Anne Sexton Quotes

It was as if a morning-glory had bloomed in her throat, and all that blue and small pollen ate into my heart, violent and religious ~ Anne Sexton

I planned to suffer
and I cannot. ~ Anne Sexton

I was born doing reference work in sin, and born
confessing it. This is what poems are. ~ Anne Sexton

This one day her mother gave her
a basket of wine and cake
to take to her grandmother
because she was ill.
Wine and cake?
Where's the aspirin? The penicillin?
Where's the fruit juice?
Peter Rabbit got camomile tea.
But wine and cake it was. ~ Anne Sexton

Poets are sitting in my kitchen.
Why do these poets lie?
Why do children get children and
Did you hear what it said? ~ Anne Sexton

Oh, all right, I say,
I'll save myself. ~ Anne Sexton

In an old time
there was a king as wise as a dictionary. ~ Anne Sexton

Alone in our place I was a guest. ~ Anne Sexton

Thief!- how did you crawl into, crawl down alone into the death I wanted so badly and for so long ... ~ Anne Sexton

My objects dream and wear new costumes,
compelled to, it seems, by all the words in my hands
and the sea that bangs in my throat. ~ Anne Sexton

I never seemed to like the spring for what it was; I always loved it for what it might have been. In the head. In the heart of hearts. It is in my ability, I think, to love something fully only if I am naturally, compulsively, irrationally drawn to it. ~ Anne Sexton

I grow old on my bitterness. ~ Anne Sexton

All in all, I'd say,
the world is strangling.
And I, in my bed each night,
listen to my twenty shoes
converse about it.
And the moon,
under its dark hood,
falls out of the sky each night,
with its hungry red mouth
to suck at my scars. ~ Anne Sexton

This November there seems to be nothing to say. ~ Anne Sexton

Poetry is my life, my postmark, my hands, my kitchen, my face. ~ Anne Sexton

I am so tired of that old suffering. ~ Anne Sexton

I would like to think that no one would die anymore
if we all believed in daisies
but the worms know better, don't they?
They slide into the ear of a corpse
and listen to his great sigh. ~ Anne Sexton

I cannot walk an inch / without trying to walk to God. ~ Anne Sexton

Let there be a heaven so that man may outlive his grasses. ~ Anne Sexton

Images are the heart of poetry ... You're not a poet without imagery. ~ Anne Sexton

Then all this became history. Your hand found mine. Life rushed to my fingers like a blood clot. Oh, my carpenter, the fingers are rebuilt. They dance with yours. ~ Anne Sexton

Some women marry houses. ~ Anne Sexton

Our checks are pale. Our wallets are invalids.
Past due, past due, is what our bills are saying
and yet we kiss in every corner, scuffing the dust
and the cat. Love rises like bread as we go bust. ~ Anne Sexton

I brush my hair,
waiting in the pain machine for my bones to get hard,
for the soft, soft bones that were laid apart
and were screwed together. They will knit.
And the other corpse, the fractured heart,
I feed it piecemeal, little chalice. I'm good to it. ~ Anne Sexton

The Saints come,
as human as a mouth,
with a bag of God in their backs,
like a hunchback,
they come,
they come marching in. ~ Anne Sexton

The place I live in is a kind of maze and I keep seeking the exit or the home. ~ Anne Sexton

But suicides have a special language.
Like carpenters they want to know which tools.
They never ask why build.
Twice I have so simply declared myself,
have possessed the enemy, eaten the enemy,
have taken on his craft, his magic. ~ Anne Sexton

Once I was beautiful. Now I am myself... ("You, Doctor Martin") ~ Anne Sexton

It would be pleasant to be drunk. ~ Anne Sexton

One of my secret instructions to myself as a poet is "Whatever you do, don't be boring." ~ Anne Sexton

We do not explain my husband's insane abuse
and we do not say why your wild-haired wife has fled
or that my father opened like a walnut and then was dead.
Your palms fold over me like knees. Love is the only use. ~ Anne Sexton

Don't worry if they say you're crazy. They said that about me and yet I was saner than all of them. I knew. No matter. You know. Insane or sane, you know. It's a good thing to know - no matter what they call it. ~ Anne Sexton

Keeping The City

"Unless the Lord keepeth the city, the watchman guardeth in vain" - John F. Kennedy's unspoken words in Dallas on November 23, 1963.

Once,
in August,
head on your chest,
I heard wings
battering up the place,
something inside trying to fly out
and I was silent
and attentive,
the watchman.
I was your small public,
your small audience
but it was you that was clapping,
it was you untying the snarls and knots,
the webs, all bloody and gluey;
you with your twelve tongues and twelve wings
beating, wresting, beating, beating
your way out of childhood,
that airless net that fastened you down.

Since then I was more silent
though you had gone miles away,
tearing down, rebuilding the fortress.
I was there
but could do nothing
but guard the city
lest it break.

I was silent.
I had a strange idea I could overhear
but that your voice, tongue, wing
belonged solely to you.
The Lord was silent too.
I did not know if he could keep you whole,
where I, miles away, yet head on your chest,
could do nothing. Not a single thing.

The wings of the watchman,
if I spoke, would hurt the bird of your soul
as he nested, bit, sucked, flapped.
I wanted him to fly, burst like a missile from your throat,
burst from the spidery-mother-web,
burst from Woman herself
w ~ Anne Sexton

I find now, swallowing one teaspoon of pain, that it drops downward to the past where it mixes with last year's cupful and downward into a decade's quart and downward into a lifetime's ocean. I alternate treading water and deadman's float. ~ Anne Sexton

Am I to bless the lost you,
sitting here with my clumsy soul? ~ Anne Sexton

Consider
a girl who keeps slipping off,
arms limp as old carrots,
into the hypnotist's trance,
into a spirit world
speaking with the gift of tongues. ~ Anne Sexton

Everyone has left me
except my muse,
that good nurse.
She stays in my hand,
a mild white mouse. ~ Anne Sexton

Our bodies were trash.
We leave them on the shore. ~ Anne Sexton

I, in my brand new body,
which was not a woman's yet,
told the stars my questions
and thought God could really see
the heat and the painted light,
elbows, knees, dreams, goodnight. ~ Anne Sexton

Words

Be careful of words,
even the miraculous ones.
For the miraculous we do our best,
sometimes they swarm like insects
and leave not a sting but a kiss.
They can be as good as fingers.
They can be as trusty as the rock
you stick your bottom on.
But they can be both daisies and bruises.
Yet I am in love with words.
They are doves falling out of the ceiling.
They are six holy oranges sitting in my lap.
They are the trees, the legs of summer,
and the sun, its passionate face.
Yet often they fail me.
I have so much I want to say,
so many stories, images, proverbs, etc.
But the words aren't good enough,
the wrong ones kiss me.
Sometimes I fly like an eagle
but with the wings of a wren.
But I try to take care
and be gentle to them.
Words and eggs must be handled with care.
Once broken they are impossible
things to repair. ~ Anne Sexton

The snow has quietness in it; no songs,
no smells, no shouts or traffic.
When I speak
my own voice shocks me. ~ Anne Sexton

January?
The month is dumb.
It is fraudulent.
It does not cleanse itself.
The hens lay blood-stained eggs.
Do not lend your bread to anyone
lest it nevermore rise.
Do not eat lentils or your hair will fall out.

Do not rely on February
except when your cat has kittens,
throbbing into the snow.
Do not use knives and forks
unless there is a thaw,
like the yawn of a baby.
The sun in this month
begets a headache
like an angel slapping you in the face.

Earthquakes mean March.
The dragon will move,
and the earth will open like a wound.
There will be great rain or snow
so save some coal for your uncle.
The sun of this month cures all.
Therefore, old women say:
Let the sun of March shine on my daughter,
but let the sun of February shine on my daughter-in-law.
However, if you go to a party
dressed as the anti-Christ
you will be frozen to death by morning.

During the rainstorms of April
the oyster rises from the sea
and opens its shell -
rain enters it -
when it sinks the raindrops
become the pearl.
So take a picnic,
open your body,
and give birth to pearls.

June and July?
These are the months
we call Boiling Water.
There is sweat on the cat but the grape
marries herself to the sun.

Hesitate in August.
Be shy.
Let your toes tremble ~ Anne Sexton THE SERMON OF THE TWELVE ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Meanwhile in my head, I'm undergoing open-heart surgery. ~ Anne Sexton

O yellow eye,
let me be sick with your heat,
let me be feverish and frowning. ~ Anne Sexton

Nature is full of teeth
that come in one by one, then
decay,
fall out. ~ Anne Sexton

Bless all useful objects,
the spoons made of bone,
the mattress I cook my dreams upon,
the typewriter that is my church
with an altar of keys always waiting. ~ Anne Sexton

Poems aren't postcards to send home. ~ Anne Sexton

When they turn the sun
on again I'll plant children
under it, I'll light up my soul
with a match and let it sing ... ~ Anne Sexton

Perhaps I am no one.
True, I have a body
and I cannot escape from it.
I would like to fly out of my head,
but that is out of the question. ~ Anne Sexton

Jesus saw the multitudes were hungry
and He said, Oh Lord,
send down a short-order cook. ~ Anne Sexton

I was
the girl of the chain letter,
the girl full of talk of coffins and keyholes,
the one of the telephone bills,
the wrinkled photo and the lost connections ... ~ Anne Sexton

I love Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton. I also love more cerebral poets like H.D. and Emily Dickinson. My parents subscribed to a monthly poetry periodical, and as a teenager I was introduced to Denise Levertov, who was an influence. ~ Francesca Lia Block

To be without God is to be a snake / who wants to swallow an elephant. ~ Anne Sexton

I am not immortal. Faustus and I are the also-ran. ~ Anne Sexton

She married the prince
and all went well
except for the fear
the fear of sleep.
Briar Rose
was an insomniac ...
She could not nap
or lie in sleep
without the court chemist
mixing her some knock-out drops
and never in the prince's presence. ~ Anne Sexton

All considerations
for these human remains!
They must have an escort!
They are classified! ~ Anne Sexton

What's the point of fighting the dollars
when all you need is a warm bed?
When the dog barks you let him in.
All we need is someone to let us in.
And one other thing:
to consider the lilies in the field. ~ Anne Sexton

Life is a trick, life is a kitten in a sack. ~ Anne Sexton

You cutting the lawn, fixing the machines,
all this leprous day and then more vodka,
more soda and the pond forgiving our bodies,
the pond sucking out the throb. ~ Anne Sexton

Wanting to Die

Since you ask, most days I cannot remember.
I walk in my clothing, unmarked by that voyage.
Then the almost unnameable lust returns.

Even then I have nothing against life.
I know well the grass blades you mention,
the furniture you have placed under the sun.

But suicides have a special language.
Like carpenters they want to know which tools.
They never ask why build.

Twice I have so simply declared myself,
have possessed the enemy, eaten the enemy,
have taken on his craft, his magic.

In this way, heavy and thoughtful,
warmer than oil or water,
I have rested, drooling at the mouth-hole.

I did not think of my body at needle point.
Even the cornea and the leftover urine were gone.
Suicides have already betrayed the body.

Still-born, they don't always die,
but dazzled, they can't forget a drug so sweet
that even children would look on and smile.

To thrust all that life under your tongue! -
that, all by itself, becomes a passion.
Death's a sad Bone; bruised, you'd say,

and yet she waits for me, year after year,
to so delicately undo an old wound,
to empty my breath from its bad prison.

Balanced there, suicides sometimes meet,
raging at the fruit, a pumped-up moon,
leaving the bread they mistook for a kiss,

leaving the page of the book carelessly ~ Anne Sexton

How are you? How is your wonderful bathroom? How are the books you read and the things you think? Your dogs and their lives? The weather? Your feelings? ~ Anne Sexton

It doesn't matter who my father was; it matters who I remember he was. ~ Anne Sexton

Fear / a motor, / pumps me around and around / until I fade slowly ... ~ Anne Sexton

Annie, Annie you sang
and I knew you drove a pure gold car
and put diamonds in you coke
for the crunchy sound, the adorable sound
and the moon too was in your portfolio, ~ Anne Sexton

I did not know the woman I would be
nor that blood would bloom in me
each month like an exotic flower,
nor that children,
two monuments,
would break from between my legs ... ~ Anne Sexton

Don't bite till you know if it's bread or stone. ~ Anne Sexton

You must be a poet,
a lady of evil luck
desiring to be what you are not,
longing to be
what you can only visit. ~ Anne Sexton

I like you; your eyes are full of language.
[Letter to Anne Clarke, July 3, 1964.] ~ Anne Sexton

Clover['s] eyes are full of language. ~ Anne Sexton

Put your mouthful of words away
and come with me to watch
the lilies open in such a field,
growing there like yachts,
slowly steering their petals
without nurses or clocks. ~ Anne Sexton

We talked death with burned-up intensity, both of us drawn to it like moths to an electric light bulb. Sucking on it! ~ Anne Sexton

I have been cut in two. ~ Anne Sexton

Let God be some tribal female who is known but forbidden. ~ Anne Sexton

All the oxygen of the world was in them.
All the feet of the babies of the world were in them.
All the crotches of the angels of the world were in them.
All the morning kisses of Philadelphia were in them. ~ Anne Sexton

Suicide is, after all, the opposite of the poem. ~ Anne Sexton

Of course
the New Testament is very small.
Its mouth opens four times
as out-of-date as a prehistoric monster,
yet somehow man-made ... ~ Anne Sexton

I was spread out dailyand examined for flaws. ~ Anne Sexton

Well, one gets out of bed and the planets don't always hiss or muck up the day, each day. ~ Anne Sexton

I am mad the way young girls are mad,
with an offering, an offering. ~ Anne Sexton

My heart is on a budget.
It keeps me on the brink. ~ Anne Sexton

When the cow gives blood
and the Christ is born
we must all eat sacrifices.
We must all eat beautiful women. ~ Anne Sexton

The windows,
the starving windows
that drive the trees like nails into my heart. ~ Anne Sexton

I lay there silently,
hoarding my small dignity.
I did not ask about the gate or the closet.
I did not question the bedtime ritual
where, on the cold bathroom tiles,
I was spread out daily
and examined for flaws.
I did not know
that my bones,
those solids, those pieces of sculpture
would not splinter. ~ Anne Sexton

The ground has on its clothes. The trees poke out of sheets and each branch wears the sock of God. ~ Anne Sexton

Do you like me? No answer. Silence bounced, fell off his tongue and sat between us and clogged my throat. It slaughtered my trust. It tore cigarettes out of my mouth. We exchanged blind words, and I did not cry, I did not beg, but blackness filled my ears, blackness lunged in my heart, and something that had been good, a sort of kindly oxygen, turned into a gas oven. ~ Anne Sexton

Need is not quite belief. ~ Anne Sexton

The man
inside of woman
ties a knot
so that they will
never again be separate ... ~ Anne Sexton

Come, my pretender, my fritter,
my bubbler, my chicken biddy!
Oh succulent one,
it is but one turn in the road
and I would be a cannibal! ~ Anne Sexton

Oh sharp diamond, my mother!
I could not count the cost
of all your faces, your moods
that present that I lost.
Sweet girl, my deathbed,
my jewel-fingered lady ... ~ Anne Sexton

Every time I get happy
the Nana-hex comes through.
Birds turn into plumber's tools,
a sonnet turns into a dirty joke,
a wind turns into a tracheotomy,
a boat turns into a corpse ... ~ Anne Sexton

I suffer for birds and fireflies but not frogs, she said, and threw him across the room. Kaboom! Like a genie out of a samovar, a handsome prince arose in the corner of the bedroom. ~ Anne Sexton

I sit at my desk
each night with no place to go,
opening the wrinkled maps of Milwaukee and Buffalo,
the whole U.S.,
its cemeteries, its arbitrary time zones,
through routes like small veins, capitals like small stones. ~ Anne Sexton

God has a brown voice, soft and full as beer. ~ Anne Sexton

Being kissed on the back of the knee is a moth at the windowscreen ... ~ Anne Sexton

Now I am just an elderly lady who is full of spleen,
who humps around greater Boston in a God-awful hat,
who never lived and yet outlived her time,
hating men and dogs and Democrats. ~ Anne Sexton

For I could not read or speak and on the long nights I could not turn the moon off or count the lights of cars across the ceiling. ~ Anne Sexton

The marriage twists, holds firm, a sailor's knot. ~ Anne Sexton

I want to kiss God on His nose and watch Him sneeze
and so do you.
Not out of disrespect.
Out of pique.
Out of a man-to-man thing. ~ Anne Sexton

Somebody who should have been born
is gone.
Yes, woman, such logic will lead
to loss without death. Or say what you meant,
you coward ... this baby that I bleed. ~ Anne Sexton

And so she danced until she was dead, a subterranean figure, her tongue flicking in and out like a gas jet. ~ Anne Sexton