Customer Reviews

Anne Sexton: Teacher of Weird Abundance (Suny Series, Feminist Theory in Education)

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One can say that writers and poets are, generally speaking, teachers of life and literature, and it is from that perspective which Salvio writes her book about Anne Sexton. But Salvio also focuses on the actual poetry workshops that Sexton gave at Boston University and Radcliffe College. While the book is in no way intended to be a biography, there is still much to learn about Sexton's life, be it as teacher, student, mother and, most of all, a free spirit struggling with mental illness. This is a well researched and succinctly written work. Anyone who loves Anne Sexton the poet or the person will appreciate this portrait of a teacher.

It is only in Salvio's description of Anne's relationship with her daughter Linda, that is, the impact she had on her daughter's life, where I think her argument is the weakest. It is weak, I believe, because Salvio relies solely on Linda's book "Searching for Mercy Street: My Journey Back to My Mother, Anne Sexton" (published in 1994). There was never an interview between Linda and Salvio, and there was no reference to Linda's foreward to the book she co-edited ("Anne Sexton, A Self-Portrait in Letters").

Salvio is correct in stating that Anne Sexton "made sexual use of her daughter's body," but it is a stretch to go from that to the general statement of a therapist or researcher who believes "The parent kills him- or herself as a parent through the act of incest..." Despite the trauma she suffered as a child, Linda the adult has forgiven her mother and can still experience the joy in special moments she had throughout the unfortunately short life of her mother. At least this is the impression I have from having read Linda's latest work, "Half in Love: Surviving the Legacy of Suicide," published in January, 2011.