Anne Sexton Audio & Necklace
Anne Sexton’s performances of her own work are riveting and beautiful in their intensity. Her voice is low and gravelly, considered, her words drawn out as she rolls them around her mouth.
In the few videos that survive of her reading at home, she is captivating as her eyes brush towards the camera from her pure white face. She does not smile and her brow furrows as she considers her words, purring them or spitting them out in genuine bitterness.
It is well worth listening to the poet speak for herself. There are various recordings to be found, including Anne Sexton Reads Her Works – The 1959 and 1961 Readings. Available to download from Amazon for only £5.99, the collection includes All My Pretty Ones, Lullaby and The Operation.
Sexton’s work and indeed Sexton herself have the spellbinding quality of insanity. Beautiful and self-destructive, she was a model for a short time before her first mental breakdown.
From then until her suicide in 1974, she merged a passionate creativity with a drive towards self-annihilation, eventually succumbing to alcoholism and poisoning herself with carbon monoxide. That her poetry was so bound up with her self has elevated her to cult status amongst certain groups.
This elegant necklace is a delicate reminder of Sexton’s essential femininity. She was an offensive poet to some – her musings on menstruation, depression, abortion and adultery have been highly criticised, particularly by men – but for me it is these very things that make her work so significant.
Very unusual, the necklace consists of an aquatic green porcelain pendant on a copper chain, and reads ‘a woman who loves a woman is forever young’ – a line from Sexton’s poem Rapunzel. From panopoly at Etsy, it’s £13.01.
Want more? Check out this beautiful Anne Sexton charm bracelet from Just Be Designs. Enter our competition and it could be yours.
Clare Hammond
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