Anne Sexton

I had said this to Tim I'm still so inward looking because it hasn't been that long since I've been writing so it's still these inner things coming out from from and of course I've been impacted but I haven't done as much reading in the beginning as I hadn't done as now so I I was in Mark Trudinick's master class and was exposed to some beautiful formal poetry there.

Many of the American poets that, Allie Whitelock is my mentor, and she loves Robert Lau and Anne Sexton, and I've come to love them, the confessional poets.

Anne Harwood, Glenn Harwood, Gwen Harwood, sorry, Judy Beveridge a lot of the Australian poets my brain is drawing a blank but I've been impacted by many the to be read pile is ridiculous I've been impacted by many poems individual poems and some of the naturalists even the Robert Gray it's really it's a bit of a hodgepodge because I haven't been immersed with some distance from my writing to be able to really say I have a good grip of this and I've been influenced by this I it's still early for me and it's really just what's come out and little bits and pieces I've I've gleaned on the way.

We're only talking two years.

He's a great example of the decadent movements kind of return to the fairy tale to reclaim its subversive moments to really look at kind of what was maybe magic in the fairy tales they draw from becomes occultism and really turning towards forbidden desires and this kind of individualism that sort of came about with the decadent movement.

And there is an argument for looking at that as a unique point in time connected to the Gothic that then speaks forward to a lot of contemporary work from Angela Carter through Anne Sexton, through Francesca Leah Buck in the 2000s to Lottie Mills, who published an incredible volume called Monstrum today.

So Monstrum was published in 2024 by Lottie Mills, which does a lot of the same sort of unlocking and opening up the tales that Angela Carter did, but for a new generation, Francesca Lia Block wrote The Rose and the Beast in 2001, I believe was the publishing date for that.

And it again, pulls open the tales.

Anne Sexton was a poet known for her collection called Transformations, which includes a very interesting take on Cinderella, which I believe was 1971.

So we definitely have this wonderful moment from Oscar Wilde going forward.

We also have this wonderful moment going backwards, and we can go from Oscar Wilde back and we can look at George MacDonald's work, who also wrote literary fairy tales.

We invite you to step past the ghost light and into the shadows with us, where stories whisper, poems breathe, and Halloween comes alive.

We begin with Maria Marquis reading Anne Sexton's

Her

Kind.

A spellbinding exploration of a woman moving through darkness, danger, and defiance.

A tale that haunts, pouts, and refuses to apologize.

Her Kind by Anne Sexton.

I have gone out, a possessed witch, haunting the black air braver at night, dreaming evil I have done my hitch over the plain houses, light by light, lonely thing twelve-fingered out of mind.

We're here to talk about poetry on this month's book club.

It is Sunday, October 4th, and I am Ephraim, and my favorite poet is Anne Sexton, and I'm handing it to Grace.

Hi, I'm Grace.

Are we supposed to say our favorite poet from among these or in general? I guess in general, yeah.

Gosh.

Do you know what? I've never been asked that before.

Who's my favorite? I know from the ones that I've read just this time around, I really enjoyed the Anne Sexton poems.

But there

so it's ee cummings what's the other one

It was by Anne Sexton, and we didn't have anything specifically picked out, so I just requested the complete works.

We don't have to read it all, of course.

I just wanted to have whatever we happen to choose.

The Edgar, well, we already had the Raven on there, but I added the Sphinx.

The love song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot.

The Anne Sexton works, the works of Anne Sexton.

And then...

moving.

Anyway, I also love Anne Sexton's Her Kind.

By the way,

it also kind of sounds like one of the heavier Decembrist songs.

Like, "Oh, with your internet." I'm, "Uh, don't, don't know what we're talking about." We went around and around, and he's like, "Well, I just got sent this report with, like, these sites on it." And finally I'm like, "Okay, you gotta tell me what this is." Well, it turns out I, I was away, I was writing some music and looking for some inspiration.

So I had typed in Anne Sexton poems that I was reading, but it only got to Anne and Sex-

[laughs]

... and sent all of that to him.

All right.

Uh, I picked a poem called I Remember by Anne Sexton, and I first came across this poem and her work in general in high school in a creative writing class.

And up until that point, I wouldn't have considered myself a fan of poetry.

I felt like all I was learning in school was, you know, just the old white dude poetry.

All right, I'll read it, and we can talk some more about it.

All right.

I Remember by Anne Sexton.

By the first of August, the invisible beetles began to snore.

He sees you one night a week-

It's, uh, yeah, but jizz, it's, uh, Anne Sexton, I'm His Wife, You're Just a Friend.

Wow.

It's-