HER KIND by Anne Sexton
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.
Copyright © 1981 by Linda Gray Sexton and Loring Conant, Jr.
Source: The Complete Poems of Anne Sexton (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1981)
Anne Sexton: Essential Books
Selected Poems of Anne Sexton (paperback)
DESCRIPTION
“This selection, which is drawn from Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Anne Sexton’s ten published volumes of poems as well as from representative early and last work, is an ideal introduction to a great American master.
ANNE SEXTON (1928–1974) was an American poet known for her highly personal, confessional verse. A celebrated poet of mid- twentieth century America, Sexton’s impressive body of work continues to be widely read and debated by literary scholars and cultural critics alike. Her poetry explored the many paradoxes within human behavior and motivation.”
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Transformations (paperback)
DESCRIPTION
“From Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Anne Sexton, this collection of poem-stories is a strange, wondrous retelling of Grimms’ fairy tales.
Including “Snow White,” “Rumpelstilskin,” “Rapunzel,” “The Twelve Dancing Princesses,” “The Frog Prince,” and “Red Riding Hood,” these are as wholly personal as Sexton’s most intimate poetry. Her raw honesty and wit in the face of psychological pain have touched thousands of readers.”
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Anne Sexton: A Self-Portrait in Letters (paperback)
DESCRIPTION
“An expression of an extraordinary poet’s life story in her own words, this book shows Anne Sexton as she really was in private, as she wrote about herself to family, friends, fellow poets, and students. Anne’s daughter Linda Gray Sexton and her close confidant Lois Ames have judiciously chosen from among thousands of letters and provided commentary where necessary. Illustrated throughout with candid photographs and memorabilia, the letters — brilliant, lyrical, caustic, passionate, angry — are a consistently revealing index to Anne Sexton’s quixotic and exuberant personality.”
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