Confessional Process and Feminist Practice in the Complete Poems
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CONTEXTUALIZING ANNE SEXTON: CONFESSIONAL PROCESS AND FEMINIST PRACTICE IN THE COMPLETE POEMS by Lynn Crosbie A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy, Graduate Department of English, in the University of Toronto Wopyright by Lynn Crosbie, 1996 National Library Bibiiomue nationale du Canada Acquisitions and Acquisitions et Bibliographic Services services bibliographiques The author has granted a non- L'auteur a accorde me licence non exclusive licence allowing the exclusive permettant a la National Library of Canada to Biblioth&penationale du Canada de reproduce, loan, distriiute or sell reproduire, preter, disbn%uerou copies of this thesis in microform, vendre des copies de cette these sous paper or electronic formats. la forme de mierofiche/fih, de reproduction sur papier ou sur format electronique. The author retains ownership of the L'auteur conserve la proprietk du copyright in this thesis. Neither the droit d'autew qui protege cette these. thesis nor substantial extracts fiom it Ni la these ni des extraits substantiels may be printed or otherwise de celle-ci ne doivent &e imprimes reproduced without the author's ou autrement reproduits sans son permission. autorisation. Lynn Crosbie Abstract: Contextualiring Anne Sexton: Confessional Process and Feminist Practice in The Complete Poems ~o&orof Philosophy, 1996 Graduate Department of English, The University of Toronto This dissertation examines each of the volumes in Anne Sexton's Com~letePoems. I attempt to identify Sexton's work with Confession and autobiography as a sustained feminist project. The Confessionai voice, I maintain, offered Sexton a way of inscribing her subjectivity, as a woman. within her work. I locate each of Sexton's collections within a wide range of social, critical. popularlliterary, and political contexts. Methodologically, this dissertation proceeds and departs from the extant Sexton scholarship; it offers a thorough contextual examination of the Complete Poems and suggests, in relation to the poems, a great many literary influences and analogues. I locate the Confessional Group (in Chapter One). drawing from the existing criticism, and both confirm and trouble the notion of a knowable Confessional school; central to this discussion is my assertion that the ambitions of the male and female Confessional poets both intersect and differ (a concept which is rarely, if ever, addressed in critical readings of Confession). Chapters Two and Three examine Sexton's work (in To Bedlam and Part Wav Back, All Mv Pretty Ones, and Live or Die) with Confessional themes - suicide, mental illness and despair - themes which are strategically gendered in her poems. Chapters Four, Five, and Six trace Sexton's movement, in her writing, away from Confessional poetry, a movement which enabled her to expand her thematic range, compound her personal voice, and abandon the traditional Confessional themes. The female bodylerotic bliss. fairy tales, and biblical themes are investigated, respectively, in my examination of Love Poems, Transformations, The Book of Folly, The Death Notebooks and Poems, Transformations. They,The Death Notebooks and The Awful Rowing Toward God. Sexton's work in these, and all of her collections, is highly gynocentric, providing critical discourse on female representation and experience. In the Conclusion. I raise questions about the editing of Sexton's posthumous collections (collections she had not completed at the time of her death in 1974). and suggest that a discussion of this poetry would be more appropriate to a biographical study than a critical study, given the incomplete, harrowing nature of these poems. iii Acknowledgements I wish to thank Mary Nyquist and Fred Flahiff for their wisdom, @dance, and support. & All My Pretty ones My family, Tony Burgess, David Trinidad, Michael Holmes, Leslie Sanders (faith. assistance, love), Kevin Connolly (the voice of reason), Sharon Walton & Cecelia Martino. Abbreviations NALW: The Norton Antholow of Literature bv Women NAMP: The Norton Anthology of Modem Poetry NAf2: The Norton Antholow of English Literature, Fourth Ed., \/ 4. NAITMA: The Norton Antholow of Enelish Literature, V.5, The Major Authors. Star: No Evil Star SPL: Anne Sexton: A Self-portrait in Lettern m:(all) CollectedlCornplete Poems Table of Contents Introduction: 1-36 Chapter One: Locating and Gendering Confessional Poetry: 37-68 Chapter Two: Madness as Method in To Bedlam and Part Wav Back: 69-107 Chapter Three: This is how I wont to die: SuicidelDesire in All M Pretty Ones and Live or Die: 108-137 Chapter Four: Transforming Power and Body Building in Love Poems: 138-172 Chapter Five: Grimm Re-Plotting in Transformations: 173-208 Chapter Six: Crisis and Faith in The Book of Folly. The Death Notebooks and The Awful Rowinn Toward God: 209-254 Conclusion: Reading My Own Life With Loathing: The Final Poems: 255-275 Notes and References: 276-310 Introduction But what ljC the "object"started to speak? Luce Irigaray , "Trivia" And to imagine b only to understand oneself: Paul ValCry A cenain image springs to mind when I read literary biography.. and when I read Middebrook's book in particular. A fred has an old Labrador dog named Dirt. Diriflnds dead things and roZk in them. .. Middiebrook too, rolled in a dead thing. The only dtyerence k, Middlbrook believes she has fooled us: she seems to believe that we will misrake Saton S talent and poetry for hers. J3ca Liedeman, "From Behind the Bedlam" Anne Sexton, who was born in 1928 and died in 1974, published eight books of poems in her Lifetime, one of which - Live or Die - received a Pulitzer Prize. Two additional collections of poetry, which Sexton had not completed, were published posthumously. She also wrote and produced a play entitled Me Street, published fiction and a children's book (The Wizard's Tears). Sexton received a number of honorary doctorates, lectured and instructed in many colleges and universities, and received a series of prestigious grants and fellowships. Her career. which peaked between the years of 1966 and 1971 - when she published her most acclaimed books, Live or Die, Love Poems (1969) and Transformations (1971) - began to decline afier this point. Following Transformations, Sexton's work was increasingly iII-received and criticized, and reviews tended to be "uniformly poor" (Sexton-Gray, Ames. &&: 36361). The most telling evidence of the decline in her reception as an artist may be found in Robert Lowell's memorial of Sexton. which was published after her death. Lowell, who was Sexton's poetry instructor in 1957. and who was instrumental in the publication of her first book, lam and Part Wav Back (1960),acknowledges that Sexton once "cut a figure" in poetry (- :7l).He goes on, however. to ask: "What went wrong? For a book or two she became more powern. Then writing was too easy or too hard for her. She became meager and exaggerated" (71). After her death. Sexton's reputation languished. She had appointed Lois Ames (who was also contracted to write Sylvia Plath's biography) as her biographer in 1966. a project which Ames never completed. Sporadic criticism appeared after her death, but her poetry was very rarely included in anthologies, or in critical overviews of the Confessional poets1. A few important books appeared in the late IWO's. however, including I. D. McClatchy 's anthology, Anne . Sexton: The Art Her Cnhcs and heSexton: A Self-Portrait in Letten, which was co- edited by Linda-Gray Sexton and Lois Ames. Sexton's Complete Poems was published in 1981, with an introduction by Sexton's long-time colleague, Maxine Kumin. In her introduction Kumin states that it "seems presumptuous, only seven years after her death, to talk about Anne Sexton's place in the history of poetry." but she acknowledges that Sexton "has earned her place in the canon" (xxxiii,xxxiv). The appearance of the Complete Poems, as well as Kumin's introduction to this book, in which she states that women poets "owe a debt to Anne Sexton," precipitated a flurry of reviews, and renewed interest in Sexton's canon. Many of the reviews were equivocal, but the (re)emergence of Sexton's work in a collected format attracted one extremely significant commentator: Diane Wood Middlebrook. Middlebrook chose to examine the collected poems as a complex Literary process, which exhibits varying "artistic goals. " and an evident, developing preoccupation "with the psychological and social consequences of inhabiting a female bodyn ("Poet of Weird Abundancen:294). Middlebrook would eventually become the most prominent scholar of Sexton's work and life. She wrote many important biographicallcritical essays, and co-edited the second Selected Poems in 1988. with Diana Hume George2. George would also prove to be a formidable Sexton scholar, who also published biographidcritical essays, and the first significant study of Sexton's work. Oedious Anne: The Poetrv of Anne Sexton (1987). When I began this thesis in 1987, a virtual ground swell of Sexton-criticism had started to appear, which included, in addition to Middlebrook and George's work, Carolyn King hardHall's Anne Sexton (1989). Steven E. Colburn's Anne Sexton: Telling the Tale (1988) and three major anthologies: Critical Essavs on Anne Sexton (l989), edited by Linda Wagner-Martin: Ori~inalEssavs on the Poetrv of Anne Sexton (1988). edited by Frances Biuler. and Sexton: Selected Criticism (1988). edited by Diana Hume George. No Evil Star: Selected Essavs. Interviews and Prose (1985). also edited by Colbum, provided valuable documentation of Sexton's commentaries on her work and ideas. The most anticipated book of this period was Middlebrook's 1991 biography of Sexton, a book which would provide funher details of a life that, according to Kurnin. had already been "mercilessly dissected" (Intro. a:xxxiv). The biography received an inordinate amount of pre- and post-publication attention. as Middlebrook used information from Sexton's psychiatric sessions in her work.