Rewite 8/25/1991I I had never read Sexton's poetry, after reading Diane Middlebrook I went out and bought her selected poems edited by Middlebrook. I've read 20 plus poems and I am impressed, both with her flare for words and her courage to be so personal. She also believed that her personal pain was redeemed only by sharing it, that her life was valuable only if she could help others by writing about it. For years I have been advocating for collaborative reparations, or, following the ideas of James Hillmam , creativity as pathologizing or "falling apart."In any case, it is a healing of the self and the community. Sexton often claimed poetry kept her alive; writing gave her a way to work out an understanding of herself and the culture that her underlay her multiple pathologies. Many people in her large audiences at her readings seized on her words as revealing as a condition they shared. Critics classed her the "confessional school" of poetry which they said broke with tradition. She had a considerable reputation at one time because she was striking looking woman who was a very good reader of her own poems. Like Sylvia Plath and Diane Arbus she was a suicide, burned out and dead at 45.
About Sexton:
----she used female sexuality as a theme in the late sixties it was controversial and unfashionable. Her friend Louis Simpson found it trivial and embarrassing.
----Her analylst has released tapes of her sessions.
----Suburban lady out of her element, hampered by mental illness, managed to become a poet of distinction and rare gifts. Sold half a million books in 10 years.
----Inescapable feminist drama, with unusual candor of self-presentation
----Confrontation changes to self-display. Work went downhill.
----one shrink slept with her she
while being treated and she committed incest with her daughter
....Had no regard for her privacy
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