Anne Sexton: A Biography by Diane
Middlebrook
Read This Book
A critically acclaimed biography of Anne Sexton explores the work and
tormented life of the powerful American poet, a woman who struggled
with mental illness throughout her career, finally taking her own life in
1974. Reprint. 50,000 first printing. $50,000 ad/promo. NYT.
Personal Review: Anne Sexton: A Biography by Diane
Middlebrook
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.
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