Customer Reviews

Anne Sexton: A Biography

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This novel utilizes records from the thousands of hours of therapy Sexton underwent (most notably with Dr. Martin Orne). As a result of this, the slant of this biography is more psychological than previous books. It is scrupulously detailed though, which is a real treat for those who want to know what her life was on a micro-level. It is fascinating to read the excerpts of her therapy sessions and then be able to relate her actions to her psychological state of mind and see how all of it influenced her poetry.

This is not a particularly literary biography - so if you are a PhD in Literature, it probably won't add anything to your understanding of Sexton's use of meter or rhyme schemes. It rigorously follows the events of her life but does not spend much time on her formative years. However, the scope and depth of Middlebrook's psychological research is wonderful, and someone who appreciates both psychology and literature will enjoy this book immeasureably.

Diane Wood Middlebrook's biography of Anne Sexton was balanced and insightful enough so as not to be too intrusive; it is simple and direct, as I believe this biography ought to be. It could be much more. True. But that would somehow seem indecent. It is a written work that will tantalize many readers to want to know more of Sexton's earlier life and later chaotic often disgusting behavior. Anne Sexton did indeed have some major psychological problems. She envied Sylvia Plath's suicide and inflicted mental abuse on her family that trangressed the boundries of chaotic. She has often been criticized for the themes that she used in her poetry: her mental breakdowns, her severe shortcomings as a wife and mother, her liberal use of female bodily sexuality, her 'womanism' and other scattered amorphous problems that she endured but that is not fully covered with very much depth in this work. To deny Sexton's mentle problems or attribute her abhorrent behavior to simple staments that she 'wanted attention' is to cast away the deamons that led her to commit suicide in the first place or write the highly noted poems "The Operation" in All My Pretty Ones, for which she garnered a National Book Award nomination or "Mother And Jack And The Rain" or "Menstruation At Forty" in Live or Die, for which she won the 1967 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. This biography has also been condemmed for the use of private conversations that Sexton had with her psychiatrist, Dr. Martin Orne, a fact that had and still does many in the profession gravely unhappy. In the forward and book jacket to The Complete Poems of Anne Sexton by her friend and fellow poet, Maxine Kumin, she states: "The stuff of Anne's life, mercilessly dissected, is here in the poems. Of all the confessional poets, none has had quite Sexton's 'courage to make a clean breast of it' ...Anne Sexton has earned her place in the cannon." Whatever her morals (or lack of them) or major priorities which always came second, she was one hell of a fantastic, little understood poet who truly added something unique to the genre.

You don't have to be a poetry afficianado to find this uniquely well-researched biography fascinating. Middlebrook makes ample use of the beautiful-but-mad-housewife-turned-poet angle, but does the more challenging job of examining the contradictions between Sexton and her work. Controversial access to Sexton's therapy records aside, Middlebrook explores the humanity behind a disturbed (and disturbing) woman who used any means at her disposal--sex, therapy (at the same time, in some instances), alcohol, drugs, her children and her poetry--in an attempt to stay afloat.

Since references to Ms Sexton's work in Portugal are almost non-existent, I cannot remember why I became interested in her. I have some idea that the british poet Neil Curry very favourably mentioned to me the book by the same author on the Plath/Hughes case and perhaps that led me to Sexton's biography.

This work is certainly as accurate as any biography can be. The author was invited by one of Ms Sexton's daughters to write it, so she must have had access to all the material available which gives a firm foundation.
As an author, we can only be surprised how someone with such little formal education and in a relatively short time was able to produced work which earned praise, a Pulitzer prize included.

As opposed to that, Ms Sexton private life was tragic. "Attended by devils", I'm borrowing from a Joan Plowright's sentence on her husband, Laurence Olivier, she was so disturbed that she was unable to perform the simplest everyday life activities and most of her life she was under psychiatric care. She depended on other people even to cross a road, a strongest example cannot be given.

We can only imagine the nightmare that her husband, and later her daughters, had to endure during some 25 years. All the time a mother-in-law was there to provide some stability to household life and her husband was prepared to put up with a lot of suffering (he knew about Sexton's multiple sexual affairs, for example) always hoping that she would get better and for a normal family life.
Since people are not saints, it is only understandable that from time to time there were terrible anger outbursts.

This biography raises a few non-trivial questions.

First, in my opinion, nothing but medical care legitimates the access to the medical archives of a patient. I strongly disapprove of their being used in this work.

Second, at a differently level, it is utterly disgusting that a psychiatrist, or a medical doctor for that matter, allows himself to get sexually involved with a patient. I see no reason for him not to be banned from the profession right away.

Third, it is clear that with the remarkable exceptions of Dr Orne and his mother among probably others, some people treating Anne were incompetent, the last one not being even a psychiatrist but a psychiatric social worker... How is it possible that with her medical history, full of suicide attempts, alcoholism, hospital stays and so on, someone can say that "... Sexton had recently shown significant gains and that the decision to seek a divorce was reasonable"? (page 371, opinion of Dr Chase).

Sexton went ahead with the divorce, both daughters were angry at the way
she treated their father, some friends tried to talk her out of that decision, provided care and, nothing that were not to be expected, got
fed up.

The foreword, written by Dr Martin T. Orne, after all the man who suggested she try poetry, ends as follows:

Sadly, if in therapy Anne had been encouraged to hold on to the vital supports that had helped herbuild the innovative career that meant so much to her and others, it is my view that Anne Sexton would be alive today.

Well, it is a rather assertive statement BUT she might.

Biographies are a tricky business. To tell the truth about a person's life, to be fair and thorough without being unkind is a fine line to tread. Diane Middlebrook certainly didn't flinch at giving the reader the dirt on Anne Sexton. From her series of extra-marital affairs to her daughter's memories of Sexton's inappropriate, incestuous behavior--all of it was fair game in Middlebrook's book. She even quoted from audiotapes of Anne Sexton's therapy sessions. This is a biography of a woman brutally exposed, psychologically naked and under a spotlight; strangely, I think that Anne Sexton would be at peace with this enormous invasion of her privacy.

In addition to the lurid personal details and the deep analyses of Sexton's troubled psyche, Middlebrook shows the reader Sexton's intense determination and devotion to becoming a famous poet. Anne would sit at her typewriter for hours everyday, working on poems. She was also very aware of the benefits of creating a dramatic public persona.

Sexton would walk up on stage in a striking black cocktail dress with red lipstick and a seductive swagger. Her throaty voice would cast a spell over the audience as she read her poems. "I am a middle-aged witch. . ." she would begin, and the room would be spell-bound by both her glamour and her bold confessional poetry. But underneath it all, she was a nervous wreck, unable to give a reading without a quick shot of liquor to make her knees stop shaking!

Diane Middlebrook's biography was so piercing, so unforgiving, it was, at times, truly uncomfortable to read. I felt almost voyeuristic, pouring over these shocking private details of Anne Sexton's life. Yet, Middlebrook's book did give me an amazingly powerful feeling of intimacy with one of my favorite poets. She revealed the fragile, flawed Anne Sexton behind the public shell of dark glamour.

Any fans of Sexton's poetry that want to understand the woman behind the words should go ahead and get this book; just be forewarned that Middlebrook does not try to flatter Sexton, only to be truthful.

This biography reminds us we need to read Anne Sexton, as she was one of this country's fore-most confessional poets.

The biography was engrossing, and elucidated many things I had not known about Sexton, or had only vaguely heard discussed.

Such difficult times she and her fellow confessional poet, Sylvia Plath, lived in.

One cannot help but wonder how things might have been different for Sexton and Plath, had they been born a couple of decades later.

Very well worth reading.

This advice applies to anyone who has stumbled upon this page whether or not you like biography or poetry or Anne Sexton. It is one of the few biographies I have read that I would describe as a true page-turner. Yes, Sexton's life has all the ingredients of a page turner. There's incest, there's adultery, there's substance abuse, there's mental illness. All this in the life of someone whose adulthood began as a rather typical 1950s housewife. Middlebrook does not spare us the gritty details, but neither does she exploit her subject for mere sensationalism. Always, even in taking the controversial step of using Sexton's psychotherapy tapes, she demonstrates respect for her subject and for the surviving members of Sexton's family. When her evidence is conflicting about what really happened, as in the case of Sexton's memory of an incestual episode with her father, Middlebrook presents us with the various views of family members and friends and gives us their reasons for believing what they do. Then she presents her own conclusions. Above all else, this is the story of a woman's survival, of her finding herself and saving herself through poetry despite little education and little interest, at first, in art or poetry. Sexton's first poem was a sonnet she wrote after seeing a lecture about sonnets on TV.

I have been unable to stop re-reading this biography for all the hidden keys I think it contains -- comments on our western culture as a viable concept; networking in the "literary world," motherlove an an ontological reality; therapy as same. The author Middleton is so adept at being unbiased toward the at times somewhat narrow, but riveting, scope of Sexton's experience (I accused her delicate side-stepping in an earlier review as being "dull-witted") that I have been attempting to read between the lines. I haven't gleaned any "truths" but because of this, keep coming back. I think the strongest thing about Middleton's account is the sense of the universal story of a family struggle, and the bond of the family which guided Sexton's poetry and had much bearing on her life. This is important for me to tell myself, I find myself feeling, in reading this one "too many times." I hope Middleton writes more biographies of women.

I have not been able to disregard the fact that this brilliant biography by one of the most important poets of our age appears to have been forgotten amid the heat of commerce. But there is another kind of commerce: one in which women have an expertise. When one of us is felled by tragedy, like the huge loss of Anne Sexton, it touches each and every one of us as we learn of its happenstance. One does not have to be a poet, an artist or suicidal to get this. Our collective history as women struggling to balance our lives within a largely patriarchal society with love, home, marriage, divorce, children, career, and faith in whatever form or not - is a burden to which few will admit. Anne Sexton, however, met all of the latter head on with genius artistry and with all the passion and complexitiy any soul could bear. Indeed, as Diane Middlebrook brilliantly writes - she bore it for as long as she possibly could with more grace, style and courage than most. In fact, not only is this biography essential as a purchase, but take the time to collect (if you can...) everything Anne Sexton wrote. You will never be quite the same. And I can only guess that she would have liked that....

The biographer here had an unusual advantage: Anne Sexton's daughter gave her access to taped sessions Sexton's psychiatrist had made of his sessions with Sexton. This disclosure of what are normally privileged sessions raised eyebrows, but I did not find the disclosure obtained from these tapes that revealing. It was obvious to anyone who came into contact with her that Sexton was a very disturbed person, and her doctor does not seem to have come to a definitive diagnosis. It may well be that she suffered from some physical defect of the brain that could not be diagnosed during her lifetime.

What is clear is that Sexton made life difficult for those closest to her, such as her husband and her children. Wildly unstable, she demanded more than anyone could give, and gave back little in return. On the other hand, she was one of the major poets of her time, and talented writers can get away with being miserable people. A weakness of this book is that it not very strong on Sexton's poetry, which is the only reason people are interested in her. Still, it is well researched, and is likely to remain useful to those interested in Sexton for years to come.