.
Not all the books of the world will change that.
I have swallowed an orange, being woman.
You have swallowed a ruler, being a man.
Yet waiting to die we are the same thing."
from "Hurry Up It's Time"
Holy fuck, this book slays.
I dream that I can piss in God's eye.
I dream I'm a boy with a zipper.
It's so practical, la de dah.
the trouble with being a woman, Skeezix,
is being a little girl in the first place.
Not all the books of the world will change that.
I have swallowed an orange, being woman.
You have swallowed a ruler, being a man.
Yet waiting to die we are the same thing."
from "Hurry Up It's Time"
Holy fuck, this book slays.
Read
January 6, 2023now I wouldn't call it a breakthrough as such because I Felt anne arrive before but something happened in the Notebooks here to me which was , unutterably alive. shivers - possible side effect of reading anne aloud. anyway what she's doing here in the space of a line is phenomenal & the contemporary can keep thinking of her
The day is slipping away, why am I
out here, what do they want?
I am sorrowful in November...
(no they don't want that,
they want bee stings).
The day is slipping away, why am I
out here, what do they want?
I am sorrowful in November...
(no they don't want that,
they want bee stings).
January 1, 2016
Anne Sexton a brilliant controversial poet who took her own life at age 46, in 1974 even though she had religion is puzzling. Anyway suffering from bouts of mental breakdowns, and guilt from having committed adultery (with other women and therapists) she was in an enormous amount of pain.
The Death Notebooks, are beautifully written, however she already had a plan to commit suicide, as she was writing them and was preparing for the Day. Most of the poems in this book embody difficulty since she mocks in a spiritual way her own depression and towards the end of the book, she begins to write "Psalms". She asks for mercy, through her prose over all the dirty little sins she had committed during her lifetime. She is about to off herself and writes about heaven and challenges her readers with Christ imagery, she assumes there is a heaven where things are better wherever that may be. She prays and rejoices of wonderful things to come painting a delightful portrait that makes you wonder if she truly believes in it or not.
Most of the poems are about rage and, desperation that represent most of the time some kind of repressed depression.
"The Furies" section and the we have the "the Death Baby"
Then she become religious, so be it I suppose. I hope she found what she was looking for after her death. It has always been understood that people that have faith and commit suicide are engaging in a big sin.
If you are in a good frame of mind, read it. But honestly, it's not amusing me!
The Death Notebooks, are beautifully written, however she already had a plan to commit suicide, as she was writing them and was preparing for the Day. Most of the poems in this book embody difficulty since she mocks in a spiritual way her own depression and towards the end of the book, she begins to write "Psalms". She asks for mercy, through her prose over all the dirty little sins she had committed during her lifetime. She is about to off herself and writes about heaven and challenges her readers with Christ imagery, she assumes there is a heaven where things are better wherever that may be. She prays and rejoices of wonderful things to come painting a delightful portrait that makes you wonder if she truly believes in it or not.
Most of the poems are about rage and, desperation that represent most of the time some kind of repressed depression.
"The Furies" section and the we have the "the Death Baby"
Then she become religious, so be it I suppose. I hope she found what she was looking for after her death. It has always been understood that people that have faith and commit suicide are engaging in a big sin.
If you are in a good frame of mind, read it. But honestly, it's not amusing me!
March 12, 2019
Faves -
Making a Living
The Death Baby
The Furies
Clothes
Making a Living
The Death Baby
The Furies
Clothes
April 14, 2024
“They fish right through the door and pull eyes from the fire. They rock upon the daybreak and amputate the waters. They are beating the sea, they are hurting it, delving down into the inscrutable salt.”
“The Lord is my shepherd, He will swallow me. The Lord is my shepherd, He will allow me back out.”
“For I am placing fist over fist on rock and plunging into the altitude of words.”
“The Lord is my shepherd, He will swallow me. The Lord is my shepherd, He will allow me back out.”
“For I am placing fist over fist on rock and plunging into the altitude of words.”
November 13, 2019
A poetry collection that was going to be published after Sexton's death but was instead released in 1974. Highlights ~ "making a living" "the death baby" "rats live on no evil star" "baby picture" " the furies" "playing on a 707" and " hurry up please it's time".
November 27, 2011
"it makes me laugh
to see woman in this condition
it makes me laugh for america and new york city
when you'r hands are cut off
and no one answers the phone"
death is to ann sexton, in this thin poetry volume, much larger and vaster and more frequent then the mere process of decaying and ceasing to be, to ann, a clinically depressed poet, a women deprived of her rights, the function of everyday living, the very stale motions and actions taken, are death it's self.
"once upon a time we were all born,
popped out like jelly rolls
forgetting our fishdom
the pleasuring seas
the country of comfort
spanked into the oxygens of death,
good morning life, we say when we wake,
hail mary coffe toast
and we americans take juice
a liquid sun going down
good morning life.
to wake up is to be born.
to brush your teeth is to be alive.
to make a bowl movement is also desirable.
la de dah,
it's all routine"
ann sexton, being the free spirited, feminist, intellectual she was, was doomed for her mother's life of the 1960s rural suburbs, terrifying as it is, to have children and a household, and a kitchen when all that is on her mind, is death and poetry, the poetry of death, and the death of poetry.
"if my mother had lived to see it
she would have put a WANTED sign up in the post office
for the black, the red, the blue I'v worn.
still, it would be perfectly fine with me
to die like a nice girl
smelling of clorox and duz.
being sixteen-in the pants
I would die full of question."
once more, she was clearly oppressed, 60's society patronising her for her sexuality, assuming she is to be a housewife, a cleansed, pure unpromiscuous housewife.
with a much, much forgotten life.
bu ann was anything but.
sexton had had a very disturbed history with mental illness and eventually ended her own life.
as many other poets and artist, has drawn a beautiful, melancholy, poetic, perhaps distraught picture of death as a sort of salvation.
despite my disagreeing with so many things she believes (our religious beliefs for one)
I believe i total unbiasedness when it comes to jugging a work of art.
this was defiantly beautiful in its accurate, romantic portrayal of sexual oppression, and exploration of possibilities of life and death.
at times even, stark, pure anger.
"give me some tomato aspic, helen!
I do not want to be alone"
to see woman in this condition
it makes me laugh for america and new york city
when you'r hands are cut off
and no one answers the phone"
death is to ann sexton, in this thin poetry volume, much larger and vaster and more frequent then the mere process of decaying and ceasing to be, to ann, a clinically depressed poet, a women deprived of her rights, the function of everyday living, the very stale motions and actions taken, are death it's self.
"once upon a time we were all born,
popped out like jelly rolls
forgetting our fishdom
the pleasuring seas
the country of comfort
spanked into the oxygens of death,
good morning life, we say when we wake,
hail mary coffe toast
and we americans take juice
a liquid sun going down
good morning life.
to wake up is to be born.
to brush your teeth is to be alive.
to make a bowl movement is also desirable.
la de dah,
it's all routine"
ann sexton, being the free spirited, feminist, intellectual she was, was doomed for her mother's life of the 1960s rural suburbs, terrifying as it is, to have children and a household, and a kitchen when all that is on her mind, is death and poetry, the poetry of death, and the death of poetry.
"if my mother had lived to see it
she would have put a WANTED sign up in the post office
for the black, the red, the blue I'v worn.
still, it would be perfectly fine with me
to die like a nice girl
smelling of clorox and duz.
being sixteen-in the pants
I would die full of question."
once more, she was clearly oppressed, 60's society patronising her for her sexuality, assuming she is to be a housewife, a cleansed, pure unpromiscuous housewife.
with a much, much forgotten life.
bu ann was anything but.
sexton had had a very disturbed history with mental illness and eventually ended her own life.
as many other poets and artist, has drawn a beautiful, melancholy, poetic, perhaps distraught picture of death as a sort of salvation.
despite my disagreeing with so many things she believes (our religious beliefs for one)
I believe i total unbiasedness when it comes to jugging a work of art.
this was defiantly beautiful in its accurate, romantic portrayal of sexual oppression, and exploration of possibilities of life and death.
at times even, stark, pure anger.
"give me some tomato aspic, helen!
I do not want to be alone"
November 10, 2011
There were some great ones here, but like most anthologies, it was hit and miss. I do wish I could take a class and just read all of her works in order and discuss them with other appreciators of poetry.
February 27, 2008
Boring, stale metaphors, lacks music or syntactical invention. Blah... it was hell to finish this book.
July 18, 2022
probably more of a 3.5 maybe……. i’m just repeating myself at this point but very beautiful words in here. she says depression is boring at one point, which is RICH coming from her. but a line that’s sticking with me is from hurry up please it’s time where she said, “the trouble with being a woman, skeezix, is being a little girl in the first place. not all the books of the world will change that.” this was personal because i am trying to solve the problem of being a woman who was once a little girl by reading all of the books in the world. my favorites were gods, making a living, the death baby, the fury of abandonment , the fury of overshoes, the fury of flowers and worms, the fury of sunsets, clothes, hurry up please it’s time, and o ye tongues
April 7, 2021
Took a little break from Sexton’s work - to savour it more & also because Berlin came out of the strictest aspects of our Winter lockdown.
It took me a minute to readjust to her style, and I spent a few pages thinking that maybe reading her daughters memoirs before finishing the actual poems had been a mistake after all. What if I had trapped her in her time- a woman in the second half of the 20th Century having a nervous breakdown- like a fly in amber?
But then Sexton rushes in - a yellow wind, a cream pie flying, a woman peeking out of her seashell, and all the other lovely images she stuffs into your hands- and I was in love again.
It took me a minute to readjust to her style, and I spent a few pages thinking that maybe reading her daughters memoirs before finishing the actual poems had been a mistake after all. What if I had trapped her in her time- a woman in the second half of the 20th Century having a nervous breakdown- like a fly in amber?
But then Sexton rushes in - a yellow wind, a cream pie flying, a woman peeking out of her seashell, and all the other lovely images she stuffs into your hands- and I was in love again.
March 15, 2021
Then she journeyed back to her own house
and the gods of the world were shut in the lavatory.
At last!
she cried out,
and locked the door.
and the gods of the world were shut in the lavatory.
At last!
she cried out,
and locked the door.
March 21, 2025
#tortured
March 29, 2024
cradle, you are a grave place
** found out anne sexton abused her children, need to look at these poems differently now
** found out anne sexton abused her children, need to look at these poems differently now
November 7, 2018
1.5/5
I know I'm a snob regarding certain things. Books, words, turns of phrases in general, I also barely read poetry (ten books of it probably in the last five years, and multiple by a single favored author), so I'm not expert when it comes to evaluating this collection. So, I just have to say: I didn't like these. Save for a brief section that I latched onto more out of queer tendencies than anything else, there was no flow or critical divide or even contemplative murmur for me to do the same with. Getting out of O'Connor meant needing a respite from the Christian obsessions, so it certainly didn't help when the introduction's god-driven stance was backed up by psalm structures and the odd Holocaust metaphor. Fucking bad form there on that last bit. It reminded me of the worst of Plath's poetry, what little I've encountered of it, so I have to wonder whether that was how antisemitism was fashionable back then, different from today's dogwhistling about "globalists" and "coastal elites" and "Hollywood liberals, not to mention synagogue mass murders. All in all, banal in the way too much 'transgressive' material will get after the sound and fury stops being anything more novel than a slight case of flatulence. After eight years of build up, I'm glad I've lanced the boil, thought I would have preferred it not be a boil at all.
I feel I should pick up another book of poetry to redeem myself, or at least to oil my critical faculties for this particular sector. I thought the end of the challenge would herald a shift in my reception now that I have a much vaster of choices at my disposal, but it seems the older end of my library catalog isn't finished haunting me yet, and putting off the chance to destabilize it will only make the disconnect worse. As such, I will still be making the oldest fifth of my TBR a priority, but as evidenced by my current diving into two works that have both graced my shelves for barely a year, I'm balancing the desire with a good amount of fresh blood. In any case, I haven't made up my mind about whether to Jettison both or only this one of the Sexton. A second chance, perhaps, although whether it takes as long as eight years for me to try again remains to be seen.
I knew a beautiful woman onceWay back when, before dropping out and switching character tracks and sexualities, I kept and actively collated a document filled with words, phrases, poetry, and eventually my own reviews, all of which resonated with me in some way or another. The formulating work that inspired this was Tithe by Holly Black and its chapter heading epithets, and many of the first "literary" works I added on this site under my own power were drawn from those intimations of promised glories. 'The Death Notebooks' was one of them, and it took me so long to acquire a copy (a good eight years, at least), that I purchased another work of Sexton's out of the hope of at least experiencing the writer, if not the work, sooner rather than later. Unfortunately, I found and read TDN so soon afterwards that I now wonder whether it would be good to send its more hastily acquired fellow work along with it to the resell pile. Unfortunate, but there's no guarantee I would have liked this Sexton had I acquired it any sooner. I went looking for Keats and Walcott and E. Browning, and what I got was more corporate than concrete, more the insularity of small town US religioning than the pinpoint of an emotion woven through the texture of life.
who sang with her fingertips
and her eyes were brown
like small birds.
At the cup of her breasts
I drew wine.
At the mound of her legs
I drew figs.
She sang for my thirst,
mysterious songs of God
that would have laid an army down.
It was as if a morning-glory
had bloomed in her throat
and all that blue
and small pollen
ate into my heart
violent and religious.
I know I'm a snob regarding certain things. Books, words, turns of phrases in general, I also barely read poetry (ten books of it probably in the last five years, and multiple by a single favored author), so I'm not expert when it comes to evaluating this collection. So, I just have to say: I didn't like these. Save for a brief section that I latched onto more out of queer tendencies than anything else, there was no flow or critical divide or even contemplative murmur for me to do the same with. Getting out of O'Connor meant needing a respite from the Christian obsessions, so it certainly didn't help when the introduction's god-driven stance was backed up by psalm structures and the odd Holocaust metaphor. Fucking bad form there on that last bit. It reminded me of the worst of Plath's poetry, what little I've encountered of it, so I have to wonder whether that was how antisemitism was fashionable back then, different from today's dogwhistling about "globalists" and "coastal elites" and "Hollywood liberals, not to mention synagogue mass murders. All in all, banal in the way too much 'transgressive' material will get after the sound and fury stops being anything more novel than a slight case of flatulence. After eight years of build up, I'm glad I've lanced the boil, thought I would have preferred it not be a boil at all.
I feel I should pick up another book of poetry to redeem myself, or at least to oil my critical faculties for this particular sector. I thought the end of the challenge would herald a shift in my reception now that I have a much vaster of choices at my disposal, but it seems the older end of my library catalog isn't finished haunting me yet, and putting off the chance to destabilize it will only make the disconnect worse. As such, I will still be making the oldest fifth of my TBR a priority, but as evidenced by my current diving into two works that have both graced my shelves for barely a year, I'm balancing the desire with a good amount of fresh blood. In any case, I haven't made up my mind about whether to Jettison both or only this one of the Sexton. A second chance, perhaps, although whether it takes as long as eight years for me to try again remains to be seen.
August 3, 2021
For America only your dolls are cheerful.
(from Psalm 6)
(from Psalm 6)
January 17, 2022
Time grows dim. Time that was so long
grows short, time, all goggle-eyed,
wiggling her skirts, singing her torch song,
giving the boys a buzz and a ride,
that Nazi Mama with her beer and sauerkraut.
Time, old gal of mine, will soon dim out.
May I say how young she was back then,
playing piggley-witch and hoola-hoop,
dancing the jango with six awful men,
letting the chickens out of the coop,
promising to marry Jack ad Jerome,
and never bothering, never, never,
to come back home.
Time was when time had time enough
and the sea washed me daily in its delicate brine.
There is no terror when you swim in the buff
or speed up the boat and hang out the line.
Time was when I could hiccup and hold my breath
and not in that instant meet Mr. Death.
Mr. Death, you actor, you have many masks.
Once you were sleek, a kind of Valentino
with my father's bathtub gin in your flask.
With my cinched-in waist and my dumb vertigo
at the crook of your long white arm
and yet you never bent me back, never, never,
into your blackguard charm.
Next, Mr. Death, you held out the bait
during my first decline, as they say,
telling that suicide baby to celebrate
her own going in her own puppet play.
I went out popping pills and crying adieu
in my own death camp with my own little Jew.
Now your beer belly hangs out like Fatso.
You are popping your buttons and expelling gas.
How can I lie down with you, my comical beau
when you are so middle-aged and lower-class.
Yet you'll press me down in your envelope;
pressed at neat as a butterfly, forever, forever,
beside Mussolini and the Pope.
Mr. Death, when you came to the ovens it was short
and to the drowning man you were likewise kind,
and the nicest of all to the baby I had to abort
and middling you were to all the crucified combined.
But when it comes to my death let it be slow,
let it be pantomime, this last peep show,
so that I may squat at the edge trying on
my black necessary trousseau.
* * *
I would like to bury
all the hating eyes
under the sand somewhere off
the North Atlantic and suffocate
them with the awful sand
and put all their colours to sleep
in that soft smother.
Take the brown eyes of my father,
those gun shots, those mean muds.
Bury them.
Take the blue eyes of my mother,
naked as the sea,
waiting to pull you down
where there is no air, no God
Bury them.
Take the black eyes of my lover,
coal eyes like a cruel hog,
wanting to whip you and laugh.
Bury them.
Take the hating eyes of martyrs,
presidents, bus collectors,
bank managers, soldiers.
Bury them.
Take my eyes, half blind
and falling into the air.
Bury them.
Take your eyes.
I come to the centre,
where a shark looks up at death
and thinks of my death.
They'd like to take my heart
and squeeze it like a doughnut.
They'd like to take my eyes
and poke a hatpin through
their pupils. Not just to bury
bu to stab. As for your eyes,
I fold up in front of them
in a baby ball and you send
them to the State Asylum.
Look! Look! Both those
mice are watching you
from behind the kind bars.
* * *
The rain drums down like red ants,
each bouncing off my window.
These ants are in great pain
and they cry out as they hit,
as if their little legs were only
stitched on and their heads pasted.
And oh they bring to mind the grave,
so humble, so willing to be beat upon
with its awful lettering and
the body lying underneath
without an umbrella.
Depression is boring, I think,
and I would do better to make
some soup and light up the cave.
* * *
Let there be a God as large as a sunlamp to laugh his heat at you.
Let there be an earth with a form like a jigsaw and let it fit for all of ye.
Let there be the darkness of a darkroom out of the deep. A worm room.
Let there be a God who sees light at the end of a long thin pipe and lets it in.
Let God divide them in half.
Let God share his Hoodsie.
Let the waters divide so that God may wash his face in first light.
Let there be pin holes in the sky in which God puts his little finger.
Let the stars be a heaven of jelly rolls and babies laughing.
Let the light be called Day so that men may grow corn or take busses.
Let there be on the second day dry land do that all men may dry their toes with Cannon towels.
Let God call this earth and feel the grass rise up like angel hair.
Let there be bananas, cucumbers, prunes, mangoes, beans, rice and candy canes.
Let them seed and reseed.
Let there be seasons so that we may learn the architecture of the sky with eagles, finches, flickers, seagulls.
Let there be seasons so that we may put on twelve coats and shovel snow or take off our skins and bathe in the Carribean.
Let there be seasons so the sky dogs will jump across the sun in December.
Let there be seasons so that the eel may come out of her green cave.
Let there be seasons so that the raccoon may raise his blood level.
Let there be seasons so that the wind may be hoisted for an orange leaf.
Let there be seasons so that the rain will bury many ships.
Let there be seasons so that the miracles will fill our drinking glass with runny gold.
Let there be seasons so that our tongues will be rich in asparagus and limes.
Let there be seasons so that our fires will not forsake us and turn to metal.
Let there be seasons so that a man may close his palm on a woman's breast and bring forth a sweet nipple, a starberry.
Let there be a heaven so that man may outlive his grasses.
grows short, time, all goggle-eyed,
wiggling her skirts, singing her torch song,
giving the boys a buzz and a ride,
that Nazi Mama with her beer and sauerkraut.
Time, old gal of mine, will soon dim out.
May I say how young she was back then,
playing piggley-witch and hoola-hoop,
dancing the jango with six awful men,
letting the chickens out of the coop,
promising to marry Jack ad Jerome,
and never bothering, never, never,
to come back home.
Time was when time had time enough
and the sea washed me daily in its delicate brine.
There is no terror when you swim in the buff
or speed up the boat and hang out the line.
Time was when I could hiccup and hold my breath
and not in that instant meet Mr. Death.
Mr. Death, you actor, you have many masks.
Once you were sleek, a kind of Valentino
with my father's bathtub gin in your flask.
With my cinched-in waist and my dumb vertigo
at the crook of your long white arm
and yet you never bent me back, never, never,
into your blackguard charm.
Next, Mr. Death, you held out the bait
during my first decline, as they say,
telling that suicide baby to celebrate
her own going in her own puppet play.
I went out popping pills and crying adieu
in my own death camp with my own little Jew.
Now your beer belly hangs out like Fatso.
You are popping your buttons and expelling gas.
How can I lie down with you, my comical beau
when you are so middle-aged and lower-class.
Yet you'll press me down in your envelope;
pressed at neat as a butterfly, forever, forever,
beside Mussolini and the Pope.
Mr. Death, when you came to the ovens it was short
and to the drowning man you were likewise kind,
and the nicest of all to the baby I had to abort
and middling you were to all the crucified combined.
But when it comes to my death let it be slow,
let it be pantomime, this last peep show,
so that I may squat at the edge trying on
my black necessary trousseau.
- For Mr. Death Who Stands with His Door Open, pg. 5-6
* * *
I would like to bury
all the hating eyes
under the sand somewhere off
the North Atlantic and suffocate
them with the awful sand
and put all their colours to sleep
in that soft smother.
Take the brown eyes of my father,
those gun shots, those mean muds.
Bury them.
Take the blue eyes of my mother,
naked as the sea,
waiting to pull you down
where there is no air, no God
Bury them.
Take the black eyes of my lover,
coal eyes like a cruel hog,
wanting to whip you and laugh.
Bury them.
Take the hating eyes of martyrs,
presidents, bus collectors,
bank managers, soldiers.
Bury them.
Take my eyes, half blind
and falling into the air.
Bury them.
Take your eyes.
I come to the centre,
where a shark looks up at death
and thinks of my death.
They'd like to take my heart
and squeeze it like a doughnut.
They'd like to take my eyes
and poke a hatpin through
their pupils. Not just to bury
bu to stab. As for your eyes,
I fold up in front of them
in a baby ball and you send
them to the State Asylum.
Look! Look! Both those
mice are watching you
from behind the kind bars.
- The Furies: The Fury of Hating Eyes, pg. 29-30
* * *
The rain drums down like red ants,
each bouncing off my window.
These ants are in great pain
and they cry out as they hit,
as if their little legs were only
stitched on and their heads pasted.
And oh they bring to mind the grave,
so humble, so willing to be beat upon
with its awful lettering and
the body lying underneath
without an umbrella.
Depression is boring, I think,
and I would do better to make
some soup and light up the cave.
- The Furies: The Fury of Rain Storms, pg. 43
* * *
Let there be a God as large as a sunlamp to laugh his heat at you.
Let there be an earth with a form like a jigsaw and let it fit for all of ye.
Let there be the darkness of a darkroom out of the deep. A worm room.
Let there be a God who sees light at the end of a long thin pipe and lets it in.
Let God divide them in half.
Let God share his Hoodsie.
Let the waters divide so that God may wash his face in first light.
Let there be pin holes in the sky in which God puts his little finger.
Let the stars be a heaven of jelly rolls and babies laughing.
Let the light be called Day so that men may grow corn or take busses.
Let there be on the second day dry land do that all men may dry their toes with Cannon towels.
Let God call this earth and feel the grass rise up like angel hair.
Let there be bananas, cucumbers, prunes, mangoes, beans, rice and candy canes.
Let them seed and reseed.
Let there be seasons so that we may learn the architecture of the sky with eagles, finches, flickers, seagulls.
Let there be seasons so that we may put on twelve coats and shovel snow or take off our skins and bathe in the Carribean.
Let there be seasons so the sky dogs will jump across the sun in December.
Let there be seasons so that the eel may come out of her green cave.
Let there be seasons so that the raccoon may raise his blood level.
Let there be seasons so that the wind may be hoisted for an orange leaf.
Let there be seasons so that the rain will bury many ships.
Let there be seasons so that the miracles will fill our drinking glass with runny gold.
Let there be seasons so that our tongues will be rich in asparagus and limes.
Let there be seasons so that our fires will not forsake us and turn to metal.
Let there be seasons so that a man may close his palm on a woman's breast and bring forth a sweet nipple, a starberry.
Let there be a heaven so that man may outlive his grasses.
- O Ye Tongues: First Psalm, pg. 77-79
February 3, 2017
A must read for anyone interested in poetry and mental illness. For me, this is Anne at her best.
January 22, 2016
Harrowing, but much less depressing than I expected.
"Rejoice with the potato which is a sweet lover and made of angel mattresses."
"Rejoice with the potato which is a sweet lover and made of angel mattresses."
December 30, 2023
The progression of these poems is immaculate. There’s foreshadowing, there’s callbacks, there’s recurrent themes (other than death), there’s humor, there’s despair, disgust & abjection, there’s hope. Anne Sexton’s poems here read like the darker dyad of Mary Oliver, how she equates nature and life with humanity and soul. She gains new insight each time, as if learning from her own words. Parts of the final Psalms poems are written in the Prophetic perfect tense, solidifying Anne’s garnered certainty.
Some of these poems are repetitive and a bit dull, too similar to Sylvia Plath for my liking. But only if you extracted them from the context of the anthology, which otherwise provides them with their necessary narrative purpose.
My favorite lines:
”Plankton came and he held them in his palm like God’s littlest lightbulbs”
”You have seen my father whip me. You have seen me stroke my father’s whip.”
”Rejoice with the roach who is despised among creatures and yet allowed his ugly place.”
This is one of my favorite lines of poetry ever, because it was introduced to me by my late friend, Luca.
”For I shat and Christopher smiled and said let the air be sweet with your soil.”
Lmfao.
Other poems I really liked: GRANDFATHER YOUR WOUND, THE FURY OF BEAUTIFUL BONES, THE FURY OF HATING EYES, THE FURY OF GUITARS AND SOPRANOS, THE FURY OF COCKS, CLOTHES, MARY’S SONG, EIGTH PSALM, TENTH PSALM
Poems I did not like: HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME
Particularly these lines:
”Why shouldn’t I pull down my pants to show my little cunny to Tom // I wee-wee like a squaw”
Girl what the hell…
Some of these poems are repetitive and a bit dull, too similar to Sylvia Plath for my liking. But only if you extracted them from the context of the anthology, which otherwise provides them with their necessary narrative purpose.
My favorite lines:
”Plankton came and he held them in his palm like God’s littlest lightbulbs”
”You have seen my father whip me. You have seen me stroke my father’s whip.”
”Rejoice with the roach who is despised among creatures and yet allowed his ugly place.”
This is one of my favorite lines of poetry ever, because it was introduced to me by my late friend, Luca.
”For I shat and Christopher smiled and said let the air be sweet with your soil.”
Lmfao.
Other poems I really liked: GRANDFATHER YOUR WOUND, THE FURY OF BEAUTIFUL BONES, THE FURY OF HATING EYES, THE FURY OF GUITARS AND SOPRANOS, THE FURY OF COCKS, CLOTHES, MARY’S SONG, EIGTH PSALM, TENTH PSALM
Poems I did not like: HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME
Particularly these lines:
”Why shouldn’t I pull down my pants to show my little cunny to Tom // I wee-wee like a squaw”
Girl what the hell…
October 13, 2019
While I have found the Confessional School of poetry to be generally too self-indulgent, Anne Sexton's "The Death Notebooks" dances a fine line between art and autobiography to crate an experience for the reader that reveals and delights. When confessional poetry fails, I think, it is too specific to the individual, losing gift of great art at speaking tot he universal human experience. Sexton's work in this volume succeeds here.
Yet waiting to die we are the same thing.
Her struggles with life and faith permeate this collection, remaining unresolved by avoiding pat answers. The old faith seems dried out:
You have to polish up the stars
with Bab-o and find a new God
as the earth empties out
into the gnarled hands of the old redeemer.
But the Christian dream remains alive in its democracy:
We are put there beside the three thieves
for the lowest of us all
deserve to smile in eternity
like a watermelon.
Sexton writes well, passionately, honestly, using her words in her futile struggle against depression that came early abuse and life's daily insults. Her words may still redeem us. That's what she hopes for as she writes:
For I am placing fist over fist on rock and plunging into the altitude of words. The silence of words.
This collection is for all of us who live along the rock edge of death, smiling like watermelons.
Yet waiting to die we are the same thing.
Her struggles with life and faith permeate this collection, remaining unresolved by avoiding pat answers. The old faith seems dried out:
You have to polish up the stars
with Bab-o and find a new God
as the earth empties out
into the gnarled hands of the old redeemer.
But the Christian dream remains alive in its democracy:
We are put there beside the three thieves
for the lowest of us all
deserve to smile in eternity
like a watermelon.
Sexton writes well, passionately, honestly, using her words in her futile struggle against depression that came early abuse and life's daily insults. Her words may still redeem us. That's what she hopes for as she writes:
For I am placing fist over fist on rock and plunging into the altitude of words. The silence of words.
This collection is for all of us who live along the rock edge of death, smiling like watermelons.
September 16, 2023
A curious poetry collection that caught my attention because of the cover and the topic at hand. Occasionally cryptic, often spinning off religious language, this collection has you thinking and processing often. Unlike other poets, rather than set you up for a punchline, Sexton leads you off either a narrative or an emotional journey as if you're crossing a high wire. Looking down may be treacherous and often the best way to enjoy is to finish and read again. Several lines really hit the mark of what she's getting to with several highpoints throughout the collection. The psalms at the end I suspect can be hit and miss, but the collection definitely offers plenty of inspiration throughout. It's the type of book that you read and makes you want to capture your own slivers of soul on paper.
April 24, 2018
Anne Sexton, as her poetic career went on, I find that began to see poetry as either too great a task or too little of one. Many of these metaphors are either too brilliant or too absurd and bland, such as,
"Rejoice with the panda bear who hugs himself."
Give praise with the barnacle who cements himself to the rock and lets the waves feed him green stuff."
Few favorites such as For Mr. Death Who Stands with His Door Open, The Death Baby, Clothes, Mary's Song, God's Backside.
"Rejoice with the panda bear who hugs himself."
Give praise with the barnacle who cements himself to the rock and lets the waves feed him green stuff."
Few favorites such as For Mr. Death Who Stands with His Door Open, The Death Baby, Clothes, Mary's Song, God's Backside.
May 18, 2018
I enjoyed this better than The Book of Folly and felt it was more transformation and mature than Love Poems or Live or Die.
The Death Note Books ends with a strong string of poems - Jesus Walks, Mary's Song, Hurry Up Please it Time were my three favorite. O Ye Tounges feels like an outro / coda.
Likewise the collection starts with some excellent poems - Gods, Making A Living, and For Mister Death.
"To Pray, Jesus Knew, is to be a man carrying a man"
My favorite line.
The Death Note Books ends with a strong string of poems - Jesus Walks, Mary's Song, Hurry Up Please it Time were my three favorite. O Ye Tounges feels like an outro / coda.
Likewise the collection starts with some excellent poems - Gods, Making A Living, and For Mister Death.
"To Pray, Jesus Knew, is to be a man carrying a man"
My favorite line.
June 25, 2019
I read a lot of poetry, but I feel that this collection of Sexton's poems were some of her weakest. Her phrases and word choices were jarring. Maybe they were intentional, but they took me out of her poems and made them a chore to read. I feel she was trying too hard and that often happens when someone writes severely depressed. Only when someone reflects back on depression after they crawl out of that hole, can they truly write objectively about it.
April 27, 2020
There are some moments in this collection that I really love, and other moments where I felt confused. Reading a bit about the author, I think it’s likely she was in a pretty bad place while writing many of these. I’d be interested to learn more about her use of particular imagery (i.e. oranges, dogs, body parts) that comes up often in the collection.
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