0:11

Hello and welcome to Back listed the podcast

0:14

which gives New Life twelve. Books. Today.

0:24

You find this in western, a small Aswan

0:26

town on the outskirts of Boston. When.

0:29

The slightly cramped dining room of a

0:31

two storey modern colonial house in about

0:33

Nineteen Sixty Two. The. Space

0:36

is dominated. By. A tall

0:38

slim woman with.bobbed hair and piercing

0:40

blue eyes. She is smoking languidly

0:43

pencil in hand, Poring. Over

0:45

a huge chief of papers, what appears to

0:47

be a card table around her, Books and

0:49

papers a stacked an unruly piles spitting out

0:51

into the rest of the room. I'm John

0:54

Richardson, the publisher of Unbound where people crowd

0:56

from the books they really want to read,

0:58

and I'm Andy Miller, the author of the

1:00

Year of Reading Dangerous. They. Are.

1:02

Guess for this episode is Emily Barry. This.

1:05

Is her first time on the

1:07

podcast Welcome Emulate. Hello I Emily

1:09

Emily is a poet, writer, and

1:11

editor living in London. She is

1:13

the author three books of poems

1:16

published by Fibrin Faber. Dear Boy

1:18

Twenty Thirteen. Stranger. Baby.

1:20

Twenty seventeen. And. On exhausted

1:22

Time Twenty Twenty Two and

1:24

co writer of the Breakfast

1:26

Bible a compendium of. Breakfasts,

1:30

Her lyric essay in the

1:32

secret country of her Mind

1:34

on dreams, aggro, phobia and

1:36

the imagination appeared in the

1:38

limited edition Artists Book many

1:40

Nights by Jackie Kenny. she's

1:42

editor of chief of the

1:44

Bedtime Stories app Sleep Worlds.

1:47

And I have yet to share this with them. The

1:49

barry cause I've saved it until this moment. I.

1:52

Am a huge fan of Emily Berries

1:54

work and so I match the having

1:56

a bit of a fan moments being

1:58

here. On the internet

2:01

talking to the poet Emily Barry.

2:03

So my question to you Emily's

2:05

why are you so good at

2:07

poetry. Offenses

2:10

that say this: It's. Still

2:12

has increased since. Okay gonna come of. this

2:14

is a from way. Tell

2:17

me about the app. I'm no,

2:19

wasn't familiar with your app. What is your

2:21

app? Sleep World's Yeah! This is a new

2:23

app that was south last year. And

2:26

Sit. It. Has stories

2:28

some of the writers in

2:31

Cj done soon and and

2:33

for me the. And Tacky co

2:35

not quite sure how to plants her son

2:37

and. Yes we to do with ah yes

2:39

we we who we love lamb. And

2:42

basically this the way the stories work is:

2:44

there's no. Slots. As it

2:46

was, they're like little scenes. That. Our.

2:49

Policies. World's each story as a well

2:51

done that added to and as you listen.

2:53

To them he some kind of fall in a

2:55

now and it doesn't matter if you fall asleep

2:57

at seven to be. Say.

3:00

Goods that East Sussex his client

3:03

with expertise for a writer. The

3:05

ambient. Oh yeah. I mean the

3:07

idea is that that that good? because as

3:09

class. Arranges up the offer these kind

3:12

of stories button the either is that

3:14

this one is. they are actually good.

3:16

Literature, Wise, but at the same

3:19

time they're not so gripping that

3:21

you sappho night china find that

3:23

will happens. And and I'm

3:25

yes the editor So I service

3:27

commission the writers and. At.

3:30

At the Stories. And stuff and it's literally

3:32

hit to him to six. Or

3:35

or many listeners use. Back list is

3:38

to a slumber sire if you need

3:40

says you need any tips on how

3:42

sick rarely droid fables into the bed

3:44

we can? We can do that in.

3:47

My brother listens to the Spoke coast

3:49

because it reminds him of when we

3:51

were children. Nice to read to him

3:53

at night. He says he says

3:56

he. Says that

3:58

rice or go for you have both. got deep

4:00

voices which are statistically the

4:02

most sought after

4:05

bedtime story voices. So yeah,

4:07

unfortunately, it's very sexist. So

4:09

men's voices are much more

4:13

after in this sweet dreams after

4:15

this show, everyone. The book we're

4:17

here to discuss, not

4:19

I think a book that many people will use

4:21

to put themselves to sleep is All

4:24

My Pretty ones, the second book of

4:26

poetry by Anne Sexton, one of the

4:28

most important and influential American poets of

4:30

the mid 20th century. It

4:32

was first published in 1962 by Helen Mifflin and

4:36

cemented Sexton's reputation at the forefront

4:38

of the new school of confessional

4:40

poetry, which included Robert Lowell,

4:43

Sylvia Plath, W. D. Snograss and

4:45

John Berryman. Confessional

4:47

poetry was marked out by its intense

4:49

personal focus and its willingness to deal

4:51

in explicit detail with the facts of

4:54

mental illness, sexuality and death. All

4:56

these themes are vividly present in All My Pretty

4:58

Ones. The collection takes its name

5:01

from the line in Matt Beth, where Macduff

5:03

discovers his wife and children have been brutally

5:05

murdered on Matt Beth's orders, comprising

5:08

32 poems, divided

5:11

into five carefully structured sections. It

5:14

contains some of Sexton's most famous poems, including

5:16

the title poem, The Truth

5:18

the Dead Know, The Operation and Women

5:20

with Girdle. You'll hear some of them later

5:23

in the episode. This

5:25

book was warmly received by critics and

5:28

fellow poets alike. Sexton

5:30

had studied with Robert Lowell and

5:32

asked him for a blurb, which indeed

5:34

he provided. He wrote of

5:37

the poems that all one can say is that

5:39

they are Sexton and therefore precious.

5:43

Her friend Sylvia Plath was more fulsome,

5:45

calling the collection superbly

5:47

masterful, womanly in the

5:49

greatest sense, and so

5:51

blessedly unliterary. But

5:54

Elizabeth Bishop had perhaps the deepest insight.

5:57

She refused to provide a blurb. but

6:00

wrote to Sexton saying that You

6:03

began right off speaking in an authentic

6:05

voice of your own This

6:07

is very rare and has

6:09

saved you a great deal of time Understanding

6:14

Sexton's voice and why it continues

6:16

to speak to so many readers

6:19

is what we are here to explore

6:21

And when we come back from this

6:23

little break We will

6:26

go straight into hearing some poetry

6:29

By and Sexton, but first

6:32

here's a word from our sponsors Okay

6:39

Understanding and Sexton's voice and

6:41

why it continues to speak to so many readers

6:44

is what we are here to explore So

6:47

first of all, let me ask you Emily the

6:49

question that we ask everyone on backlisted Where were

6:51

you and who were you when you first? encountered

6:54

either this volume of

6:57

poetry or and Sexton's work in

6:59

general Well, I'd

7:01

love to say that I discovered her when I

7:03

was a teenager because that seems like the most

7:05

suitable time But I think it was probably when

7:07

I was in my mid-20s and I was studying

7:09

creative writing and The

7:14

first time I came across or was introduced you

7:16

with her kind from the first collection and

7:20

Yeah, I just became kind of obsessed with that poem I'm

7:23

I'm kind of like I'm not really necessarily a

7:25

completist when it comes to poetry So I took

7:28

I start off with one poem and I just

7:30

really like it and I just read it over and

7:32

over again So I think with her kind that's what

7:35

happened I mean it's still one of the few poems

7:37

that I know off my heart and I

7:39

still kind of recite it to myself when I

7:41

feel like doing something like that so

7:44

it was only some time later that

7:46

I saw oh, I should read some of this

7:48

poets other work and She's

7:51

a great poet to come to when

7:54

you're just starting out as a poet

7:56

because she's so Permission-giving,

7:58

I mean even now like

8:00

a lot of her work is so taboo

8:02

breaking and writing about stuff

8:05

that you know you wouldn't necessarily

8:07

think you could write about so

8:09

yeah I think it was a kind of an important

8:13

time in my own sort of development as

8:15

a writer. I'm

8:18

very keen that we get Anne Sexton's

8:20

poetic voice in here before John and

8:22

I talk. So Emily I wonder could

8:24

I ask you if you would read

8:26

to us the first poem

8:29

in All My Pretty Ones? Yeah so

8:33

this is The Truth, The Dead Know and it

8:36

has a dedication for my

8:38

mother born March 1902 died March 1959 and my

8:40

father born February 1900 died June 1959. Gone I

8:42

say and walk from church

8:54

refusing the stiff procession to the

8:56

grave letting the dead ride

8:58

alone in the hearse. It is

9:00

June I am tired

9:02

of being brave. We

9:05

drive to the Cape I

9:07

cultivate myself where the sun gutters

9:10

from the sky where the

9:12

sea swings in like an iron gate

9:14

and we touch. In

9:16

another country people die. My

9:20

darling the wind falls in

9:22

like stones from the white-hearted

9:25

water and when we touch

9:27

we enter touch entirely. No

9:30

one's alone. Men kill

9:32

for this or for as

9:34

much. And what

9:36

of the dead? They lie

9:39

without shoes in their stone

9:41

boats. They are more like

9:43

stone than the sea would be if

9:45

it's stopped. They refuse

9:47

to be blessed, throat,

9:50

eye and knuckle bone. Wow.

9:58

Emily what? aspects

10:00

of Anne Sexton's work,

10:03

can we see straight away in that

10:05

particular poem? Well,

10:08

it's just so direct

10:10

and immediate. It's

10:13

kind of forceful, and there's a kind of

10:16

plainness to it, even

10:18

though there's so much sort of drama

10:20

and violence in the language in

10:22

a way. It's not at

10:24

all flowery. She's using mostly sort

10:27

of Anglo-Saxon words at school,

10:29

like a lot of one-syllable words. And

10:32

yeah, well, there's obviously the confessional

10:35

aspect which is alluded

10:37

to with the dedication. We

10:39

might want to raise the question of how we

10:41

feel about the term confessional, but for

10:45

want of a better term... Whatever value it

10:47

had in the 1960s, it drained away quite

10:49

a long time ago, didn't it? Yeah. I

10:52

mean, she felt that, and I'm sure we

10:54

all feel that. Yeah, absolutely. And it's sort

10:56

of odd that it's only associated with these

10:58

four or five

11:01

poets. They inaugurated it, and then

11:03

it doesn't seem

11:05

to be used so much anymore, thankfully. We

11:08

should say of those poets, at least

11:10

three came to a particularly

11:13

unhappy end, right? Yeah.

11:15

I mean, Bereman Plath

11:17

and Sexton all died

11:20

by their own hand. I

11:22

wonder as well whether Plath's comment there about

11:24

the, what does she

11:26

say, unliterary. Yeah. That's true here,

11:28

isn't it? In terms of

11:30

what we would think of as literary poetry

11:33

in the early 1960s, as

11:36

you suggest, this is almost

11:38

colloquial, not quite colloquial, but it's

11:40

very plain. Yeah. And it's sort of looking

11:42

at it from a contemporary point of

11:44

view is maybe, I guess that stuff is

11:46

less noticeable because it's much more common for

11:49

people to write in a kind of colloquial

11:52

voice. But back then, this was very sort of

11:54

new and something that I understand

11:57

that she, because she has a lot of, she has a lot of love

11:59

for her writing, she hadn't been to

12:02

college and she was

12:04

just writing in a very sort of fresh

12:06

way and obviously she studied with Lowell who

12:08

was writing

12:11

very personally as well so there was

12:13

that influence. But

12:16

it is quite a structured poem I mean

12:18

it's you know four four standards are four

12:20

lines A, B, A, B rhyme schemes maybe

12:22

that's not what you first noticed about it

12:24

but that one of the things I really

12:26

love about Sexton is that she was really

12:29

interested maybe as you

12:31

say she wasn't she didn't have a degree but

12:34

she was really interested in poetic

12:37

form and in rhyme you know

12:39

she was obsessed with with kind of her

12:42

rhyming dictionary and trying to find structure

12:44

and things and you can

12:46

definitely see that in this poem you know

12:48

and as I say you kind of don't

12:50

notice it when because you're so grappling with

12:52

the emotional intensity of it. One

12:55

of the things about her I think is the Emily

12:58

as you say like the confessional tag

13:01

that got applied to her and

13:03

other poets um

13:05

is I mean we can see why that why

13:08

that occurred but for me she's

13:10

one of the great

13:14

poets who writes poems about

13:17

poems and as Reggy

13:19

listens we know I love books about books

13:21

those are the best books and so for

13:23

me Anne Sexton is a mixture of that

13:26

kind of performative but

13:28

sincere depressive which I love

13:30

and also she

13:33

writes about what she's doing while she's doing it

13:35

you know there are poems later in this collection

13:38

that we'll come to that I think illustrate this

13:40

more but but here in the truth

13:42

the dead know it seems to me that the line

13:45

at the end of the third stanza men

13:49

kill for this or for

13:51

as much that's

13:53

the John

13:55

that's the anchor of that poem

13:58

for me What is

14:00

the trade that I, the poet, am making

14:02

here? What is the payoff? What

14:05

do I give and what do I receive? John,

14:09

can I ask you then, when and where

14:11

did you first encounter the work of Anne

14:13

Sexton? Well, I've got one of my embarrassing

14:15

confessions to make. So I was studying

14:19

English at Auckland University back in 1980. I

14:24

guess it would have been 1981. And

14:27

there was a really, really good course

14:29

on modern American poetry. And

14:35

the week that Anne

14:38

Sexton's poetry was discussed was the week I

14:40

didn't go to the lecture. So

14:45

I remember really being blown away by W.D.

14:48

Snodgrass's Heart's Needle. So that was one of the

14:50

most, and it still is one of my, it's

14:52

one of the things I go back to, I

14:54

just think. And being blown

14:56

away by Skunkow, by Robert Lowell, and

14:58

indeed by pretty much all the

15:01

poetry of Adrian Rich that I read at that

15:03

period. I've got this big, until

15:07

Emily suggested this, I had a big blank

15:09

space where I had always felt

15:11

Anne Sexton. I knew about her, but I had never

15:14

read her. So one of the, that's

15:16

one of the things I love most about this book. This

15:19

gave me a fantastic excuse to read lots

15:21

of Anne Sexton. And again,

15:23

I just feel I've had to recalibrate

15:26

my understanding of modern

15:28

American poetry. She's, I

15:30

think, had importance and in

15:33

a way different, very different, I think, from

15:35

the men, but also different from Hadra

15:38

Sylvia Plath and different from Plath and different

15:40

from Adrian Rich

15:43

as well. Emily, I've got a tangential

15:45

question to ask. I know there's some

15:47

discussion in the poetry world

15:49

about how seriously we should take

15:52

the concepts of the individual

15:54

volumes of poetry, as opposed

15:56

to the individual poems or

15:58

the collected work. You

16:00

know, do you you've talked there very interestingly about

16:02

how you came via a single poem by a

16:05

hit and then decided you might buy the album

16:08

How do you feel you know when

16:10

you when you're preparing one of your

16:12

collections for publication? How

16:14

concerned are you with the

16:17

experience of reading the book as

16:19

a book? Yeah, it's an interesting question

16:21

because I think I suspect

16:24

most poets when preparing their books, I certainly

16:26

do think very

16:29

carefully about the order of the poems and The

16:32

shape of the book what comes after what and

16:34

so on what's the beginning what's the

16:36

end? Most

16:38

people I would hazard a guess

16:40

don't read poetry collections in order.

16:42

I always set out to and then I

16:46

Sort of get I get about

16:48

people are full. I get about three

16:50

poems in I think oh, I'll just kind of skip

16:52

along a bit Well, let's see what the last poem

16:55

is or whatever a good

16:57

bit of advice I heard when putting together a

16:59

poach collection is to basically make sure your first

17:02

Obviously the first poem has to be a banger, but you want

17:04

your second poem still be pretty good So

17:06

basically the first three have got to be the

17:08

best and the last one and

17:11

then the rest of it You know just put

17:13

it in Like

17:15

an album isn't it? It's just like an album I was

17:17

gonna say like an album You would program an album by

17:19

putting the hits at the beginning of each side and a

17:21

banger to go out on and then the filler Comes in

17:23

in the gaps. So

17:27

You didn't you don't confess your

17:29

and sexton first First

17:31

contact and then he's a confession speaking

17:34

of confessional things

17:36

confessional podcast I Came

17:39

to the once popular and

17:41

now problematic Problematic poet and

17:43

sexton's via the once popular

17:45

and now problematic singer Morrison.

17:47

Yes Now

17:50

Morrissey is a long time admirer

17:52

of and sexton's work and indeed

17:55

has issues public proclamations as is

17:57

is want declaring her

17:59

a a poet than Sylvia Plath. He

18:04

knows what he's doing there. He's just trying to get you

18:06

to look at him, as indeed Anne

18:08

Sexton was, which is why I think she likes him.

18:10

But some time ago,

18:12

I attended a Morrissey

18:14

concert where

18:17

before the show, he has

18:20

like a video montage of different

18:22

bands and records and video clips.

18:25

And there are things that you would expect.

18:27

New York Dolls Sparks, Iggy.

18:32

And then there was a two minute clip,

18:35

or black and white clip, of

18:38

a woman I didn't recognize reading

18:41

a poem I didn't know. And

18:43

we're going to hear that poem now and

18:45

that clip. But I'm going to say to

18:47

listeners, if

18:50

you go on to YouTube, you

18:52

pause the podcast here and you go

18:54

to YouTube and you watch Anne

18:58

Sexton reading her poem,

19:01

Wanting to Die, and it's called

19:03

Wanting to Die, Film That Home.

19:06

And then if it's important that

19:08

you watch it. So we'll

19:11

come back to this discussion after

19:13

we've listened to it and you've seen it.

19:18

Wanting to Die. Since

19:20

you ask, most

19:22

days I cannot remember. I

19:25

walk in my clothing, unmarked by

19:27

that voyage, then the

19:29

almost unnameable lust returns.

19:32

Even then I have nothing against life.

19:35

I know well the grass blades you

19:37

mentioned, the furniture you have placed under

19:39

the sun. But

19:42

suicides have a special language.

19:44

Like carpenters, they want to

19:46

know which tools. They

19:48

never ask why build. Twice

19:51

I have so simply declared myself,

19:53

have possessed the enemy, eaten the

19:56

enemy, have taken on his craft,

19:58

his magic. Invict me. This

20:00

way, heavy and thoughtful, warmer

20:02

than oil or water, I'd

20:04

have rested drooling at the

20:06

mouthful. I did

20:08

not think of my body at needle point. Even

20:11

the cornea and the leftover urine were gone.

20:14

Suicides have already betrayed the

20:16

body. Stillborn,

20:20

they don't always die. But dazzled,

20:22

they can't forget a drug so

20:24

sweet that even children would look on

20:27

and smile. To

20:29

thrust all that life under your tongue,

20:31

that all by itself becomes a potion.

20:35

Death's a sad bone, bruised,

20:37

you'd say. And yet

20:39

she waits for me year after year to

20:42

so delicately undo an old wound,

20:45

to empty my breath from its

20:47

bad prison. Vowels

20:50

there, suicide sometimes

20:52

meet, raging at the

20:54

fruit, a pumped up moon,

20:56

leaving the bread they mistook for a

20:58

kiss, leaving the page

21:00

of the book carelessly opened, something

21:03

unsaid, the phone off the

21:05

hook, and the love, whatever

21:08

it was, an infection.

21:15

Now, as you all

21:17

know, listener, viewer, if

21:19

you've just watched that, I

21:22

was struck by the poem. But

21:24

I absolutely was smitten

21:27

with the look and sex and gives the

21:29

camera at the end of that recording.

21:32

As if to say now, viewer,

21:35

what are you going to do with that? And

21:38

to me, that was a really,

21:40

genuinely a very powerful moment. It's

21:43

so unusual to see a poet

21:46

performer in that era with an

21:48

awareness of what the camera will

21:50

do and the image that

21:53

they're projecting. And in a sense, that's

21:55

a kind of pre-rock and roll which

21:58

we'll come on to. Awareness of what

22:01

the media and the medium is able to

22:03

do with the work Emily

22:05

I described and Sexton's work as

22:07

performative and performative is a word that

22:09

has a Negative connotation I

22:12

think in lots of ways at the

22:14

moment, but I use it with an

22:16

sexton holy positive It's

22:18

an acknowledgement of things. She was good

22:20

at and they weren't they weren't just

22:22

writing they were also Performing.

22:26

Yeah, absolutely. I mean her readings are

22:28

incredible It's not necessarily that

22:30

common for poets to be able to present

22:32

their work so well Unfortunately,

22:35

I mean it, you know, it can be but It's

22:39

much more of a thing nowadays for people to

22:41

work on their performance Style

22:43

that and obviously back then it wasn't at

22:45

all and I know she was criticized sometimes

22:48

for her approach to performances Because it was

22:50

sort of seen as I Don't

22:53

know showing off or it's of being a sort

22:55

of actress II which wasn't considered appropriate When

22:58

in it's completely part of the poem. It's not

23:02

Yeah, it's not to be separated from it.

23:04

Really. I mean, I think that John has

23:06

an attention seeker And again, that's and that

23:08

is a term with a negative conversation, but

23:11

it seems truthful in an section's case It's

23:14

a classic Forgive me CF.

23:16

Look at me by Anita Bruckner. It's a

23:19

classic example of look at me. So you

23:21

can't see me Hmm, you

23:23

know simultaneously the poems are about

23:25

in theory Full

23:27

disclosure while simultaneously erasing

23:30

the real person So

23:32

if I can if I can project

23:35

a simulacrum of myself to distract you

23:37

from the real me Then

23:39

you can't get me, you know, that

23:41

seems powerfully evident with with an sex

23:43

dinner I think that's probably true. I

23:46

mean hard to say without knowing the

23:48

person but and I

23:51

was reading in her biography

23:53

that she said that she was always

23:56

very disturbed Before and after her readings

23:58

which kind of seems to

24:00

align with the idea that the

24:02

performance was a monumental

24:04

effort and took a lot of

24:07

preparation and obviously took a lot out of her as

24:09

well. Bearing in mind she was someone

24:11

who was dealing with a lot of mental distress, keeping

24:14

that all somehow underneath the showmanship.

24:25

You were talking earlier about

24:27

how to

24:29

put together a collection. The

24:32

culture really that she was writing in

24:35

feels to me very fascinating, that

24:38

workshopping culture. She was

24:40

in a workshop with a poet, John

24:42

Holmes and her friend,

24:44

Maxine Kunim and George

24:48

Starbuck. They were all poets,

24:50

they all criticised one another's work. There was

24:53

a sort of performative aspect to the way

24:55

they got better. But

24:57

she was dealing with genuine

24:59

mental illness. When she

25:01

was putting together this collection, her therapist,

25:05

Dr. Martin Orne went

25:08

on holiday, seemed to go on holiday at various

25:10

moments during her life. Classic

25:14

therapist behaviour. She

25:16

had a proper full blown suicidal

25:18

when she was trying to work

25:21

out the... She took the sequencing

25:23

of her poems really, really carefully.

25:28

There's one brilliant thing in the biography,

25:30

she wanted to dedicate the poem The

25:32

Fortress, which she'd written in

25:34

a very positive frame of

25:37

mind. It's a poem about as many of

25:39

her great poems are about her relationship with

25:41

her children, her daughter.

25:44

She wanted to dedicate it

25:47

to a therapist and he

25:50

refused to do that. He said,

25:52

unlike other doctors, psychiatrists are entitled

25:55

to only one form of currency,

25:58

money. Everything else costs $1,000. the

26:00

patience too much. I'm

26:03

strangely attracted to that

26:05

guy. Can

26:09

you tell listeners a little bit

26:11

about how Anne Sexton

26:13

started writing poetry? That's the

26:15

first issue. But also how you

26:19

feel about the relationship between why

26:21

she started and then how she continued.

26:24

Because I think that's a very interesting

26:29

thought to unpack. Yeah,

26:31

it's interesting the role of therapy in

26:34

her work throughout her

26:37

writing life. Well, she apparently wrote

26:39

as a teenager but was kind

26:41

of put off by negative remarks

26:43

from her mother. Who hasn't

26:45

been? When

26:49

she had her first daughter and

26:51

had a breakdown after that,

26:54

I think it was at that point she started seeing

26:56

the psychiatrist. It might have been after

26:58

her second child because she had

27:01

further problems then. And

27:03

this psychiatrist Martin Orne

27:06

suggested that she start

27:08

writing more in

27:10

earnest because he was impressed with something

27:13

that she'd shown him. And

27:15

obviously she took that to heart and

27:17

then carried on

27:19

writing from then on. Her

27:23

relationship with him and with other

27:25

therapists or psychiatrists plays

27:27

out in the work so there's a lot of poems

27:29

that address him. At one

27:32

point she had a sexual relationship

27:34

with another psychiatrist which is very

27:37

disturbing from the

27:39

therapeutic ethics point of view.

27:42

And there's a sequence that was

27:44

published posthumously called I think Letters

27:47

to Doctor Y.

27:49

I think the

27:51

relationship between poetry and psychotherapy is really

27:53

interesting. It's something that I think a

27:55

lot about because my own experience of

27:57

being in therapy has informed my writing

27:59

quite a lot. And I know

28:01

that some creative people think

28:03

that being in psychotherapy could be

28:06

detrimental to your work, because you

28:08

might sort of talk

28:11

it all out and get healed of your problem.

28:13

That's the thing that's creating the work in the

28:15

first place. But that's definitely not been my experience

28:17

and certainly didn't seem to be an sextant

28:20

either. So I think it can

28:22

be a very sort of generative thing for

28:25

writers, because it's working on the same, whatever

28:28

it is that brings these things to

28:31

the surface, I think. I

28:34

think in Sexton's case, the

28:37

therapy is the catalyst for the

28:39

work, but offers

28:41

little in the way of therapeutic value.

28:43

That's my observation from reading it. You

28:46

know, it's almost like, rather

28:48

than dealing with the problem, as I suggested earlier,

28:50

it's a way of not dealing with it. It's

28:52

a way of turning it into entertainment for other

28:54

people and a way of... And that's

28:57

not... Sorry, that sounds overly critical

28:59

in terms of... I think the poetry is incredible.

29:02

But if we were to compare her with Plath, and

29:04

there are whole books that have been written that do

29:07

just this, you know, Plath

29:10

is, it seems to me,

29:12

more interested in the classicism

29:15

of poetry from

29:18

the off. And

29:20

Sexton comes to that having

29:23

discovered she has this preternatural

29:26

gift as

29:28

a result of it being suggested to

29:31

her that she try writing poetry. She

29:33

finds, outpours this

29:35

stuff, which is simultaneously self-expression,

29:38

but also material to

29:40

turn into a more

29:43

formal art form.

29:46

John, did you find reading

29:48

her poetry moving? Yes,

29:52

I certainly find watching her perform

29:54

her poetry moving, because

29:56

I think you see and

29:59

hear... the performance

30:02

aspect, I think

30:04

what you were touching on there, Andy, that

30:06

she's, although they're very

30:09

controlled and sometimes even ecstatic

30:11

performances, you feel that

30:13

this is a person, this is classic,

30:15

you know, one skin too few, she

30:17

feels things, I think, really

30:20

intensely you feel that she's a conduit

30:22

for all kinds of emotional

30:25

energy. And she

30:27

was obviously, you know, she's not

30:29

an easy person to live

30:31

with, but she had a, one

30:34

of those apparently affluent

30:37

childhoods, where what

30:39

exactly happened to her, her

30:42

mother was difficult. And

30:45

you know, there are terrible stories

30:47

of her mother kind of examining her and checking

30:50

her, I know it's supposedly standard procedure

30:52

in those days, checking her daily stools.

30:55

And then there's a whole complicated relationship with her

30:58

father, who she sort of both admired,

31:00

but then found controlling

31:02

and distant and potentially

31:05

abused her, although it's very difficult to

31:07

know. Nobody can quite, her

31:10

analyst didn't think that that really happened,

31:12

that she'd fantasized it. What

31:14

I feel with her work is,

31:18

although the poems are intense,

31:21

they're very under control. Certainly

31:23

the poems in this collection, the

31:25

early poetry, I think, has an

31:28

incredible restraint in terms

31:30

of its language.

31:34

You can see that she got a

31:36

lot of that formal control stuff from

31:38

Robert Lowell, but Reading Heart's Needle obviously

31:40

set something free in her to talk

31:42

about what she, the stuff

31:44

of her own, the stories of her own life. But

31:46

is she a reliable witness? I think she always said

31:48

that the eye in her poetry was a bit of

31:50

a con, it was a bit of a trick. Yeah,

31:53

Bériman tried to say that as well, and we know

31:55

that wasn't true. So

31:57

that's fine. I

32:00

would, you know, whatever you say, Anne. There are

32:02

definite connections, aren't there, with Marilyn? Emily, here's the

32:04

thing that Anne Sexton does in her work, which

32:06

I think is, I absolutely adore. And

32:09

maybe we can find a poem that does this,

32:12

or maybe one of the poems you

32:14

wanted to share with us does this. I

32:16

love how Anne Sexton, both in

32:18

her, seemingly in her private life

32:20

and in her work, does

32:23

a wonderful thing where she

32:25

turns off or

32:27

on her charm at will. At

32:31

moments you never expect it to, leaving

32:33

you, the person attending the cocktail party

32:36

with her, or reading the poem by

32:38

her, wrong-footed. She

32:41

loves to charm you, to

32:44

give you the dying

32:46

phrase and the wry

32:48

wink, or the look

32:50

to camera, in fact. And then

32:52

she'll switch suddenly. So you

32:54

don't know where you are. There'll

32:57

be some really abrasive image

33:00

or confrontational metaphor.

33:03

I'm thinking specifically, actually, while I say

33:05

this, of there's

33:08

a poem called, To a Friend Whose

33:10

Work Has Come to Triumph. Yeah, yeah.

33:12

It's short. I'll just read it quickly.

33:16

To a friend whose work has come to triumph, consider

33:20

Icarus, pasting those sticky

33:22

wings on, testing that

33:24

strange little tug at his shoulder blade,

33:27

and think of that first flawless moment

33:29

over the lawn of the labyrinth. Think

33:33

of the difference it made. There

33:36

below are the trees, as awkward

33:38

as camels. And here

33:41

are the shocked starlings pumping past.

33:44

And think of innocent Icarus, who is

33:46

doing quite well, larger

33:48

than a sail, over the

33:51

fog and the blast of the plushy

33:53

ocean he goes. Admire

33:55

his wings. Feel

33:57

the fire at his neck. And

34:00

see how casually he glances up

34:02

and is caught, wondrously

34:04

tunnelling into that hot eye.

34:08

Who cares that he fell

34:10

back to the sea? See

34:13

him, a-claiming the

34:15

sun, and come plunging

34:17

down, while his sensible daddy

34:20

goes straight into town. You

34:25

know that? That's

34:27

a sonnet. I recognise that from A

34:30

level A-ish. That's my first

34:32

comment. Rhyming couplet to end it there.

34:35

But also the sensible daddy goes

34:37

straight into town is a

34:39

kind of pathetic switch, isn't it? From

34:43

the kind of the rise up towards the sun. Her

34:47

idea that the

34:51

artist could burn

34:54

alive and it would

34:56

still be worth it. The same theme

34:58

as the starry night, the same

35:00

theme as the truth but dead know in

35:02

a sense. Men

35:05

kill for this. It's that

35:07

same idea, better to

35:09

immolate than be the

35:11

sensible daddy going straight to town. Yeah,

35:13

it's like, it's

35:15

a kind of paradox as well because people

35:19

have commented that I think possibly

35:21

it was her friend Maxine Coomen that her

35:24

poetry saved her life, kept her alive for

35:27

as long as it did. But at the

35:29

same time it was consuming her as well.

35:31

So it's like the same with Icarus, he's

35:33

got to do this, he's flying high

35:35

and then that's that. Here's

35:38

my point in relation. It's a self-dramatising gesture.

35:40

This is what I mean. It's this thing

35:43

that keeps coming back to me with ansex.

35:45

It's performative. It's self-dramatising. I

35:47

am an artist. I

35:51

am this person who will fly

35:54

too close to the sun and burn. It's

35:56

almost a self-fulfilling prophecy. And

35:59

I was thinking, that, Emily. The

36:01

idea that doing

36:04

this may

36:06

have prolonged her life, but

36:09

equally burnt it up in a

36:11

different manner than it would have been burnt

36:13

away differently, perhaps. Yeah. I

36:16

mean, I think this is not

36:18

an uncommon theme in

36:21

poetry, generally. I'm

36:24

thinking of a Plath poem about

36:26

the red comet that flies into

36:28

the sun. So

36:30

I don't know if it's unique to Sexton.

36:33

Because of what happened to her

36:35

and her life and everything, it's

36:38

more noticeable. I think a lot of

36:40

poets write about death, but when they

36:42

do die prematurely or in tragic circumstances,

36:45

then we suddenly go, oh my God,

36:47

they've written about death so much. What

36:49

does that mean? There's like Auden's

36:51

poem about, in the Musee de Beaux-Arts

36:54

about Icarus, is the polar opposite of

36:56

this, because as we know, Auden refused

36:58

to die. And I love

37:00

him, but he just keeps going, right? It's

37:03

not an Icarus-style immolation for Auden.

37:05

It's just like we keep

37:08

going, we keep going. Listen, we're going

37:10

to take a little break, and when we come back,

37:12

we're going to hear from Anne

37:14

Sexton herself again, with her poem,

37:16

The Starry Night, inspired by Van

37:19

Gogh's painting. Welcome

37:21

back. We're about to listen to Anne Sexton

37:23

reading her poem, performing her poem, The Starry

37:25

Night, and in the collection All

37:28

My Pretty Ones. It's prefigured

37:30

by a quote of Vincent

37:32

Van Gogh's inner letter to his brother, Theo.

37:35

Vincent writes, that does not

37:37

keep me from having a terrible need

37:39

of, shall I say the word, religion.

37:42

Then I go out at night to paint

37:44

the stars. The

37:46

Starry Night. Vincent

37:50

Van Gogh, in a letter

37:52

to his brother. That

37:54

does not keep me from having a

37:56

terrible need of, shall I

37:59

say the word? Religion,

38:01

then I go out

38:03

at night to paint the stars.

38:08

The town does not exist

38:10

except where one black-haired tree

38:12

slips up like a drowned

38:14

woman into the hot

38:17

sky. The

38:19

town is silent, the

38:21

night boils with eleven

38:23

stars, oh starry, starry

38:25

night, this is how I want

38:28

to die. It

38:31

moves, they are all

38:33

alive, even the

38:35

moon bulges in its

38:37

orange irons to push

38:39

children like a god

38:42

from its eye. The

38:44

old unseen serpent swallows

38:47

up the stars, oh

38:49

starry, starry night, this

38:52

is how I want to die,

38:55

into that rushing beast of the

38:57

night sucked up by that

38:59

great dragon to split

39:01

from my life with no

39:04

flag, no belly, no cry.

39:07

Yeah. Emily,

39:11

it has the same image, albeit with the

39:13

moon and stars substituting for

39:16

the sun of set

39:19

the controls for the heart of whatever

39:21

thing is going to destroy you. I

39:25

wonder, could I ask your opinion, how

39:27

do you interpret the last lines of

39:30

this poem? To

39:32

split from my life with no

39:35

flag, no belly, no

39:37

cry. Yeah, I love

39:40

this poem. I

39:42

don't know that the line break there

39:44

to split from my life is just incredible.

39:47

It's like, how can a line break be

39:50

so good? I feel the same about

39:52

in the first stanza and

39:55

it's an echoed sound except where one

39:57

black haired tree slips up like

39:59

a dragon. women into the hot sky.

40:04

It's like this kind of... I

40:07

read it as almost like this ecstatic birth

40:11

into death. So to split

40:15

from my life, I imagine like a

40:17

baby separating from its mother and

40:20

in this vision it's

40:24

almost like going up into the

40:26

sky and and to

40:30

describe it, sort of life is the

40:32

mother birthing the soul into death. So

40:37

yes, so it's a death image isn't it?

40:39

But it's also it seems to me to

40:41

split from my life with no flag is

40:45

to almost as you say

40:47

look down on one's own life and

40:51

make that the subject of what you write about.

40:55

It's confessional but of course it's not it's

40:57

not confessional. I always feel with Sexton's poetry,

40:59

not all the time but often, it

41:01

gives the impression of having been blurted out.

41:05

But that's the trick. Because of

41:07

course it hasn't been blurted out.

41:09

It's been extremely carefully revised and

41:11

re-revised in order to give exactly

41:13

that impression. You know what

41:16

the classic transformation

41:19

of art, you process

41:21

it so it feels like the original thought

41:24

but it's not the original thought. Yeah, I'm

41:26

really interested in in what is

41:28

meant by no flag because it

41:30

sort of suggests that

41:34

this dramatic kind of

41:36

transformation from life into death

41:39

is being conceived of as happening without

41:42

any sort of marker. Like you

41:45

could say a flag was kind of showing

41:48

it off in some way. I

41:50

wonder whether a white flag as well. It's

41:53

no surrender. Yeah. Maybe.

41:57

No flinching. You know no Or

42:00

is it about a sign, like

42:02

giving no sign? I mean,

42:06

maybe this is reading too much into it, but

42:08

when she did finally die by

42:10

suicide, she didn't tell

42:12

anyone about her plans, which she

42:15

had done with previous attempts. But

42:18

it's kind of contradictory because

42:20

obviously, the description of this

42:22

sort of ecstatic death, if that's what it is, is

42:24

very flamboyant. So it's

42:26

not really happening without a flag. It's

42:29

happening with all these boiling stars and

42:31

this witchy tree. She's

42:34

got a poem later in the collection called The Black

42:36

Art, which is about the

42:39

difference between the perceived differences between

42:41

the poetry that women write and the poetry

42:43

that men write. She

42:45

starts it by saying, a woman who writes feels

42:47

too much, those trances and

42:50

portents, as if

42:52

cycles and children and islands weren't enough,

42:55

as if mourners and gossips

42:57

and vegetables were never enough.

42:59

She thinks she can warn

43:01

the stars. It's that imagery

43:03

of the star again, the

43:05

thing you're aiming for, or

43:09

can commune with. She thinks she

43:11

can warn the stars. A writer

43:13

is essentially a spy. Dear

43:15

love, I am that girl. That's

43:18

the look to camera again. Yes,

43:21

exactly. But to say it is, it's that

43:23

little, we know this was invented by Fleabag

43:26

and yet somehow it happened

43:28

all these decades earlier. So

43:30

we need to acknowledge that John

43:33

Wen and Sexton's

43:35

biography was published. When

43:38

was this? In the in the 1980s? 1991 it was published. How did that

43:40

change how

43:46

people perceived Anne Sexton? It

43:48

was broadly very well received biography.

43:50

It is, if anyone is interested in Anne

43:54

Sexton's life, Dan Ward-Middelbroek's

43:56

biography is, I

43:58

mean, it's huge and invaluable. because

44:00

it's, and she

44:02

edited Saxton's work

44:05

as a writer as well, so it's, on

44:07

that level, it's good. But the thing that made

44:10

it controversial was that she, Dr.

44:12

Martin Orne, who was the

44:15

therapist, when

44:17

Saxton did her kind of, you know, thumbnail

44:19

sketch of her life, you

44:21

know, I was saved by poetry and

44:23

my therapist got me writing poetry, and

44:26

I hadn't had a formal education and it was poetry,

44:28

but he was that therapist.

44:31

He handed over to Dan Ward-Mittlebrook the

44:34

transcripts of the sessions that he had with

44:37

Ansexton, which is, I mean,

44:39

he did it knowingly, but it is a massive kind

44:42

of breach of patient, a

44:45

psychiatrist, patient-daughter protocol.

44:48

You don't share the stuff that's passed

44:50

between a therapist and this patient is

44:52

sacrosanct. His defense was that

44:54

she would have been

44:57

happy for that

45:00

to happen. And also it was done in

45:03

consultation with Linda Saxton.

45:06

But is it the biography that

45:09

reveals the details

45:11

of her abusive

45:13

relationship with her daughter? Yes.

45:16

Yes. I

45:19

mean, her daughter has written a memoir. I

45:22

believe that Heather Clarke, who wrote the

45:24

recent Plath Biography, is now working on

45:26

a new Saxton biography. Right.

45:29

Okay. We should hear

45:31

from Anne's daughter, Linda, who

45:33

Saxton appointed as her literary executor

45:35

just a few months before she

45:37

died. I

45:39

found in the beginning when I

45:42

identified with her as a storyteller,

45:44

as a woman, all those things

45:46

I started writing when I was

45:48

11, I

45:51

found the story she told about me,

45:53

like Little Girl My String Bean, My

45:56

Lovely Woman, which is one of her

45:58

best-known poems. I

46:01

found that to be a positive,

46:09

something that, you know, let

46:12

me shine a little bit as

46:14

a child. Instead of being the

46:16

hated child, I was the beloved

46:19

child. So that

46:22

was a good thing until later

46:24

on when she began

46:26

to write quite intrusive

46:28

things about me. The loss

46:30

of my virginity, a suicide

46:33

attempt, things that I felt, you know,

46:36

it's one thing for her to write

46:38

about her life. It was

46:40

something else for her to write so

46:42

boldly and boldly and with

46:45

such excruciating detail and

46:48

tell those stories. I felt that

46:51

was intrusive. So

46:53

that was, it was

46:55

hard for the family. It wasn't easy.

46:57

It was different than telling good

47:00

stories or positive stories, the

47:02

stories that came about in different ways.

47:05

When she got to her poetry, the

47:07

stories she told were steeped

47:10

in honesty, but

47:13

were also steeped in bold

47:20

truths. You know, it

47:22

seems to me that Linda, her

47:24

daughter, has spent

47:27

her life broadcasting the

47:29

fact that she has made peace with her

47:31

mother's memory by seeing her mother as an

47:33

artist and seeing her

47:35

in the round while

47:38

acknowledging the abuse

47:40

that she

47:43

doled out was in turn something

47:45

that had been done to Sexton

47:47

when she was a child. I

47:50

think it's interesting in that clip, Emily,

47:52

that it's almost like the real lingering

47:57

unfairness is focused

48:00

on the intrusion,

48:05

as she describes it, into their

48:07

lives. It's one

48:09

thing for Ansexton to turn herself into a

48:11

character, but another

48:14

to do it to her

48:16

children and make

48:18

them tiny supporting characters

48:20

in Ansexton's great story. Yeah,

48:24

I mean, I think

48:26

it's kind of recognised that she was a very

48:30

complicated and difficult woman

48:33

and it

48:37

seems unimaginable

48:42

what it would be like having

48:45

to have experienced something like that from

48:47

your mother and then for your mother

48:49

to be someone of

48:51

such fame and to have to

48:54

reckon with all of that in the

48:57

public eye or credit to Linda Sexton

48:59

for somehow managing to

49:01

kind of hold all of those

49:03

things. Because obviously we live in

49:05

a moment where these

49:08

things are constantly coming

49:11

up and the question of how you hold artists

49:15

who have done horrendous things alongside

49:17

their work if you still consider

49:19

their work to be important

49:25

and the people can only make their own

49:28

judgements about that. It's

49:31

so entwined, isn't it, the work,

49:33

you know, and

49:35

what I've read of Linda's

49:38

account, which is actually a really

49:40

beautiful kind of book and not

49:42

so great about how she made peace

49:44

with her mother. As you

49:46

say, Andy, in the end... I

49:50

think with Ansexton you could say she died

49:52

in her early 40s, her

49:55

life was plagued by mental illness but

49:57

she was also a surprise winning poet.

50:00

I mean, she achieved in a tremendous amount

50:03

through her art. That

50:06

doesn't exonerate her from

50:10

responsibility for her behavior, but

50:15

it's very, very

50:17

difficult to pull her out of

50:19

the context of the

50:21

specific time and the specific family inheritance that she

50:24

was dealing with and she dealt with in

50:26

lots of ways with amazing courage and

50:30

clarity. I

50:33

think we look to poets in particular

50:35

amongst artists to

50:37

bring us back, to

50:40

bring us here in the straight world, to

50:43

bring us back messages

50:45

from places we can guess exist but

50:48

would prefer not to go ourselves. Yeah,

50:50

for sure. And it's

50:52

not a question of them being nice or not

50:54

nice or nasty or

50:57

not nasty. It doesn't work like

50:59

that. It's a question of them being able

51:02

to remain open to whatever

51:04

messages they receive and bring them back

51:06

to us. And sometimes in order to

51:08

be open, it

51:11

might require an access via mental

51:13

illness or it might require an

51:15

access via temperament. Or, she's writing

51:17

about Van Gogh there and we've

51:19

been talking on this

51:21

show about the

51:23

price paid by the person

51:25

who flies too close to the

51:28

sun but sends back a homing

51:30

pigeon before they fall with

51:32

a little poem tied to its leg. Fins

51:34

and wings. Which

51:37

is not to exonerate and

51:39

sex anyone from her behavior but

51:41

I find her daughter's

51:44

way of dealing with that

51:46

instructive, which is

51:48

she chooses not to see her

51:52

mother as a demon but as

51:54

a complicated person capable of bad

51:56

things. Can I read a little bit from The Fortress,

51:59

which is a book? it's kind of central

52:01

poem in this collection, but

52:03

I think if you're trying

52:06

to figure out how on earth

52:08

do people survive these things, how

52:10

do you survive the relationship?

52:14

This is about taking a nap with Linda. I won't

52:16

read all of it, but just towards the end. It

52:19

just says, darling, life is not in my hands.

52:22

Life with its terrible changes will take

52:25

you, bombs or glands,

52:27

your own child at your breast, your own

52:30

house on your own land. Outside

52:33

the bittersweet turns orange. Before

52:36

she died, my mother and I

52:38

picked those fat branches, finding

52:40

orange nipples on the gray

52:42

wire strands. We weeded

52:45

the forest, curing trees

52:47

like cripples. Your

52:50

feet thump, thump against my back and you whisper

52:52

to yourself, child, what

52:54

are you wishing? What pact are

52:57

you making? What mouse runs between your

52:59

eyes? What arc can I fill for

53:01

you when the world goes wild? The

53:04

woods are underwater. Their

53:06

weeds are shaking in the tide. Birch

53:09

is like zebrafish, flash by in a

53:11

pack. Child, I

53:13

cannot promise that you will get your

53:16

wish. I cannot

53:18

promise very much. I

53:20

give you the images I know. Lie

53:24

still with me and watch. A

53:27

pheasant moves by like a seal, pulled

53:29

through the mulch by his thick white

53:32

collar. He's on show

53:34

like a clown. He drags a beige feather

53:36

that he has removed one time from an

53:38

old lady's hat. We

53:40

laugh and we touch. I

53:44

promise you love. Time

53:46

will not take away that. Beautiful.

53:53

Yeah, beautiful. A

53:55

beautiful flower growing from dark. Listen,

54:02

we have to wind up soon. Emily, I'm going to

54:04

ask you to read another poem of Anne Sexton's. But

54:06

before we do that, I've waited 205, 206 episodes to

54:08

be able to say this. But

54:12

the subject of this week's

54:14

episode of Backlisted, Anne Sexton had

54:18

her own jazz rock combo

54:20

called Anne Sexton and Her

54:22

Kind. For

54:24

four years in the late 1960s

54:27

and early 1970s, for

54:29

copyright reasons, we can only play a snippet of

54:31

one of their tracks. But

54:34

enjoy a brief excerpt

54:37

from Anne Sexton

54:39

and Her Kind live

54:41

in concert performing their setting of

54:44

Woman with Girdle. You'll

54:48

miss it back to

54:50

your knees. Your

54:54

breath lies on an air,

54:57

bare nipples as uninvolved as

54:59

warm shots. You'll

55:09

be able to

55:11

feel a lot of hate. You'll

55:16

not give up newborn and

55:19

lowborn, high-born. Come

55:25

on, White and the Hatchet, you can put that out. And

55:27

that really reminds me, there's the whole jazz

55:29

and poetry scene. There's a really fantastic LP

55:31

that came out on DRAM in the late

55:33

60s or early 70s called Crystal

55:36

Telephone by Terry Durham. And if

55:38

any listeners are familiar with that,

55:40

I removed my tiny hat, absolutely.

55:44

It really reminds me of that. Emily,

55:46

were you aware of the work of

55:48

Anne Sexton and Her Kind? I

55:51

was aware of its existence, but I hadn't had

55:53

the pleasure of hearing it. It's

55:56

an interesting combo for sure. There's

55:59

a little clip. of her talking about

56:01

the band, which is just very, very funny.

56:03

It tells you quite a lot about her.

56:06

Would you be bold

56:08

enough, if that's the word, to recommend

56:11

this to some of the other modern

56:13

poets? Oh, I don't want them to know anything

56:15

about it. I'm going to be the only

56:17

one doing it. What

56:20

kind of future would you like to record

56:22

it and then be the hit

56:25

record with the teenagers or something like that? I'd

56:27

like to reach a wider audience and if

56:29

a hit record with the teenagers would do it,

56:31

then that would satisfy me. See, I really don't

56:34

know where I'm going. I just know that I've

56:36

never been there. Oh,

56:39

come on, man. That's

56:42

jazz. You know, you

56:44

heard that brilliant statement there from Sexton very

56:47

in the era saying, well, I don't know where I'm going.

56:52

If you're a long time listener to

56:54

this podcast, you will recognize the sentiment

56:57

of these phrases.

57:00

This is from a letter that near the end

57:02

of her life Sexton wrote to Erica Young in

57:06

which she stated what

57:08

she felt her aesthetic was. And

57:10

this relates not just to the relationship

57:13

between the life and the poetry and how

57:16

we feel about volumes of poetry and

57:18

single poems, but just things we talk

57:20

about all the time on this podcast.

57:23

And this is what she wrote to Erica

57:25

Young. The

57:27

whole life of us writers, the

57:29

whole product, I guess I mean, is

57:32

the one long poem. It's

57:34

all the same poem. It

57:37

doesn't belong to any one writer. It's

57:39

God's poem, perhaps, or God's people's poem.

57:42

You have the gift and with

57:45

it comes responsibility. You

57:47

mustn't neglect or be mean to that gift. You

57:49

must let it do its work. It

57:52

has more rights than the ego that

57:54

wants approval. If

57:56

you can feel you are in touch with

57:58

experience, if you've so to. speak, stuck

58:01

your finger into experience and got it right

58:03

and can put it down so that others,

58:05

even experienced tellers, can comprehend their own lives

58:07

better, then you must

58:10

get on with it. The

58:12

listener awaits. I

58:17

mean that's as good a matter as we've

58:19

ever heard on this podcast. Emily, before we

58:21

wrap up, do you have a poem

58:25

or a section of a poem you could read it

58:27

with? Well, I'd love to read her kind, which was

58:29

my yeah, gateway drug to

58:31

Ansex and it was also a very, I

58:35

think, important poem for her. She

58:37

used to read it often as

58:39

her opening poem in her readings.

58:43

So we can read it as a closing poem,

58:45

maybe. Her

58:49

Kind. I

58:53

have gone out, a possessed witch,

58:56

haunting the black air, braver

58:58

at night, dreaming evil.

59:00

I have done my

59:02

hitch over the plain houses, light

59:05

by light, lonely

59:07

thing, twelve fingered,

59:10

out of mind. A woman

59:12

like that is not a woman quite.

59:16

I have been her kind. I

59:21

have found the warm caves in the woods,

59:23

filled them with skillets,

59:26

carvings, shelves, closets, silts,

59:29

innumerable goods. Fix

59:31

the suppers for the worms and the

59:33

elves, whining, rearranging

59:36

the disaligned. A woman

59:39

like that is misunderstood. I

59:41

have been her kind. I

59:44

have ridden in your cart, driver, waved

59:47

my nude arms at villages

59:49

going by, learning

59:51

the last bright roots, survivor,

59:54

where your flames still bite

59:56

my thigh and my ribs

59:58

crack where you your wheels

1:00:00

wind. A woman like

1:00:02

that is not a shame to die. I

1:00:05

have been her kind." It's

1:00:12

just great. Follow that to

1:00:14

your midginson. I'm

1:00:17

afraid. That is, it's

1:00:20

time for us now to leave the strange

1:00:22

and intense, beautiful world

1:00:24

of Ansexton. Huge thanks

1:00:26

to Emily for inviting us to explore it

1:00:29

and to Nicky Burch for recording what we discovered

1:00:31

on the journey. Set

1:00:57

to a jazz rock backing or however else

1:00:59

you feel compelled to communicate with us. For

1:01:28

those of you who previously enjoyed our What

1:01:30

Have You Been Reading slot, that's where you

1:01:32

now find it. It's an hour of tunes,

1:01:34

musings and superior book chat. Plus,

1:01:37

lot listeners get their names read out,

1:01:39

accompanied by lashing surprise like this. Craig

1:01:41

Fitzgerald, thank you. Richard Sult,

1:01:44

thank you. Casey Sheehan, thank

1:01:46

you. Daniel Mudford, thank you.

1:01:48

Helen Stitt, thank you. Jan

1:01:51

Pakach, thank you. Francis Ambler,

1:01:53

thank you. Niall Green,

1:01:55

thank you. Julia Colton,

1:01:57

thank you. And David Strange.

1:02:00

Thank you. Emily, before we go,

1:02:02

is there anything else you would like to add

1:02:04

that you feel we haven't covered

1:02:06

on the topic of Anne Sexton

1:02:09

or Confessional poetry? Yes. I

1:02:12

wanted to mention, and I just was

1:02:14

thinking, oh, damn it, I didn't get

1:02:16

to mention that, that Anne Sexton wrote

1:02:18

a children's book with Maxine Cooman called

1:02:21

Eggs of Things. Eggs

1:02:23

of Things, which is just such a great title.

1:02:26

Eggs of Things. I

1:02:29

want to see that. It's about these two

1:02:31

little boys who find some frogs born in

1:02:33

a pond, and they take

1:02:36

them and put them in a bath, and all

1:02:38

hell breaks loose. Frogs and toads

1:02:40

are hopping around the house. So this

1:02:42

is a whole other dimension to her that we didn't get a

1:02:44

chance to explore. Are those books in print? Have we

1:02:46

owned any of us? They're not in print, I don't

1:02:48

think. They're not in print, but it's worth going and

1:02:50

looking at them, is it? You

1:02:53

can see Eggs of Things on

1:02:55

the Marginalia website. Right. Whilst

1:02:59

there is a selected

1:03:01

volume of Anne Sexton's poetry called Mercy's

1:03:04

edited by her daughter available from Penguin

1:03:06

Modern Classics, certainly in the UK, there

1:03:08

is no, the complete poems of Anne

1:03:11

Sexton is not in print and has

1:03:13

not been in print for some time.

1:03:15

That's exaggerated. It seems to you,

1:03:17

it'll cost you £40 or £50 sterling

1:03:19

at the moment to buy a copy of it. I know that

1:03:22

to my point. I don't know

1:03:24

if in the States it's not, it seems not to be available in the

1:03:26

States as well. So that's a separate

1:03:28

issue which we don't have time to discuss.

1:03:31

My last thing, it was just, you know, there's a very

1:03:33

famous quote from Franz Kafka, which gets used all the time

1:03:35

about books. And I, you love this. Well,

1:03:38

why it suddenly came into circulation, as far as

1:03:40

I can see, it was first used as the

1:03:44

kind of frontiers, the epigraph to

1:03:46

this book, which is the books we need are

1:03:48

the kind that act upon us like misfortune that

1:03:50

make us suffer like the death of someone we

1:03:52

love more than ourselves that make us feel as

1:03:54

though we were on the verge of suicide or

1:03:56

lost in a forest remote from

1:03:58

all human habitation. A book should

1:04:00

serve as the axe for the frozen

1:04:02

sea within us. I

1:04:05

always like doing that. Print that on

1:04:07

a tote bag. Yeah, I love it. That's

1:04:09

what it is. Great. I always like to read

1:04:11

that out when we're looking at cookbooks at work.

1:04:13

Yeah, indeed. Indeed, yeah.

1:04:15

Okay, well listen, Emily, thank you so

1:04:17

much. That has been- Amazing. As

1:04:20

every bit as enjoyable and revelatory

1:04:22

for us. Huge. And I

1:04:24

hope it will be for listeners. Thanks for having

1:04:26

me. Yeah. That was wonderful. Thanks

1:04:28

very much, everyone. See you in a full night.

1:04:30

Bye. Bye.