Anne Sexton Quiz

Metaphor--- a figure of speech that implies comparison--between two unsimilar things--which have something in common.

Her Temper boiled over.

Her home was a prison.

Her son's birth was new sunrise in her life.


What would be a metaphor for Sexton? Use specific examples from her poems to explain....

CONTEXT by Tomas Transtromer new Nobel Prize Winner for Poetry

CONTEXT by Tomas Transtromer from the great enigma


Look at the grey tree. The sky has run
through its fibers down in the earth—
only a shrunken cloud is left when
the earth has drunk. Stolen space
is twisted in pleats, twined
to greenery. —The brief moments
of freedom rise in us, whirl
through the Parcae and further

Sexton Reading

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4VlcVfgFJk

Sylvia's Death by Anne Sexton
for Sylvia Plath
O Sylvia, Sylvia,
with a dead box of stones and spoons,
with two children, two meteors
wandering loose in a tiny playroom,
with your mouth into the sheet,
into the roofbeam, into the dumb prayer,
(Sylvia, Sylvia
where did you go
after you wrote me
from Devonshire
about rasing potatoes
and keeping bees?)
what did you stand by,
just how did you lie down into?
Thief --
how did you crawl into,
crawl down alone
into the death I wanted so badly and for so long,
the death we said we both outgrew,
the one we wore on our skinny breasts,
the one we talked of so often each time
we downed three extra dry martinis in Boston,
the death that talked of analysts and cures,
the death that talked like brides with plots,
the death we drank to,
the motives and the quiet deed?
(In Boston
the dying
ride in cabs,
yes death again,
that ride home
with our boy.)
O Sylvia, I remember the sleepy drummer
who beat on our eyes with an old story,
how we wanted to let him come
like a sadist or a New York fairy
to do his job,
a necessity, a window in a wall or a crib,
and since that time he waited
under our heart, our cupboard,
and I see now that we store him up
year after year, old suicides
and I know at the news of your death
a terrible taste for it, like salt,
(And me,
me too.
And now, Sylvia,
you again
with death again,
that ride home
with our boy.)
And I say only
with my arms stretched out into that stone place,
what is your death
but an old belonging,
a mole that fell out
of one of your poems?
(O friend,
while the moon's bad,
and the king's gone,
and the queen's at her wit's end
the bar fly ought to sing!)
O tiny mother,
you too!
O funny duchess!
O blonde thing!