The Truth the Dead Know- A Sexton Poem

The Truth the Dead Know

by Anne Sexton

    For my Mother, born March 1902, died March 1959

    and my Father, born February 1900, died June 1959

Gone, I say and walk from church,

refusing the stiff procession to the grave,

letting the dead ride alone in the hearse.

It is June.  I am tired of being brave.

We drive to the Cape.  I cultivate

myself where the sun gutters from the sky,

where the sea swings in like an iron gate

and we touch.  In another country people die.

My darling, the wind falls in like stones

from the whitehearted water and when we touch

we enter touch entirely.  No one's alone.

Men kill for this, or for as much.

And what of the dead?  They lie without shoes

in the stone boats.  They are more like stone

than the sea would be if it stopped.  They refuse

to be blessed, throat, eye and knucklebone.

Beautiful Anne Sexton

Beautiful Anne Sexton … incredible poet, tragic soul. Happy date of birth, lady …
(Nov. 9th 1928 – Oct. 4th 1974)

Her Kind - A Sexton Poem

Yep, yep … it was on this day in 1928 that the beautiful Anne Sexton was born. Along with her friend Plath, she’s one of the most recognized of the Confessional poets.

Collectively speaking, her poetry is a vivid reflection of her personal struggles internally and externally (she had a very troubled life).

What I learned from Sexton was that poetry doesn’t have to revolve around flowers and bumblebees and golden suns … no, poetry can touch the dark, deep internal recesses of one’s own writhing pains and struggles … but I also learned, after having learned she killed herself, that it can be very, very dangerous to do so.

Anyhow, with that said, I celebrate the poet’s birth, not death.


Now it’s very rare to find poems written by the Confessional generation that are written with a rhyming format. Needless to say, I was shocked, and utterly delighted, to find that Sexton had such a poem- it’s call Her Kind.

In it Sexton expresses, indirectly, of course, three aspects of her life that she seems unhappy with: that some have deemed her to be crazy like a witch (1st stanza); that others have tried to enslave her as a house wife (2nd stanza); and then there’s the life of adultery. Though a tragic reflection of self, it’s a great poem. Check it out.


Her Kind

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.

I have found the warm caves in the woods,
filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves,
closets, silks, innumerable goods;
fixed the suppers for the worms and the elves:
whining, rearranging the disaligned.
A woman like that is misunderstood.
I have been her kind.

I have ridden in your cart, driver,
waved my nude arms at villages going by,
learning the last bright routes, survivor
where your flames still bite my thigh
and my ribs crack where your wheels wind.
A woman like that is not ashamed to die.
I have been her kind.




Of the Poem (Poetic Parameters)

Stanza: Septet (i.e. 7 lines per stanza)

Meter: Mixed
1st stanza’s syllable count: 8 9 9 9 9 11 5
2nd stanza’s syllable count: 9 9 9 9 10 10 5
3rd stanza’s syllable count: 9 11 9 7 8 11 5

Rhyme Scheme: ababcba (per stanza); and, of course, the refrain I have been her kind.

If you'd like to hear Sexton read this piece, click this link ...

Lifted Up

I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself.

John 12:32

Uplifted

Beyond the mystic’s hope I hope
To know the higher sky
To live and breathe that vaulted slope
Where seraphs joyous fly

O raise me from this solemn earth
And place me in the blue
And grant renewal, newer birth
And clad me in thy hue

Let henceforth fairer blue skies reign
Where fowl in cadence stroll
Release me from this bond, this chain
This flesh, and free my soul

Let bright blue stars their auras lend
Whose phosphor lights I see
And all those truths that do transcend
Ah, draw them unto me

-jwm



Of the Poem (Parameters and Notes):

Stanza: Ballad, Common Measure, Quatrain
Meter: Alternates between a tetrameter (8 syllables per line), and a trimeter (6 syllables)
Rhyme Scheme: abab per individual stanza

I wrote this poem as a sort of counter-sequel to a poem I wrote and dedicated to Anne Sexton.

I named the poem, Touch the Sky. That particular poem speaks on Sexton’s desire to kill herself ('to negate flesh') and my astonishment and grief that she did. It's pretty good, you should check it out.

The imagery employed in that poem is somewhat similar to the imagery employed in this one- namely, sky verses earth. The difference between the two poems, however, and the reason this current one is a counter-sequel, is that Sexton literally took her life to escape this earthly realm, while this poem speaks of the desire to be one with God and everything that pertains to Him, the desire to cast off- not kill- the flesh.

Hope you guys like it. Happy National Poetry Month!!


****

About the sub-quote, it’s from John 12:32 and refers to Jesus’ crucifixion. While acknowledging the historical reference of the verse, I’ve always found a symbol (in fact, many symbols) hidden away in that statement. This particular poem is inspired by one of those interpretations.

The ‘earth’ represents the flesh, or that which is merely corporeal, or worldly. The 'sky' represents the spirit and that which is spiritual or heavenly.

To be ‘lifted up from the earth’ signifies a receding or drawing away from things of the flesh, or that which is worldly. At the same time, it also represents an increase in that which is spiritual and heavenly (since the ‘lifting up’ is a lifting up toward the sky).

I take, in this particular case, the word ‘man’ to symbolize spiritual truths; and so, to ‘draw all men unto me’ simply signifies exposure to spiritual truths, truths that transcend that which is merely corporeal.

The crucifixion itself was an actual act of sacrifice, and therefore, latent in the poem is the idea that departing from the base things of the flesh to attain the noble things of the spirit requires sacrifice.

Interestingly, and I love this fact, the words ‘holy’ and ‘saint’ and ‘sanctification’ all imply a state of separation in the Bible- that is, a separation and departure from that which is not of God. This poem implies that idea of separation, a separation that brings one closer to God, and one that increases propriety. In fact, the point of the poem is exceedingly akin to one of my favorite quotes:

We ought to fly away from the earth to heaven as quickly as we can; and to fly away is to become like God, as far as this is possible; and to become like him is to become holy, just, and wise.
-Plato-

Touch the Sky

Touch the Sky

A Poem in Gentle Dedication to Anne Sexton

She wants to walk the clouds aglow
To negate flesh and touch the sky
She thinks- I think- it’s bliss to die
To flee this sleepy earth below

It’s life, not death, she deems the foe
And earthen truths she deems the lie
She therefore towards the heavens ply
And goes where scarce others go

One wonders why she wishes so
Why she would walk where wrens would fly
The truth is that I don’t know why
The truth is … I don’t want to know

-jwm



Poetic Parameters

Stanza: Quatrain
Meter: Tetrameter (i.e. 8 syllables per line)
Rhyme Scheme: abba abba abba (Italian quatrain in repetition)

An Anne Sexton Selection

Man of many hearts, you are a fool!
The clover has grown thorns this year
and robbed the cattle of their fruit
and the stones of the river
have sucked men's eyes dry,
season after season,
and every bed has been condemned,
not by morality or law,
but by time.

... very curious imagery from an extremely intense Anne Sexton poem, The Interrogation of the Man of Many Hearts. If you want to read one of Sexton's more intense poems, click on the link and read this one. Let me know what you think, what you feel. I'll leave my opinion in the comments area as soon as I get a moment.

Sexton on Plath's Death

Plath and Sexton were friends who shared several things in common: they were both woman; they were both roughly the same age; they were both exceptional poets; and they were both living a tortuous life of mental depression which, as a result of it and an intense obsession with death, caused them to kill themselves.

The women talked often with one another of their ills, particularly of their deep desire to die. It seems, to me at any rate, that, along with their poetry writing, they were somewhat therapeutic for one another ... but not therapeutic enough.

On February 11th, 1963, Plath ended her life. News of her friend's death must have reached Sexton quickly, for just six days later she scripted a poem (a sort of elegy) in memory of her friend. Here's that poem:


Sylvia's Death
for Sylvia Plath

O Sylvia, Sylvia,
with a dead box of stones and spoons,

with two children, two meteors
wandering loose in a tiny playroom,

with your mouth into the sheet,
into the roofbeam, into the dumb prayer,

(Sylvia, Sylvia
where did you go
after you wrote me
from Devonshire
about rasing potatoes
and keeping bees?)

what did you stand by,
just how did you lie down into?

Thief --
how did you crawl into,

crawl down alone
into the death I wanted so badly and for so long,

the death we said we both outgrew,
the one we wore on our skinny breasts,

the one we talked of so often each time
we downed three extra dry martinis in Boston,

the death that talked of analysts and cures,
the death that talked like brides with plots,

the death we drank to,
the motives and the quiet deed?

(In Boston
the dying
ride in cabs,
yes death again,
that ride home
with our boy.)

O Sylvia, I remember the sleepy drummer
who beat on our eyes with an old story,

how we wanted to let him come
like a sadist or a New York fairy

to do his job,
a necessity, a window in a wall or a crib,

and since that time he waited
under our heart, our cupboard,

and I see now that we store him up
year after year, old suicides

and I know at the news of your death
a terrible taste for it, like salt,

(And me,
me too.
And now, Sylvia,
you again
with death again,
that ride home
with our boy.)

And I say only
with my arms stretched out into that stone place,

what is your death
but an old belonging,

a mole that fell out
of one of your poems?

(O friend,
while the moon's bad,
and the king's gone,
and the queen's at her wit's end
the bar fly ought to sing!)

O tiny mother,
you too!
O funny duchess!
O blonde thing!

February 17, 1963


Tragically, on October 4th, 1974, Sexton, like her friend, ended her life by asphyxiation.

Anne Sexton*

Anne Sexton (1928 - 1974)

Anne Gray Harvey was born in Newton, Massachusetts, in 1928. She attended Garland Junior College for one year and married Alfred Muller Sexton II at age nineteen. She enrolled in a modeling course at the Hart Agency and lived in San Francisco and Baltimore. In 1953 she gave birth to a daughter. In 1954 she was diagnosed with postpartum depression, suffered her first mental breakdown, and was admitted to Westwood Lodge, a neuropsychiatric hospital she would repeatedly return to for help. In 1955, following the birth of her second daughter, Sexton suffered another breakdown and was hospitalized again; her children were sent to live with her husband's parents. That same year, on her birthday, she attempted suicide.

She was encouraged by her doctor to pursue an interest in writing poetry she had developed in high school, and in the fall of 1957 she enrolled in a poetry workshop at the Boston Center for Adult Education. In her introduction to Anne Sexton's Complete Poems, the poet Maxine Kumin, who was enrolled with Sexton in the 1957 workshop and became her close friend, describes her belief that it was the writing of poetry that gave Sexton something to work towards and develop and thus enabled her to endure life for as long as she did. In 1974 at the age of 46, despite a successful writing career--she won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1967 for Live or Die--she lost her battle with mental illness and committed suicide.

Like Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, W. D. Snodgrass (who exerted a great influence on her work), and other "confessional" poets, Sexton offers the reader an intimate view of the emotional anguish that characterized her life. She made the experience of being a woman a central issue in her poetry, and though she endured criticism for bringing subjects such as menstruation, abortion, and drug addiction into her work, her skill as a poet transcended the controversy over her subject matter.

*Biography from Poets.org