Happy Birthday Anne Sexton

from 1974 NY Times piece, Remembering Anne Sexton, by Erica Jong:

I could speak here of the fact that Anne Sexton is one of the writers by whom our age will be known and understood in times to come -- if there are any times to come. Some people -- including other poets -- were embarrassed by her poetry and sought to denigrate it, perhaps because it was so naked and painful that it exposed the hypocrisies they lived by (and even, at times, wrote by). But I would rather speak of Anne Sexton's bigness as a person than her greatness as a poet. The poems are there -- seven published books and two more (at least) to come. They will be understood in time -- not as "women's poetry" or "confessional poetry" -- but as myths that expand the human consciousness. Like all such myths, they are a big frightening. Some people would rather pretend they do not exist, or do not exist in the temple of art. But no matter: the poems go on saying themselves to us in the dark. They will not go away.

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a poem by Anne Sexton (from All My Pretty Ones):


To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Triumph


Consider Icarus, pasting those sticky wings on,
testing that strange little tug on his shoulder blade,
and think of that first flawless moment over the lawn
of the labyrinth. Think of the difference it made!
There below are the trees, as awkward as camels;
and here are the shocked starlings pumping past
and think of innocent Icarus who is doing quite well:
larger than a sail, over the fog and the blast
of the plushy ocean, he goes. Admire his wings!
Feel the fire at his neck and see how casually
he glances up and is caught, wondrously tunneling
into that hot eye. Who cares that feel back to the sea?
See him acclaiming the sun and come plunging down
while his sensible daddy goes straight into town.