I have gone out, a possessed witch,
haunting the black air, braver at night;
dreaming evil, I have done my hitch
over the plain houses, light by light:
lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.
A woman like that is not a woman, quite.
I have been her kind.
That's Anne Sexton, from the first verse of the poem "Her Kind." (From the collection To Bedlman and Part Way Back, 1960.) Reading over The Common Ills entry "Books That Spoke to You" we enjoyed getting a look at the choices of other community members. And we realized that we hadn't even thought to note poetry in our arts section.
We got some positive feedback on the Jean Rhys' cutting we did last week. Confession time: we had about two paragraphs of text and were freaking out as Sunday morning was rolling around.
We i.m.ed CI for assistance and were asked why we didn't round it out with quotes. One for instance, followed by another quickly ended up resulting in a piece that many of you enjoyed.
The thought of writing an interpretation of poetry left us cold and, we feared, would leave you cold as well. Noting that Anne Sexton was mentioned many times in The Common Ills entry, and since one of us was familiar with her work due to a poetry survey class, we decided to make her the focus of this entry. We checked out various volumes and also asked CI to assist by submitting any favorite passages and would possibly Shirley be interested in noting a favorite passage since her list of six books contained four volumens of poetry (two of which were by Anne Sexton)?
With Shirley and CI's assistance, we were seven selectors on this entry. Hopefully, you'll find a passage that speaks to you, one that prompts you to look into the poetry of Anne Sexton. Or maybe you'll just read through this piece with the aim of becoming a little more "well rounded?"
With so little attention given to poetry (we're as guilty as most in this country) maybe the result will be that you'll be provided with a new way of looking at the world around you? Take from it what you can.
We are America.
We are the coffin fillers.
We are the grocers of death.
We pack them in crates like cauliflowers.
("The Firebombers," The Book of Folly, 1972.)
It was only important
to smile and hold still
to lie down beside him
and to rest awhile,
to be folded up together
as if we were silk,
to sink from the eyes of mother
and not to talk.
("The Moss of His Skin," To Bedlam and Part Way Back, 1960.)
Then all this became history.
Your hand found mine.
Life rushed to my fingers like a blood clot.
Oh, my carpenter,
the fingers are rebuilt.
They dance with yours.
They dance in the attic and in Vienna.
My hand is alive all over America.
Not even death will stop it,
death shedding her blood.
Nothing will stop it, for this is the kingdom
and the kingdom comes.
("The Touch," Love Poems, 1969.)
Let's face it, I have been momentary.
A luxury. A bright red sloop in the harbor.
My hair rising like smoke from the car window.
Littleneck clams out of season.
She is more than that. She is your have to have,
has grown you your practical your tropical growth.
This is not an experiment. She is all harmony.
She sees to oars and oarlocks for the dinghy,
("For My Lover, Returning To His Wife," Love Poems, 1969.)
Two years ago, Reservist,
you would have burned
your draft card or
else have gone A.W.O.L
But you stayed to serve
the Air Force. Your head churned
with bad solutions, carrying
your heart like a football
to the goal, your good heart
that never quite ceases
to know its wrong. From
Frisco you mae a phone call.
Next they manufactured you
into an Aero-medic
who plced together
shot off pieces
of men. Some were sent off
too dead to be sick.
But I wrote no diary
for that time then
and you say what you
do today is worse.
Today you unload the bodies of men
out at Travis Air Force
Base -- that curse --
no trees, a crater
surrounded by hills.
The Starlifter from
Vietnam, the multi-hearse
jets in. One hundred
come day by day
just forty-eight hours
after death, filled
sometimes with as
many as sixty coffins in array.
[. . .]
This is the stand
that the world took
with the enemy's children
and the enemy's gains.
You unload them slipping
in their rubber sacks
within an aluminum coffin --
those human remains,
always the head higher
than the ten little toes.
They are priority when
they are shipped back
with four months pay
and a burial allotment
that they enclose.
All considerations
for these human remains!
They must have an escort!
They are classified!
Never jettisoned in
emergencies from any planes.
Stay aboard! More important
now that they've died.
You say, "You're treated like
shit until you're killed."
("Eighteen Days Without You," Love Poems, 1969.)
This is madness
but a kind of hunger.
What are good are my questions
in this hierarchy of death
where the earth and the stones go
Dinn! Dinn! Dinn!
It is hardly a feast.
It is my stomach that makes me suffer.
Turn, my hungers!
For once make a deliberate decision.
There are brains that rot here
like black bananas.
Hearts have grown as flat as dinner plates.
Anne, Anne,
flee on your donkey,
flee this sad hotel,
ride out on some hairy beast,
gallop backward pressing
your buttocks to his withers,
sit to his clumsy gait somehow.
Ride out
any old way you please!
In this place everyone talks to his own mouth.
That's what it means to be crazy.
Those I loved best died of it --
the fool's disease.
("Flee On Your Donkey," Live or Die, 1966.)
I tapped my own head;
it was glass, an inverted bowl.
At first it was private.
Then it was more than myself;
it was you, or your house
or your kitchen.
And if you turn away
because there is no lesson here
I will hold my awkward bowl,
with all its cracked stars shining
like a complicated lie,
and fasten a new skin around it
as if I were dressing an orange
or a strange sun.
Not that it was beautiful,
but that I found some order there.
("For John, Who Begs Me Not To Enquire Further," To Bedlam and Part Way Back, 1960.)
The woman is bathing her heart.
It has been torn out of her
and because it is burnt
and as a last act
she is rinsing it off in the river
This is the death market.
America,
where are your credentials?
("The Firebombers" -- again -- The Book of Folly, 1972.)
What I want to say, Linda,
is that there is nothing in your body that lies.
All that is new is telling the truth.
I'm here, that somebody else,
an old tree in the background.
Darling,
stand still at your door,
sure of yourself, a white stone, a good stone --
as exceptional as laughter
you will strike fire,
that new thing!
("Little Girl, My String Bean, My Lovely Woman," Live or Die, 1966.)