▊ Excerpt from an Interview with Anne Sexton (1968) Interviewer: Barbara Kefres
Paris Review: You were nearly thirty years old when you started writing poetry. Why?
Anne Sexton: I had a hidden self before I was twenty-eight, a "me" who thought he could only mix milk sauce and change diapers, and nothing else. I didn't know I had some creative potential. In the past, I was a victim of the American Dream, petty bourgeoisie and middle class. All I want is a decent life, like getting married and having children. I believe that as long as there is enough love, those nightmares, hallucinations and demons will not come. I desperately wanted to live a regular life, and I grew up in this life myself, and my husband thought the same thing. Unfortunately, one cannot put up a white fence to block out all nightmares. When I was twenty-eight years old, the surface was cracked. I was mentally ill and always wanted to kill myself.
Paris Review: Did you start writing after the psychosis broke out?
Sexton: It's not that simple. I started by saying to the psychiatrist, "I suck, I won't do anything." What a fool. So he suggested that I study on my own and watch the Boston Education Channel. He said my mind was good to use. In fact, after doing the Rorschach test, he said that I had a talent for creativity, but I just never played it. I didn't think so, but I did what he said. One night, I found the education desk in I.A. Richards) read the sonnet program, and after reading it he also commented on the form of the poem. I thought to myself, "Maybe I can do this too, so I might as well try it." So I sat down and wrote a sonnet. The next day I wrote another one, and that was it. My doctor encouraged me to write a little more, "Don't kill yourself," he said, "And one day, maybe your poem will mean a little to some people." "It was as if I had a purpose, a little motivation, and no matter how incurable I was, I always felt like there was something to do in life.
Paris Review: People say you're full of raw wildness. Is it natural for you to dig so deep into the painful experiences of your own lives?
Sexton: There will be a part of me that I feel afraid of, but the brave part that drives me forward. However, there are parts of me who are always intimidated by what is being done in front of me. The left hand digs out some unclean ones, and the right hand buries them with sand. Either way, I always move forward. I know more now. Sometimes, I feel like I'm a rapporteur who studies myself. Yes, it takes a certain amount of courage, but the writer has to take the opportunity to be a fool... Yes, being a fool, that's perhaps the most courageous thing to do.
Paris Review: You said: "I think the second collection lacks the impact and the sense of honesty of the first, which I was so raw and ignorant when I wrote it." "Can you talk about your progress from the second book of poems to the third, or even the fourth?"
Sexton: Yes, the first book of poems presents the experience of madness; the second, the cause of madness; the third, I finally discovered, that I wanted to make a decision between life and death. I dared to be a fool again when I wrote the third book of poems—raw, as Lowell called "unpolished," with my protective colors. By the fourth book of poems, I not only experienced it, but I also loved it all the way to the scene, and it was sometimes like a miracle.
Paris Review: What are the technical developments?
Sexton: Most of the poems in Madhouse are very rigorous in form, and I think that's more conducive to expression. Constructing verses, lines of poetry, making them a whole, and finally coming to some conclusions, leaving a little shock, a kind of double rhyme shock, all of which made me feel endlessly fun, and now I take pleasure in it, but even more fun when I write Madhouse. My second collection of poems, All My Dear Ones, is more relaxed in form, and the last part is not even formal. I find the freedom achieved by abandoning form that used to function like my "superego." The third collection of poems is even looser. There is a long poem in "Love Poems", eighteen verses, all written in a certain form, which also makes me enjoy it. In addition, basically the entire poetry collection uses free body, and at that time I thought it was good to use no rhymes, or it was up to the specific poems.
Paris Review: In Sylvia Plath's last collection of poems, the one she wrote before she committed suicide, she is completely immersed in the theme of death, much like you did in Life or Death. Did you discuss death and suicide while Liz was drinking?
Sexton: It was a lot of discussion, very frequent, and Sylvia and I would talk tirelessly about our first suicide, in great detail and in depth — with free fries on the side. In fact, suicide is the antithesis of poetry. Sylvia and I used to talk about opposites. When we talk about death, we are preoccupied, and both of us are like moths to a fire. She talks about her first suicide, and she goes out of her way, and her novel "The Bell Cover" is about it. It is strange that our ego-centeredness did not corrupt George's interest; on the contrary, I think both of us were inspired—even George—as if death had made each of us a little more real.
Paris Review: Are there any poems that make you feel that you must use strict rhymes and not write in free bodies?
Sexton: Maybe it's a poem about madness. I've noticed that Robert Lowell did a better job of using free laws when he wrote about psychosis, but I did the exact opposite. Only when I set the frame to the point of incomprehensibility can I gain freedom of expression. But in Life or Death, my Ride Your Donkey and Escape is not formally framed, and I find that I am just as comfortable with free body. Maybe it's because in addition to being a poet, I have grown a little bit as a person and have a better understanding of myself.
Paris Review: Many of your poems are full of dramatic narratives. Because you are used to and good at grasping the plot, for you, from writing poetry to scene narrative, it is easy to call it?
Sexton: I don't think it's a shift. Both genres are written about how the protagonist faces himself and faces his destiny. I don't think I'm writing scenes, I'm just writing people. In another context—I was helping Marcoshin Cumin—to give her a little opinion on her novel, I told her, "Fuck the structure, just grab your character at the right time." "Each of us is in our own timeline; we are born, we live, and then we die. She was thinking about it, and then I told her to go into her character's life — and she finally did.
Paris Review: How did you feel when you won the Pulitzer Prize for Literature for Life or Death in 1967?
Sexton: Of course I'm genuinely happy. I wasn't going well then. I had broken hips and was recovering, limping, but still two steps away. After winning the award, I gained more motivation and wanted to write more poetry. In the months that followed, I managed to write a poem, Eighteen Days Without You—a poem of eighteen parts over fourteen days. I was inspired by the awareness pulitzer gave me, but I also knew that it wasn't a big deal. After all, they give a Pulitzer Prize to one person every year, and I'm just one of those in the long list.
Paris Review: Did your responsibilities as a mother and wife interfere with your writing?
Sexton: Well, when the kids were little, they were interfering all day long. It was because of my tough attitude that I got through that period, you think, two little girls would be called "Mommy, Mommy, and I was there trying to find imagery and conceive a poem. Now my children are much older and know how to gently walk around me and say, "Shhh, Mommy is writing poetry." However, when I was writing Eighteen Days Without You—the last of the poems," my husband said to me, "I can't stand it, you've left me alone for too long." "The poem was originally called 'Twenty-one Days Without You', and it turned out to be because he destroyed my inspiration and had to become 'Eighteen Days Without You'; he asked me to go back to his life, and I had a hard time refusing.
Sexton and her two daughters were at home, circa 1960
Paris Review: What prompted you to write In That Deep Museum? That poem is about how Christ would feel if he were still alive in His tomb. First of all, how did you come up with the idea of dealing with such a subject?
Sexton: I don't know. I think it could be unconscious. I feel like I've had the feeling that Christ spoke to me and asked me to write this story down... The story he couldn't write. I said to myself, this should be the worst death. The cross and martyrdom that I had been so convinced of had almost become clichés, and on the other hand, he might have had to pursue another, more humble death for reasons of love, for the most important thing in him was love—not death.
Paris Review: I just asked if you are an atheist of faith. So, when death does happen, will you be pushed from the side of the faith to the side of the faith?
Sexton: There will be a moment, but it doesn't have to happen because of death. There will also be some mild death in your life— in your own life, and then you will be connected with something strange, something transcendental.
Paris Review: Perhaps in the future, your critics will relate the misfortunes you present in your confessional poems to the unfortunate people you present in religious poems.
Sexton: You couldn't have been more right. Thank you for speaking out. The ragged Christ, the unfortunate one, acted out the greatest confession, I mean, a confession made of the body. And I try to confess in words.
Paris Review: In the beginning your poetry was one of the means of physical healing, but now, what is the motivation for writing?
Sexton: I write because I'm driven — that's my baggage. Although after each book of poems was published, I felt that there would be no more. It will feel like it's over, goodbye, goodbye.
Paris Review: What do you think is the purpose of poetry?
Sexton: As Kafka said in a novel, "A book should be like an axe that splits the frozen sea in people's hearts." "That's what I want to get out of poetry. A poem should be like an axe, splitting the frozen sea in our hearts.
Translator: Zhang Yimin
■ This article is excerpted from the Paris Review poet review
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