Anne Sexton: A Biography - Hardcover

Wood Middlebrook, Diane

4.17

3,981 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1853814067 ISBN 13: 9781853814068

Publisher: Virago, 1991

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At the time of her suicide in October 1974, Anne Sexton, 45, occupied a central position on the American poetry scene. Today, her reputation is tangled up with that of Sylvia Plath, whom she knew, and tainted with images of monster or victim. This biography, written with the full co-operation of Sexton's family and her principal psychiatrist who released three years of audiotaped therapy sessions, reveals and pivots around the creative relationship Anne Sexton struck with an incurable illness. Suffering from a mental disorder that eluded diagnosis, Anne Sexton underwent intensive psychotherapy and repeated bouts in mental institutions for nearly half her life. By the time she died, misery had hollowed her out, and drinking and pills had impaired her creativity. But hers had been an urgent, exciting and shocking new voice in poetry - accessible, moving, intensely honest; "madness" and its cultural meanings were central in her art.

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Review:

A wonderful book, just, balanced, insightful, complex in its sympathies and in its judgment of Sexton both as a person and as a writer... a deeply moving account."-- The New York Times Book Review

"Judicious and canny. [Middlebrook] appreciates both Sexton's gifts as a poet and her attractive side as a human being...but looks at her destructive weaknesses with a steady eye." -- Time

"Sympathetic but resolutely unsentimental ... intelligent, sensitive, at times harrowing." -- Joyce Carol Oates, Washington Post Book World

About the Author:

Diane Middlebrook was an American biographer, poet, and teacher. She taught feminist studies for many years at Stanford University. Middlebrook is best known for her acclaimed biographies of Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath, and Billy Tipton. She passed away in 2007.

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