[John Isbell]

Bill: nope, that's Sexton's opening stanza all right. Her Complete Poems are beside me.

[William A. Baurle]

Originally Posted by John Isbell

Bill: nope, that's Sexton's opening stanza all right. Her Complete Poems are beside me.

Thanks, John. It just reads a tad awkward to me. I still can't find my Complete Poems. That was my bible when I was in my early twenties.

[William A. Baurle]

I forgot how Great a poet she was. I have to post this section from a long poem called The Double Image:


5.

I checked out for the last time
on the first of May;
graduate of the mental cases,
with my analyst’s okay,
my complete book of rhymes,
my typewriter and my suitcases.

All that summer I learned life
back into my own
seven rooms, visited the swan boats,
the market, answered the phone,
served cocktails as a wife
should, made love among my petticoats

and August tan. And you came each
weekend. But I lie.
You seldom came. I just pretended
you, small piglet, butterfly
girl with jelly bean cheeks,
disobedient three, my splendid

stranger. And I had to learn
why I would rather
die than love, how your innocence
would hurt and how I gather
guilt like a young intern
his symptoms, his certain evidence.

That October day we went
to Gloucester— the red hills
reminded me of the dry red fur fox
coat I played in as a child; stock-still
like a bear or a tent,
like a great cave laughing or a red fur fox.

We drove past the hatchery,
the hut that sells bait,
past Pigeon Cove, past the Yacht Club, past Squall’s
Hill, to the house that waits
still, on the top of the sea,
and two portraits hung on the opposite walls.

— Anne Sexton


John - NOTE the enjambments. I'm sure you have, since you have her book beside you, but damn, she was good. There have been threads where some rather prominent poets ridiculed Sexton - suggesting that she TRIED to write in perfect meter, but failed. Absolutely absurd. A machine can write in perfect meter, with enough input. Poets will be poets, however, as much as other poets protest and protest and protest.

[Ian Hoffman]

I've not read a lot of Sexton. I remember her being slammed around these parts—along with Plath—and finding that very unfair, based on what I have read of her. Sure, her writing is deeply personal, but almost all poetry is on at least some level. If it's good, it's good. I should investigate more at some point.

I have two more gems to share, from contemporary poet Joshua Mehigan (who actually has an account here). These both blew me away:


Fire Safety

Aluminum tank
indifferent in its place

behind a glass door
in the passageway,

like a tea urn
in a museum case;

screaming-machines
that dumbly spend each day

waiting for gas or smoke
or hands or heat,

positioned like beige land mines
overhead,

sanguine on walls,
or posted on the street

like dwarf grandfather clocks
spray painted red;

little gray hydrant
in its warlike stance;

old fire-escape,
all-weather paint job peeling,

a shelf for threadbare rugs
and yellowing plants;

sprinkler heads,
blooming from the public ceiling;

all sitting
supernaturally still,

waiting for us to cry out.
And we will.


What a killer poem! The last couplet—the form (take a second. This is a form you're highly familiar with)—and 'dwarf grandfather clocks / spray painted red'. So many good moments.

One more Mehigan that blows me away: http://www.poemtree.com/poems/Abject-Bed.htm

Read that and then name the form. It's pretty clever.

[William A. Baurle]

Indeed, I've written my share of those, but I like how the poet decided to make it stanzaically different than the traditional form.

Before I scrolled down, I thought for a brief second, "Ah, a sestina!" Pleasant surprise.

**

Yes, there were a few threads that took shots at Sexton, and at least two prominent formalists (one whom I've seen in major, big-house anthologies) argued that she was simply not capable of writing in strict forms. What I think is that she dabbled a bit in it, did it her own way, and then continued to do whatever the hell she wanted, which is what we'd expect from any great poet.

But even Sexton wasn't the poet Plath was. Anyone reading Plath's total output (not just Ariel) and can still say she wasn't a great poet, is someone I couldn't take too seriously.

**I should add that if you're going to read Sexton, just go about it as you would reading someone like Ginsberg. Both poets got sloppy and lazy, and uber-confessional sometimes with far too much information, as with Ginsberg's:

"...wish I had summin to shove up my ass..." during one of his longer onanistic excursions.

[John Isbell]

I'm not a big fan of Sexton's - whereas I find Plath unrivaled in her art - but a couple of Sexton's works blow me away. "Unknown Girl in the Maternity Ward", for instance, or "The Fury Of Beautiful Bones", which does make me think of Plath:

"Sing me a thrush, bone.
Sing me a nest of cup and pestle.
Sing me a sweetbread for an old grandfather.
Sing me a foot and a doorknob, for you are my love.
Oh sing, bone bag man, sing.
Your head is what I remember that August
you were in love with another woman but
that didn't matter. I was the guy of your
bones, your fingers long and nubby, your
forehead a beacon, bare as marble and I worried
you like an odor because you had not quite forgotten,
bone bag man, garlic in the North End,
the book you dedicated, naked as a fish,
naked as someone drowning into his own mouth.
I wonder, Mr. Bone man, what you're thinking
of your fury now, gone sour as a sinking whale,
crawling up the alphabet on her own bones.
Am I in your ear still singing songs in the rain,
me of the death rattle, me of the magnolias,
me of the sawdust tavern at the city's edge.
Women have lovely bones, arms, neck, thigh
and I admire them also, but your bones
supersede loveliness. They are the tough
ones that get broken and reset. I just can't
answer for you, only for your bones,
round rulers, round nudgers, round poles,
numb nubkins, the sword of sugar.
I feel the skull, Mr. Skeleton, living its
own life in its own skin."

Anne Sexton

And since I'm posting here, I'll mention Tagore, another Nobel Prizewinner (the first I think in the developing world) absent in the Vintage anthology. They seem to have something against Nobel Prizewinners.

[William A. Baurle]

Could be?

Maybe McClatchy was advised not to select Nobel Prize winners? Though I doubt it, since there must be some included in that book. I'll look into it when I get time.

I do know that Harold Bloom purposefully neglected one of the BAAP's, edited by Adrienne Rich, when he edited the Best of the BAAP's one year, on the grounds that Rich's selections were politically rather than esthetically motivated. That caused a BIG snafu, but Bloom couldn't have cared less, being Bloom. In fact, I think it's safe to say that he wanted to cause a shit-storm. And he was successful!

Thanks for the Sexton. And I think we need to put up some Plath. She has MANY hidden gems.

[John Isbell]

Yes, i think Paz and Walcott at least are in. But it does seem odd. I still say there's no better world poetry anthology I know, and I do like his Horace. Nobody's perfect, as the millionaire says to Jack Lemon. We are perfectible.

Cheers,
John

[Michael F]

John,

I like Tagore. Tagore reminds me of Hafiz. Hafiz reminds me of Rumi. Here's a snippet of Rumi that I can never forget, from "Green Ears":


The way of love is not
a subtle argument.

The door there
is devastation.

Birds make great sky-circles
of their freedom.
How do they learn it?

They fall, and falling,
they're given wings.

(translation Coleman Barks)

[John Isbell]

Hi Michael,

Thank you for quoting the Barks. The story goes that Barks is loose, but it blew me away when I found his Essential Rumi. I have Hafez et al. in the Dick Davis version, where the rhyme hampers my enjoyment, but I do love FitzGerald's Rubaiyat. Of that Persian/Sufi school, Saadi's The Rose Garden I also have, but haven't yet read.

Cheers,
John