[Mary Meriam]

I've been reading Anne Sexton's Transformations. I also read the intro to Sexton's collected: "How It Was: Maxine Kumin on Anne Sexton" here are some quotes --

In addition to the strong feelings Anne’s work aroused, there was the undeniable fact of her physical beauty. Her presence on the platform dazzled with its staginess, its props of water glass, cigarettes, and ashtray.
...
During this period, all of us wrote and revised prolifically, competitively, as if all the wolves of the world were at our backs...There was no more determined reviser than Sexton, who would willingly push a poem through twenty or more drafts. She had an unparalleled tenacity in those early days and only abandoned a “failed” poem with regret, if not downright anger, after dozens of attempts to make it come right. ... As a result of this experience, Anne came to believe in the value of the workshop. She loved growing in this way...
....
Initially, however, she worked quite strictly in traditional forms, believing in the value of their rigor as a forcing agent, believing that the hardest truths would come to light if they were made to fit a stanzaic pattern, a rhyme scheme, a prevailing meter.
....
But for all the sought-after and hard-won poems Anne wrote.. a number were almost totally “given” ones... the poem itself came quite cleanly and easily, as if written out in the air beforehand and then transcribed onto the page with very few alterations.