WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.660 Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Today we are opening 00:00:02.660 --> 00:00:05.200 up a file that is, and I don't use this word 00:00:05.200 --> 00:00:07.919 lightly, explosive. It really is. We're looking 00:00:07.919 --> 00:00:11.460 at a figure who didn't just write poetry. She 00:00:11.460 --> 00:00:14.960 effectively took a sledgehammer to the polite 00:00:14.960 --> 00:00:18.100 silence of the 1950s domestic sphere. We're talking 00:00:18.100 --> 00:00:21.079 about Anne Sexton. Anne Sexton. It's a name that 00:00:21.079 --> 00:00:23.359 for a lot of people, you know, it conjures up 00:00:23.359 --> 00:00:26.000 a very specific aesthetic. Right. The cigarette 00:00:26.000 --> 00:00:30.140 smoke, the martini glass, the typewriter. And 00:00:30.140 --> 00:00:33.539 this absolute refusal to look away from the dark. 00:00:33.659 --> 00:00:36.140 Yeah, the darkness. She's a monumental figure, 00:00:36.240 --> 00:00:38.359 but I feel like she's often misunderstood or 00:00:38.359 --> 00:00:41.359 maybe just... flattened into this one -dimensional 00:00:41.359 --> 00:00:42.960 tragic figure. I think that's exactly right. 00:00:43.060 --> 00:00:44.679 And that's a real disservice to the work and 00:00:44.679 --> 00:00:47.100 to the life, as complicated as it was. Exactly. 00:00:47.100 --> 00:00:49.039 And I think for the average person or even the 00:00:49.039 --> 00:00:51.679 casual reader, the knowledge stops at confessional 00:00:51.679 --> 00:00:55.079 poet or maybe Sylvia Plath's friend. But we have 00:00:55.079 --> 00:00:57.359 a stack of sources here, biographies, literary 00:00:57.359 --> 00:01:00.380 criticism, details on the controversies that 00:01:00.380 --> 00:01:02.420 erupted after her death. And they tell a much, 00:01:02.479 --> 00:01:04.480 much wilder story. Oh, absolutely. I mean, we're 00:01:04.480 --> 00:01:06.819 talking about a woman who went from being a suburban 00:01:06.819 --> 00:01:10.599 housewife. And a literal fashion model. Right. 00:01:10.659 --> 00:01:12.799 A fashion model. People forget that part. To 00:01:12.799 --> 00:01:15.560 a Pulitzer Prize winner who fronted a jazz rock 00:01:15.560 --> 00:01:18.500 band. It's a jarring trajectory. It sounds almost 00:01:18.500 --> 00:01:20.459 like fiction when you lay it all out like that. 00:01:20.560 --> 00:01:22.659 It really does. And she did all of this while 00:01:22.659 --> 00:01:26.299 battling severe, often untreated or poorly treated 00:01:26.299 --> 00:01:30.120 mental illness, specifically bipolar disorder. 00:01:30.379 --> 00:01:32.959 And that's a key point. We have to be careful 00:01:32.959 --> 00:01:37.359 not to define her solely by. The illness. Yes. 00:01:37.659 --> 00:01:39.760 Even though the illness, as we'll see, defines 00:01:39.760 --> 00:01:42.099 so much of her work and her life. It's the central 00:01:42.099 --> 00:01:44.359 tension of her story, isn't it? The creativity 00:01:44.359 --> 00:01:46.900 and the illness being so intertwined. And that 00:01:46.900 --> 00:01:49.340 is really the core of our mission today. We want 00:01:49.340 --> 00:01:52.159 to understand this woman who was once told by 00:01:52.159 --> 00:01:55.840 a priest, God is in your typewriter. What a line. 00:01:56.159 --> 00:01:58.510 It's such a heavy charge to put on someone. A 00:01:58.510 --> 00:02:00.689 blessing and a curse, maybe. Yeah. But we also 00:02:00.689 --> 00:02:03.489 have to navigate the dark reality of her biography 00:02:03.489 --> 00:02:06.290 because her story raises some massive ethical 00:02:06.290 --> 00:02:09.050 questions. It does. It forces us to ask about 00:02:09.050 --> 00:02:11.789 the price of privacy. I mean, when an artist 00:02:11.789 --> 00:02:14.629 decides that their life, and by extension the 00:02:14.629 --> 00:02:17.210 lives of their family members, is their raw material, 00:02:17.669 --> 00:02:20.490 what are the consequences? That's the question. 00:02:20.710 --> 00:02:22.689 We often celebrate the bravery of the confession. 00:02:23.449 --> 00:02:25.370 But rarely do we look at the collateral damage 00:02:25.370 --> 00:02:27.830 of that confession. Right. And we are going to 00:02:27.830 --> 00:02:30.669 get into the really thorny stuff later. The release 00:02:30.669 --> 00:02:32.810 of confidential therapy tapes, the allegations 00:02:32.810 --> 00:02:35.650 of abuse. It gets incredibly complicated. Very. 00:02:35.750 --> 00:02:37.969 But let's start at the beginning. Because before 00:02:37.969 --> 00:02:41.750 she was Anne Sexton, the tortured poet, she was 00:02:41.750 --> 00:02:44.789 just Anne Grey Harvey. And on paper, her early 00:02:44.789 --> 00:02:47.770 life looked... Well, it looked picture perfect, 00:02:47.830 --> 00:02:50.069 didn't it? On the surface, absolutely. She was 00:02:50.069 --> 00:02:52.650 born in 1928 in Newton, Massachusetts. OK, so 00:02:52.650 --> 00:02:54.189 for those not familiar with New England geography, 00:02:54.569 --> 00:02:57.669 Newton is. What does that signify? It's upper 00:02:57.669 --> 00:03:00.289 middle class. It's respectable. Her father, Ralph 00:03:00.289 --> 00:03:02.870 Churchill Harvey, was a successful wool merchant. 00:03:03.069 --> 00:03:05.270 So we're talking about a world of country clubs 00:03:05.270 --> 00:03:08.930 and expectations, a very specific, very buttoned 00:03:08.930 --> 00:03:11.509 up world. It's that classic mid -century American 00:03:11.509 --> 00:03:14.969 stability, the white picket fence dream. Exactly 00:03:14.969 --> 00:03:17.650 that. And she follows the path that was laid 00:03:17.650 --> 00:03:19.449 out for a young woman of her station at that 00:03:19.449 --> 00:03:22.460 time. She goes to boarding school at Rogers Hall 00:03:22.460 --> 00:03:24.979 in Lowell, Massachusetts. Right. Then she does 00:03:24.979 --> 00:03:27.560 a stint at a place called Garland School. And 00:03:27.560 --> 00:03:29.439 you have to understand, these were institutions 00:03:29.439 --> 00:03:32.539 designed to polish young women. They were effectively 00:03:32.539 --> 00:03:34.860 preparing them for the marriage market. So the 00:03:34.860 --> 00:03:37.180 curriculum wasn't about finding your voice. No, 00:03:37.240 --> 00:03:38.819 it was about finding a husband. It was about 00:03:38.819 --> 00:03:42.580 learning to be a good hostess, to run a household. 00:03:42.780 --> 00:03:45.000 That was the career path. And she had the currency 00:03:45.000 --> 00:03:48.229 for that market. Our sources all emphasize she 00:03:48.229 --> 00:03:51.090 was stunningly beautiful. And this detail that 00:03:51.090 --> 00:03:52.870 jumped out at me is that she actually worked 00:03:52.870 --> 00:03:55.969 as a model for the Heart Agency in Boston. That 00:03:55.969 --> 00:03:58.169 is a crucial detail. It's not just trivia. It 00:03:58.169 --> 00:04:00.930 emphasizes that she knew how to present a facade. 00:04:01.150 --> 00:04:03.189 She knew how to be looked at. She understood 00:04:03.189 --> 00:04:05.889 the power of image, the power of a pose. And 00:04:05.889 --> 00:04:08.669 she follows that script perfectly for a while. 00:04:08.789 --> 00:04:12.509 She elopes in 1948, marrying Alfred Cayo Sexton 00:04:12.509 --> 00:04:15.629 II. She is only 20 years old. So young. Very 00:04:15.629 --> 00:04:17.430 young. And she just starts checking all the boxes. 00:04:17.470 --> 00:04:21.269 Marriage, check. Children, check. She has her 00:04:21.269 --> 00:04:24.550 first daughter, Linda Gray Sexton, in 1953, and 00:04:24.550 --> 00:04:28.079 her second. Joyce led Sexton in 1955. Right. 00:04:28.160 --> 00:04:30.379 So if you were looking at her life from the outside 00:04:30.379 --> 00:04:33.339 in, say, 1955, you would see the ultimate success 00:04:33.339 --> 00:04:35.959 story of the era, a beautiful home in the suburbs, 00:04:36.220 --> 00:04:39.740 a husband, two healthy kids, the American dream. 00:04:39.899 --> 00:04:43.000 But internally. But internally, the wheels were 00:04:43.000 --> 00:04:45.019 already coming off. And this is where the story 00:04:45.019 --> 00:04:47.720 pivots so dramatically. It seems that motherhood 00:04:47.720 --> 00:04:50.300 was the catalyst or at least the match that lit 00:04:50.300 --> 00:04:52.560 the fuse of her illness. Which is a terrifying 00:04:52.560 --> 00:04:54.500 thought considering the era. We're talking about 00:04:54.500 --> 00:04:56.319 the mid -50s. You weren't supposed to be unhappy 00:04:56.319 --> 00:04:58.339 about being a mother. It was supposed to be the 00:04:58.339 --> 00:05:00.199 ultimate fulfillment. Exactly. You were supposed 00:05:00.199 --> 00:05:02.519 to be grateful and content. But we know now, 00:05:02.620 --> 00:05:05.319 looking back, that she suffered from severe postpartum 00:05:05.319 --> 00:05:07.199 depression, which likely triggered her underlying 00:05:07.199 --> 00:05:09.480 bipolar disorder. But back then, the terminology 00:05:09.480 --> 00:05:11.759 wasn't there, was it? no not at all it was just 00:05:11.759 --> 00:05:14.899 viewed as nerves or instability or you know female 00:05:14.899 --> 00:05:18.519 hysteria her first manic episode hits in 1954. 00:05:18.980 --> 00:05:21.480 then after her second daughter is born in 1955 00:05:21.480 --> 00:05:25.540 a second major episode hits and this one is worse 00:05:25.540 --> 00:05:28.899 much worse it gets bad enough that she is hospitalized 00:05:28.899 --> 00:05:32.839 at glenside hospital she's suicidal her family 00:05:32.839 --> 00:05:34.420 doesn't know what to do with her and this is 00:05:34.420 --> 00:05:37.000 the moment that changes literary history it's 00:05:37.000 --> 00:05:40.550 almost cinematic she's in the hospital presumably 00:05:40.550 --> 00:05:43.069 at her lowest point, and she meets a man named 00:05:43.069 --> 00:05:46.730 Dr. Martin Orne. Dr. Orne. He is a central character 00:05:46.730 --> 00:05:49.230 in this story, and a controversial one. He is 00:05:49.230 --> 00:05:51.550 both a hero and a villain, depending on which 00:05:51.550 --> 00:05:53.189 chapter we're in. Right, we'll definitely get 00:05:53.189 --> 00:05:55.550 to that later. But in 1955, he is the catalyst. 00:05:55.889 --> 00:05:58.089 He doesn't just give her pills or shock therapy, 00:05:58.370 --> 00:06:00.790 he gives her an assignment, he sees something 00:06:00.790 --> 00:06:02.970 in her, some way she's processing her trauma, 00:06:03.149 --> 00:06:06.420 and he specifically encourages her... To write 00:06:06.420 --> 00:06:08.399 poetry. I want to pause on that because it's 00:06:08.399 --> 00:06:11.220 so counterintuitive. Usually we think of writing 00:06:11.220 --> 00:06:14.040 as a career choice. I want to be a writer. But 00:06:14.040 --> 00:06:17.199 for Sexton, it wasn't career advice. No, it was 00:06:17.199 --> 00:06:19.259 a prescription. It was medicine. He wasn't saying, 00:06:19.259 --> 00:06:21.660 and you have a gift, go get famous. He was using 00:06:21.660 --> 00:06:24.139 writing as a therapeutic tool. So it was a way 00:06:24.139 --> 00:06:27.970 to. Like to organize the chaos. Exactly. To organize 00:06:27.970 --> 00:06:30.689 the chaos in her mind. It was a way for her to 00:06:30.689 --> 00:06:33.449 externalize the internal horror so she could 00:06:33.449 --> 00:06:36.370 look at it, give it a shape, and maybe, just 00:06:36.370 --> 00:06:39.170 maybe, manage it. She was transitioning from 00:06:39.170 --> 00:06:41.970 a patient struggling with madness to a student 00:06:41.970 --> 00:06:44.290 of the craft. But it wasn't an easy transition, 00:06:44.430 --> 00:06:46.509 was it? I mean, she didn't just pick up a pen 00:06:46.509 --> 00:06:48.870 and become a confident poet overnight. Far from 00:06:48.870 --> 00:06:51.959 it. She was incredibly insecure. There's a great 00:06:51.959 --> 00:06:54.579 anecdote about her wanting to join her very first 00:06:54.579 --> 00:06:57.699 poetry workshop, which was led by a man named 00:06:57.699 --> 00:07:00.879 John Holmes. Okay. She was so filled with great 00:07:00.879 --> 00:07:03.639 trepidation, as one biography puts it, that she 00:07:03.639 --> 00:07:05.220 couldn't even pick up the phone to register. 00:07:05.519 --> 00:07:08.899 Wow. She made a friend call for her, and it gets 00:07:08.899 --> 00:07:11.629 even more poignant. She then made that same friend 00:07:11.629 --> 00:07:14.389 drive her to the first class and literally walk 00:07:14.389 --> 00:07:17.089 her into the room. She was that terrified of 00:07:17.089 --> 00:07:19.730 being exposed as a fraud, as just a housewife 00:07:19.730 --> 00:07:22.649 playing at art. It makes her so human. We see 00:07:22.649 --> 00:07:24.870 the Pulitzer winner later, this icon of strength, 00:07:24.949 --> 00:07:27.269 and here she is just terrified to walk into a 00:07:27.269 --> 00:07:29.329 classroom. It's a powerful image, but once she 00:07:29.329 --> 00:07:31.269 got in there... Once she got in, she was hooked. 00:07:31.470 --> 00:07:35.060 She was. And she learned from the best. She eventually 00:07:35.060 --> 00:07:37.860 ends up at Boston University studying under the 00:07:37.860 --> 00:07:40.660 titan of mid -century poetry, Robert Lowell. 00:07:40.779 --> 00:07:42.879 And this is the class. If you could go back in 00:07:42.879 --> 00:07:45.420 a time machine to any poetry workshop. This is 00:07:45.420 --> 00:07:47.620 the one you'd pick. Because look at who is sitting 00:07:47.620 --> 00:07:50.319 in the desks next to her. Sylvia Plath and George 00:07:50.319 --> 00:07:53.100 Starbuck. It is the legendary class. You have 00:07:53.100 --> 00:07:56.439 Sexton and Plath. Two women who would come to 00:07:56.439 --> 00:07:59.620 define this new raw genre, sitting in the same 00:07:59.620 --> 00:08:02.079 room, workshopping each other's poems. They were 00:08:02.079 --> 00:08:04.240 at the absolute epicenter of what would become 00:08:04.240 --> 00:08:06.899 the confessional movement. Let's drill down into 00:08:06.899 --> 00:08:08.800 that term confessional because it gets thrown 00:08:08.800 --> 00:08:11.639 around a lot. Sometimes almost as a slur, right? 00:08:11.680 --> 00:08:14.220 Implying it's just oversharing or diary entries 00:08:14.220 --> 00:08:17.060 set to line breaks. Yes, it's often used dismissively. 00:08:17.180 --> 00:08:19.600 But in the context of the late 50s and early 00:08:19.600 --> 00:08:22.240 60s, this was revolutionary stuff. It was earth 00:08:22.240 --> 00:08:24.680 shattering. Set the scene for us. What was poetry 00:08:24.680 --> 00:08:27.060 supposed to be like back then? Well, the prevailing 00:08:27.060 --> 00:08:30.360 style was high modernism. Think T .S. Eliot. 00:08:30.839 --> 00:08:33.059 Poetry was supposed to be intellectual, detached, 00:08:33.519 --> 00:08:36.340 objective, full of allusions to Greek myths and 00:08:36.340 --> 00:08:39.480 obscure history. Deeply impersonal. It was about 00:08:39.480 --> 00:08:42.759 broad cultural commentary. It was not about your 00:08:42.759 --> 00:08:45.360 body. It was not about your kitchen or your messy 00:08:45.360 --> 00:08:47.779 divorce or your time in a mental hospital. That 00:08:47.779 --> 00:08:51.480 was considered vulgar, unseemly. And then comes 00:08:51.480 --> 00:08:53.940 Anne Sexton writing about, well, give us a list. 00:08:53.980 --> 00:08:55.559 What was she putting on the page? Okay, here's 00:08:55.559 --> 00:08:59.309 the list. Menstruation. abortion, masturbation, 00:08:59.470 --> 00:09:03.850 incest, adultery, drug addiction, the messy secret 00:09:03.850 --> 00:09:06.529 realities of a woman's life. Even saying those 00:09:06.529 --> 00:09:08.889 words now on a show like this feels a little 00:09:08.889 --> 00:09:12.789 heavy. In 1960, in a book of poetry from a major 00:09:12.789 --> 00:09:15.519 publisher, That must have been nuclear. It was. 00:09:15.679 --> 00:09:18.299 Her best friend, the poet Maxine Kuhman, put 00:09:18.299 --> 00:09:20.779 it perfectly. She said these topics were proprieties 00:09:20.779 --> 00:09:23.299 embraced by none. They were considered obscene, 00:09:23.299 --> 00:09:25.100 especially for a woman to be writing about. Why 00:09:25.100 --> 00:09:27.000 especially for a woman? Because a woman's job 00:09:27.000 --> 00:09:29.220 was to be the angel in the house, a famous phrase 00:09:29.220 --> 00:09:31.659 from a Victorian poem. She was supposed to be 00:09:31.659 --> 00:09:34.659 pure, selfless, and silent about the unpleasantries 00:09:34.659 --> 00:09:38.139 of life. Her role was to uphold the facade, not 00:09:38.139 --> 00:09:40.440 to talk about the blood and the mess of biology 00:09:40.440 --> 00:09:43.080 and psychology. So sex had really ripped the 00:09:43.080 --> 00:09:45.169 veil. off. Her first book comes out in 1960. 00:09:45.470 --> 00:09:48.330 And just look at the title, To Bedlam and Part 00:09:48.330 --> 00:09:50.629 Way Back. She is putting her institutionalization 00:09:50.629 --> 00:09:54.009 right on the cover. Bedlam is another word for 00:09:54.009 --> 00:09:57.090 madness, for the asylum. She is saying, I have 00:09:57.090 --> 00:09:59.309 been to the place you all fear, the place you 00:09:59.309 --> 00:10:01.750 whisper about, and I have returned to tell you 00:10:01.750 --> 00:10:04.269 what it's like. She's reclaiming the experience. 00:10:04.649 --> 00:10:07.149 Exactly. She's refusing to hide it in the attic 00:10:07.149 --> 00:10:09.049 like some family secret. She's making it the 00:10:09.049 --> 00:10:11.350 subject of her art. And inside that book, you 00:10:11.350 --> 00:10:14.909 have Poems like Her Kind. I feel like this is 00:10:14.909 --> 00:10:17.070 the entry point for so many readers, the poem 00:10:17.070 --> 00:10:19.850 everyone knows. It is seminal. It's her anthem. 00:10:20.009 --> 00:10:22.870 She uses the metaphor of the witch. I have gone 00:10:22.870 --> 00:10:25.549 out, a possessed witch. I have been her kind. 00:10:25.789 --> 00:10:27.169 What's she doing there with that witch imagery? 00:10:27.429 --> 00:10:29.970 She is taking the figure of the witch, the outcast, 00:10:30.129 --> 00:10:32.549 the dangerous woman, the one society persecutes 00:10:32.549 --> 00:10:36.049 for being different or powerful, and she is aligning 00:10:36.049 --> 00:10:38.350 herself with it. She's saying, that's me. I am 00:10:38.350 --> 00:10:41.029 the woman who doesn't fit. It is an act of solidarity 00:10:41.029 --> 00:10:43.509 with every woman who has ever been called too 00:10:43.509 --> 00:10:46.389 much or hysterical or crazy. It's an incredibly 00:10:46.389 --> 00:10:48.690 powerful statement of identity. It's a reclamation 00:10:48.690 --> 00:10:51.850 of a slur. She also wrote the double image, which 00:10:51.850 --> 00:10:55.000 hits closer to home. It explores the mother daughter 00:10:55.000 --> 00:10:58.419 relationship, but specifically the guilt of separation. 00:10:58.639 --> 00:11:02.039 Yes. That poem was written after one of her hospitalizations 00:11:02.039 --> 00:11:04.240 when her young daughter had to go live with her 00:11:04.240 --> 00:11:06.240 mother in law because Anne was too sick to care 00:11:06.240 --> 00:11:09.039 for her. Wow. And the poem deals with this incredible 00:11:09.039 --> 00:11:12.220 guilt, but also with generational trauma. It 00:11:12.220 --> 00:11:15.059 questions whether this disease of sadness is 00:11:15.059 --> 00:11:17.799 passed down from mother to daughter like an inheritance. 00:11:18.340 --> 00:11:21.259 It's raw and unflinching in a way that just hadn't 00:11:21.259 --> 00:11:23.750 really been done before in poetry. And speaking 00:11:23.750 --> 00:11:25.830 of trauma and connection, we have to talk about 00:11:25.830 --> 00:11:28.509 Sylvia's death. This was written after Plath 00:11:28.509 --> 00:11:32.210 died by suicide in 1963. They were friends, but 00:11:32.210 --> 00:11:34.649 also rivals. It's a very complicated relationship, 00:11:34.909 --> 00:11:38.509 but the poem is a raw, painful homage. It's not 00:11:38.509 --> 00:11:41.710 just a simple elegy or mourning. Sexton talks 00:11:41.710 --> 00:11:44.149 about the tangled threads of their shared depression. 00:11:44.570 --> 00:11:46.470 There's a darkness in that poem that goes beyond 00:11:46.470 --> 00:11:49.210 just grief. There is. There's almost a sense 00:11:49.210 --> 00:11:52.330 of envy in the poem that Plath had finally achieved 00:11:52.330 --> 00:11:55.169 the death they had both been courting. It's a 00:11:55.169 --> 00:11:58.629 very dark, very honest look at suicidal ideation 00:11:58.629 --> 00:12:01.450 as a shared bond. They used to talk about suicide 00:12:01.450 --> 00:12:03.970 over martinis at the Ritz -Carlton bar. It was 00:12:03.970 --> 00:12:06.269 their common language. It's chilling. It is. 00:12:06.289 --> 00:12:09.429 But despite, or maybe because of this darkness, 00:12:09.789 --> 00:12:13.639 the literary world rewarded her. She starts out 00:12:13.639 --> 00:12:15.740 a bit conventional in her style, but our sources 00:12:15.740 --> 00:12:17.960 say she quickly learns to roughen up her line. 00:12:18.360 --> 00:12:20.440 What does that mean to roughen up her line? It 00:12:20.440 --> 00:12:22.480 means she stopped trying to be so formal. She 00:12:22.480 --> 00:12:24.460 stopped trying to write like the men, like Robert 00:12:24.460 --> 00:12:27.100 Lowell. She found her own voice, which was more 00:12:27.100 --> 00:12:29.559 direct, more visceral. She weaponized language 00:12:29.559 --> 00:12:33.240 against the palatess, the polite facade of society. 00:12:33.700 --> 00:12:36.820 And it worked. It worked. By 1967, she wins the 00:12:36.820 --> 00:12:39.159 Pulitzer Prize for poetry for her collection, 00:12:39.360 --> 00:12:41.500 Live or Die. That is the pinnacle. That's the 00:12:41.500 --> 00:12:43.840 top of the mountain. It absolutely is. She isn't 00:12:43.840 --> 00:12:46.019 just a housewife poet from the suburbs anymore. 00:12:46.259 --> 00:12:49.929 She's not an amateur. She's one of them. Now, 00:12:49.929 --> 00:12:53.269 I want to shatter the image of the lonely artist, 00:12:53.490 --> 00:12:56.230 you know, suffering alone in the garret. Sexton 00:12:56.230 --> 00:12:58.850 didn't work in isolation. You mentioned her friends, 00:12:58.929 --> 00:13:01.250 and it seems like she had a whole creative ecosystem 00:13:01.250 --> 00:13:03.899 around her. She did. She was very connected. 00:13:03.980 --> 00:13:06.100 And she needed those connections to survive, 00:13:06.279 --> 00:13:09.740 I think. First, there was W .D. Snodgrass. He 00:13:09.740 --> 00:13:11.860 was an established poet who became a kind of 00:13:11.860 --> 00:13:14.860 mentor. She met him at the Antioch Writers Conference 00:13:14.860 --> 00:13:18.480 in 1957. And he wrote a poem that unlocked something 00:13:18.480 --> 00:13:20.639 for her, right? Yes. His poem is called Heart's 00:13:20.639 --> 00:13:22.980 Needle. And it was about Snodgrass being separated 00:13:22.980 --> 00:13:25.100 from his young daughter after a divorce. So it 00:13:25.100 --> 00:13:27.539 was personal. Very personal. And when Sexton 00:13:27.539 --> 00:13:29.840 read that, it was a revelation. It was like a 00:13:29.840 --> 00:13:33.279 light bulb went on. validated her own experience 00:13:33.279 --> 00:13:36.580 as a subject for high art. If a man could write 00:13:36.580 --> 00:13:38.980 about missing his child and be praised for it, 00:13:39.039 --> 00:13:42.039 so could she. It gave her permission to use her 00:13:42.039 --> 00:13:44.879 own life without apology. That's a huge moment. 00:13:45.559 --> 00:13:47.820 But the most important relationship in her creative 00:13:47.820 --> 00:13:50.639 life has to be Maxine Kuhman. Without a doubt. 00:13:50.700 --> 00:13:52.899 They met in that very first workshop, the one 00:13:52.899 --> 00:13:54.840 she was scared to even enter. And they just clicked. 00:13:55.059 --> 00:13:58.039 Instantly. Kuhman was the steadying force to 00:13:58.039 --> 00:14:00.720 Sexton's chaos. They were so close, they had 00:14:00.720 --> 00:14:02.679 a dedicated phone line installed between their 00:14:02.679 --> 00:14:06.139 houses. A private line. A dedicated creative 00:14:06.139 --> 00:14:10.759 hotline in the 1960s. That is commitment. I love 00:14:10.759 --> 00:14:13.039 that detail. It was their lifeline. They would 00:14:13.039 --> 00:14:15.639 stay on the phone for hours, sometimes just working 00:14:15.639 --> 00:14:17.679 in silence with the line open just to know the 00:14:17.679 --> 00:14:20.860 other was there. Other times, reading drafts 00:14:20.860 --> 00:14:23.200 back and forth. They rigorously critiqued each 00:14:23.200 --> 00:14:24.980 other's work. So it wasn't just a friendship, 00:14:25.039 --> 00:14:26.940 it was a professional partnership. A deep one. 00:14:27.120 --> 00:14:29.460 They even collaborated on four children's books 00:14:29.460 --> 00:14:31.840 together. Kuhman was there for every step, every 00:14:31.840 --> 00:14:34.299 crisis, every triumph. It was a partnership of 00:14:34.299 --> 00:14:36.919 survival as much as it was about art. And Sixson 00:14:36.919 --> 00:14:39.100 was also expanding what poetry could even look 00:14:39.100 --> 00:14:40.779 like. This is the part of her story that always 00:14:40.779 --> 00:14:44.299 surprises me. The band. Her kind. A jazz rock 00:14:44.299 --> 00:14:46.960 group she formed in the late 60s. She performed 00:14:46.960 --> 00:14:49.840 her poetry to music. It's so rock and roll. I 00:14:49.840 --> 00:14:52.179 mean, can you imagine a Pulitzer Prize winning 00:14:52.179 --> 00:14:55.220 poet, a suburban mother, fronting a band. It 00:14:55.220 --> 00:14:57.419 shows she wanted to be visceral. She wasn't satisfied 00:14:57.419 --> 00:15:00.080 with just the quiet words on a page. No, she 00:15:00.080 --> 00:15:02.279 was a performer. The sources all agree she was 00:15:02.279 --> 00:15:04.639 incredibly charismatic. She had a stage presence. 00:15:04.980 --> 00:15:07.600 She wanted to be seen and heard. And the band 00:15:07.600 --> 00:15:09.460 was another way to do that, to get the Palms 00:15:09.460 --> 00:15:11.620 out into the world in a different way. And she 00:15:11.620 --> 00:15:14.080 kept experimenting with the writing, too. In 00:15:14.080 --> 00:15:17.320 1971, she publishes a book called Transformations. 00:15:17.440 --> 00:15:19.820 Yes, and this is a really interesting shift. 00:15:20.240 --> 00:15:23.220 She moves away from pure autobiography for a 00:15:23.220 --> 00:15:25.700 bit. She takes Grimm's fairy tale stories we 00:15:25.700 --> 00:15:28.220 all know, like Snow White and Cinderella, and 00:15:28.220 --> 00:15:31.190 she retells. them with a dark modern feminist 00:15:31.190 --> 00:15:34.129 twist what do you mean by that Well, it's what 00:15:34.129 --> 00:15:37.870 critics now call revisionary retelling. She stripped 00:15:37.870 --> 00:15:40.049 the fairy tales of their saccharine happily ever 00:15:40.049 --> 00:15:43.389 after endings and exposed the brutal gender dynamics 00:15:43.389 --> 00:15:46.590 underneath. The passive princesses, the predatory 00:15:46.590 --> 00:15:49.230 men. She saw the horror that was already there 00:15:49.230 --> 00:15:51.509 and just amplified it. So she's at the height 00:15:51.509 --> 00:15:53.909 of her powers. She's won the Pulitzer. She has 00:15:53.909 --> 00:15:56.529 the band. She's writing plays. Her play Mercy 00:15:56.529 --> 00:15:59.110 Street was produced. Yes. Starring Marion Selds. 00:15:59.129 --> 00:16:02.230 She was a major literary figure. But the darkness 00:16:02.230 --> 00:16:04.059 we talked about. about at the beginning it never 00:16:04.059 --> 00:16:06.600 went away the bipolar disorder was a constant 00:16:06.600 --> 00:16:09.620 companion and as we move into the late 60s and 00:16:09.620 --> 00:16:12.860 early 70s things start to deteriorate what happened 00:16:12.860 --> 00:16:15.320 alcohol becomes a major factor she was drinking 00:16:15.320 --> 00:16:18.100 heavily and some critics started to notice a 00:16:18.100 --> 00:16:19.860 change in the work some of the reviews became 00:16:19.860 --> 00:16:23.100 more negative they called it preening lazy and 00:16:23.100 --> 00:16:25.259 flip so they felt the discipline was slipping 00:16:25.259 --> 00:16:28.789 that the craft wasn't as sharp some did Others 00:16:28.789 --> 00:16:31.669 saw it as a deliberate stylistic choice, a new 00:16:31.669 --> 00:16:34.690 phase, a rejection of niceness in her poetry. 00:16:35.169 --> 00:16:37.429 But there's no denying that the suffering was 00:16:37.429 --> 00:16:40.309 immense. The mania and the depression were cycling 00:16:40.309 --> 00:16:42.950 faster and faster. And this leads to another 00:16:42.950 --> 00:16:44.889 one of those incredible stories that seems to 00:16:44.889 --> 00:16:47.090 define her life. It's about the title of one 00:16:47.090 --> 00:16:49.309 of her last books, The Awful Rowing Toward God. 00:16:49.509 --> 00:16:51.809 It's an incredible title. It comes from a meeting 00:16:51.809 --> 00:16:55.059 with a priest. Yes. During a particularly bad 00:16:55.059 --> 00:16:57.580 crisis, she went to see a Roman Catholic priest. 00:16:57.820 --> 00:16:59.960 She was suicidal and she asked him to administer 00:16:59.960 --> 00:17:03.460 the last rites. And he refused. He refused because 00:17:03.460 --> 00:17:06.140 she wasn't physically dying. But he said something 00:17:06.140 --> 00:17:09.140 to her that stuck. He looked at her, this tormented 00:17:09.140 --> 00:17:11.660 artist, and he said, God is in your typewriter. 00:17:12.619 --> 00:17:15.140 That phrase again. It seems to be the anchor 00:17:15.140 --> 00:17:17.480 of her entire creative life. It gave her the 00:17:17.480 --> 00:17:20.279 will to live just a little bit longer, just long 00:17:20.279 --> 00:17:22.740 enough to get the words out. It gave her a mission. 00:17:23.099 --> 00:17:25.480 And she wrote the first draft of that book, The 00:17:25.480 --> 00:17:28.980 Awful Rowing, in 20 days. 20 days? 20 days. She 00:17:28.980 --> 00:17:31.339 said herself that she took two days out for despair 00:17:31.339 --> 00:17:33.980 and three days out in a mental hospital. But 00:17:33.980 --> 00:17:36.339 otherwise, she just wrote. She wrote. She was 00:17:36.339 --> 00:17:38.000 rowing against the tide of her own chemistry. 00:17:38.240 --> 00:17:42.740 And sadly, on October 4th, 1974. The rowing stopped. 00:17:43.099 --> 00:17:46.140 It did. The details of that day are just haunting 00:17:46.140 --> 00:17:48.519 because of how mundane they were, how normal. 00:17:48.759 --> 00:17:50.700 She had lunch with Maxine Kuhlman. She had lunch 00:17:50.700 --> 00:17:53.079 with her best friend. They were working. They 00:17:53.079 --> 00:17:55.359 were revising the galleys for the awful rowing 00:17:55.359 --> 00:17:58.319 toward God. Just two friends doing the work they 00:17:58.319 --> 00:18:00.539 loved. One source says they had tuna melts and 00:18:00.539 --> 00:18:04.039 vodka. And then she goes home. She takes off 00:18:04.039 --> 00:18:06.539 her rings. She puts on her mother's old fur coat. 00:18:06.839 --> 00:18:09.599 She pours herself a glass of vodka. She goes 00:18:09.599 --> 00:18:12.319 into the garage. gets into her car and turns 00:18:12.319 --> 00:18:14.960 the engine on. Carbon monoxide poisoning. Yes. 00:18:15.039 --> 00:18:19.059 She was 45 years old. 45. It's incredibly young. 00:18:19.180 --> 00:18:21.480 And the reaction from the literary world was 00:18:21.480 --> 00:18:24.220 huge, as you'd expect. But there was also a warning 00:18:24.220 --> 00:18:26.259 note in some of the eulogies, wasn't there? There 00:18:26.259 --> 00:18:29.599 was. The poet Denise Levertov said something 00:18:29.599 --> 00:18:32.720 crucial. She said, we who are alive must make 00:18:32.720 --> 00:18:35.299 clear, as she could not, the distinction between 00:18:35.299 --> 00:18:37.940 creativity and self -destruction. What do you 00:18:37.940 --> 00:18:40.519 think she meant by that? I think she was pushing 00:18:40.519 --> 00:18:43.059 back against the romantic myth of the tortured 00:18:43.059 --> 00:18:45.720 artist. She was saying, we shouldn't glamorize 00:18:45.720 --> 00:18:47.799 the illness that killed her. We have to separate 00:18:47.799 --> 00:18:50.180 the art from the tragedy. The art is brilliant, 00:18:50.319 --> 00:18:52.980 but the suicide is just a tragedy. It's not a 00:18:52.980 --> 00:18:54.819 creative act. A really important distinction 00:18:54.819 --> 00:18:57.339 to make. Now, usually when a famous person dies, 00:18:57.539 --> 00:19:00.380 the story kind of settles. It becomes fixed. 00:19:00.460 --> 00:19:02.720 But with Anne Sexton, the death was really just 00:19:02.720 --> 00:19:04.980 the beginning of a whole new storm. It really 00:19:04.980 --> 00:19:06.940 was. This is where we get into what's known as 00:19:06.940 --> 00:19:09.049 the posthumous controversy. And this is where 00:19:09.049 --> 00:19:12.150 it gets legally and ethically messy. Very messy. 00:19:12.549 --> 00:19:16.630 In 1991, 17 years after her death, a biographer 00:19:16.630 --> 00:19:19.170 named Diane Middlebrook publishes Anne Sexton, 00:19:19.390 --> 00:19:23.190 a biography. And it caused an absolute firestorm. 00:19:23.309 --> 00:19:25.750 And the fuel for that fire came from an unlikely 00:19:25.750 --> 00:19:29.140 source. It came from Dr. Martin Orne. The same 00:19:29.140 --> 00:19:31.160 doctor who encouraged her to write poetry in 00:19:31.160 --> 00:19:33.859 the first place. Yes. For the biography, Dr. 00:19:33.980 --> 00:19:35.640 Oren gave Middlebrook something unprecedented. 00:19:36.000 --> 00:19:38.259 He gave her access to the tape recordings of 00:19:38.259 --> 00:19:41.160 his therapy sessions with Sexton. Wait. Just 00:19:41.160 --> 00:19:44.500 to stop right there. Doctor -patient confidentiality. 00:19:44.559 --> 00:19:46.900 How is that even possible? That is the golden 00:19:46.900 --> 00:19:49.279 rule of medicine. It was a massive, massive breach 00:19:49.279 --> 00:19:51.640 of ethics. The New York Times reported thunderous 00:19:51.640 --> 00:19:53.640 condemnation from the medical and psychiatric 00:19:53.640 --> 00:19:55.720 community. So how did he justify it? What was 00:19:55.720 --> 00:19:57.990 his reasoning? His justification was that Sexton 00:19:57.990 --> 00:20:00.170 herself had given him permission to do whatever 00:20:00.170 --> 00:20:02.210 he thought would help others understand her illness 00:20:02.210 --> 00:20:04.970 and her work. He argued that she viewed herself 00:20:04.970 --> 00:20:07.750 as a kind of case study for the world, that she 00:20:07.750 --> 00:20:09.829 wanted her pain to be used for a greater good. 00:20:10.049 --> 00:20:13.069 But the family, they must have had to agree. 00:20:13.410 --> 00:20:15.910 Linda Gray Sexton, her daughter and the literary 00:20:15.910 --> 00:20:18.650 executor of her estate, did approve it. And that's 00:20:18.650 --> 00:20:21.009 another layer of complication. Okay, so what 00:20:21.009 --> 00:20:23.089 was on those tapes that was so explosive? It 00:20:23.089 --> 00:20:26.079 wasn't just poetry talk. No. The tapes, and by 00:20:26.079 --> 00:20:28.859 extension the biography, revealed a side of Sexton 00:20:28.859 --> 00:20:31.559 the public had never seen. It revealed that she 00:20:31.559 --> 00:20:33.460 could be physically violent toward her daughters. 00:20:33.579 --> 00:20:36.220 It detailed physical altercations with her husband. 00:20:36.440 --> 00:20:38.980 It painted a picture of a household filled with 00:20:38.980 --> 00:20:41.680 chaos and rage. So a much darker picture than 00:20:41.680 --> 00:20:44.480 just a woman struggling internally. Yes. But 00:20:44.480 --> 00:20:46.539 the most shocking allegations came not from the 00:20:46.539 --> 00:20:49.000 tapes, but from her daughter, Linda Grace Sexton 00:20:49.000 --> 00:20:51.789 herself. Linda wrote her own memoir, right? searching 00:20:51.789 --> 00:20:54.890 for mercy street yes in 1994 a few years after 00:20:54.890 --> 00:20:57.690 the biography and in that book she detailed being 00:20:57.690 --> 00:21:00.210 sexually assaulted by her mother this changes 00:21:00.210 --> 00:21:02.509 everything this is a seismic shift in how we 00:21:02.509 --> 00:21:06.109 see her we go from seeing sexton primarily as 00:21:06.109 --> 00:21:08.829 a victim of her own mind to seeing her as a perpetrator 00:21:08.829 --> 00:21:11.789 of abuse it complicates the narrative immensely 00:21:11.789 --> 00:21:15.480 and it tore the family apart Other relatives 00:21:15.480 --> 00:21:18.299 wrote op -eds. They disputed the portrayals in 00:21:18.299 --> 00:21:20.460 the biography and in Linda's book, calling it 00:21:20.460 --> 00:21:23.079 a distortion of the truth. It became a very public, 00:21:23.200 --> 00:21:26.059 very painful family feud. And Dr. Orne himself 00:21:26.059 --> 00:21:30.539 had some... let's say, controversial theories 00:21:30.539 --> 00:21:32.500 about her behavior, didn't he? Yeah. Based on 00:21:32.500 --> 00:21:34.460 those therapy sessions. He did. And this gets 00:21:34.460 --> 00:21:36.759 into the whole false memory debate that was raging 00:21:36.759 --> 00:21:39.220 in the 80s and 90s. Okay, what do you mean? Well, 00:21:39.259 --> 00:21:41.180 Owen used some pretty aggressive therapeutic 00:21:41.180 --> 00:21:45.700 techniques, including hypnosis and sodium pentothal, 00:21:45.700 --> 00:21:49.059 what people call truth serum. Right. And he claimed 00:21:49.059 --> 00:21:51.319 that under hypnosis, a separate personality named 00:21:51.319 --> 00:21:54.990 Elizabeth emerged in Sexton. He also came to 00:21:54.990 --> 00:21:57.309 believe and allegedly suggested to Sexton that 00:21:57.309 --> 00:21:59.890 she had been abused by her own father as a child. 00:22:00.089 --> 00:22:02.569 But the family disputed that. Vigorously. Her 00:22:02.569 --> 00:22:05.089 mother, her aunts, they all denied it completely. 00:22:05.250 --> 00:22:06.670 They said it never happened. So where did the 00:22:06.670 --> 00:22:09.569 idea come from? That's the question. Oren himself 00:22:09.569 --> 00:22:12.829 later admitted that adults under hypnosis don't 00:22:12.829 --> 00:22:16.369 literally replay childhood events. He said they 00:22:16.369 --> 00:22:18.690 view childhood through the prisms of adulthood. 00:22:19.569 --> 00:22:21.849 He eventually concluded that she was suffering 00:22:21.849 --> 00:22:25.230 from hysteria and was highly suggestible, meaning 00:22:25.230 --> 00:22:26.950 she might have created these memories to please 00:22:26.950 --> 00:22:29.529 him, the therapist. So we have a situation where 00:22:29.529 --> 00:22:31.789 the therapist who released the confidential tapes 00:22:31.789 --> 00:22:34.210 is also using techniques that are now considered 00:22:34.210 --> 00:22:36.730 highly unreliable and may have even planted the 00:22:36.730 --> 00:22:39.750 ideas himself. It is a hall of mirrors. It is 00:22:39.750 --> 00:22:42.650 a complete ethical morass. And to add one final 00:22:42.650 --> 00:22:44.930 layer of tragedy and professional malpractice 00:22:44.930 --> 00:22:47.269 to the story, there were allegations of an affair. 00:22:47.569 --> 00:22:49.500 Not with Warren. No. With her second therapist, 00:22:49.660 --> 00:22:52.079 the one who replaced Orne, he's given a pseudonym 00:22:52.079 --> 00:22:54.779 in the biography, Ali Zweizum, but was later 00:22:54.779 --> 00:22:57.180 identified in the press as a Dr. Frederick J. 00:22:57.220 --> 00:23:00.579 Dull. And she had an affair with him. Her own 00:23:00.579 --> 00:23:02.839 therapist. The biography alleges that she did. 00:23:02.980 --> 00:23:05.819 And Dr. Orne, her first therapist, actually believed 00:23:05.819 --> 00:23:08.440 that this affair, this massive boundary violation 00:23:08.440 --> 00:23:11.180 by her second doctor, was the final catalyst 00:23:11.180 --> 00:23:13.920 for her suicide. He believed it destroyed her 00:23:13.920 --> 00:23:16.380 last anchor to stability. It is just tragedy 00:23:16.380 --> 00:23:20.450 upon tragedy. Malpractice, illness. Abuse, suicide. 00:23:20.829 --> 00:23:23.569 It is so hard to reconcile all of this with the 00:23:23.569 --> 00:23:26.970 beautiful, powerful poetry. It is hard. But that 00:23:26.970 --> 00:23:28.950 is the task, I think, for anyone who reads her 00:23:28.950 --> 00:23:31.130 work now. We have to hold two truths at once. 00:23:31.269 --> 00:23:34.289 Anne Sexton was a brilliant, groundbreaking artist 00:23:34.289 --> 00:23:38.329 who gave a voice to female pain like no one before 00:23:38.329 --> 00:23:41.430 her. And she was a deeply, profoundly troubled 00:23:41.430 --> 00:23:43.990 woman who caused significant lasting harm to 00:23:43.990 --> 00:23:46.130 the people closest to her. Both things can be 00:23:46.130 --> 00:23:48.920 true. Her legacy, though, despite all the controversy, 00:23:49.119 --> 00:23:51.140 is undeniable. I mean, look at pop culture. Her 00:23:51.140 --> 00:23:53.500 influence is still felt. Oh, absolutely. The 00:23:53.500 --> 00:23:56.160 musician Peter Gabriel wrote the song Mercy Street 00:23:56.160 --> 00:23:58.500 for her. It's on his huge album, so it's directly 00:23:58.500 --> 00:24:01.660 inspired by her poem 45 Mercy Street. And Morrissey 00:24:01.660 --> 00:24:04.140 from the Smiths cites her as a personal touchstone. 00:24:04.319 --> 00:24:06.720 Her fingerprints are all over the place. She 00:24:06.720 --> 00:24:08.859 created a permission structure for artists to 00:24:08.859 --> 00:24:11.000 talk about the self, about mental health, about 00:24:11.000 --> 00:24:13.619 trauma. And physically, she is still part of 00:24:13.619 --> 00:24:15.500 Boston. She's on the Boston Women's Heritage 00:24:15.500 --> 00:24:18.440 Trail. She's commemorated. She opened the door. 00:24:18.559 --> 00:24:21.000 Every memoirist who writes about their struggles 00:24:21.000 --> 00:24:23.059 with mental health today, every songwriter, every 00:24:23.059 --> 00:24:26.839 poet who turns the lens inward, they all owe 00:24:26.839 --> 00:24:29.960 a debt to Anne Sexton. She took the stigma and 00:24:29.960 --> 00:24:32.460 put it under a spotlight. So as we wrap up this 00:24:32.460 --> 00:24:35.599 deep dive, how do we synthesize this? How do 00:24:35.599 --> 00:24:37.880 we put a frame around this incredibly complex 00:24:37.880 --> 00:24:41.019 life and legacy? I think we have to accept the 00:24:41.019 --> 00:24:43.420 complexity. We can't simplify her into just a 00:24:43.420 --> 00:24:46.319 hero or just a villain. She shattered the silence. 00:24:46.519 --> 00:24:49.140 She proved that a woman's domestic interior life 00:24:49.140 --> 00:24:52.220 was worthy of high art. But she also showed us 00:24:52.220 --> 00:24:54.720 the destructive power of untreated or poorly 00:24:54.720 --> 00:24:57.500 treated mental illness, both for the person suffering 00:24:57.500 --> 00:25:00.299 and for everyone around them. It brings me back 00:25:00.299 --> 00:25:01.880 to that question you raised at the very beginning, 00:25:02.019 --> 00:25:04.579 the cost of this kind of confessional art. And 00:25:04.579 --> 00:25:06.339 that's the thought I really want to leave you 00:25:06.339 --> 00:25:09.660 with. When a writer decides, my life is my material. 00:25:10.250 --> 00:25:12.710 They're making a unilateral decision for everyone 00:25:12.710 --> 00:25:15.130 in their life, their children, their spouses, 00:25:15.289 --> 00:25:17.509 their parents. They all become characters in 00:25:17.509 --> 00:25:20.009 the story, often without their consent. And when 00:25:20.009 --> 00:25:23.430 the writer is gone, the story and the trauma 00:25:23.430 --> 00:25:25.970 that may come with it lives on in the people 00:25:25.970 --> 00:25:28.890 who are left behind. Exactly. Does the brilliance 00:25:28.890 --> 00:25:31.529 of the work survive the tragedy of the life? 00:25:31.710 --> 00:25:34.720 Does it excuse the harm inflicted? There is no 00:25:34.720 --> 00:25:36.980 easy answer to that. I don't think there is one. 00:25:37.319 --> 00:25:39.660 But it is a question we have to ask every time 00:25:39.660 --> 00:25:42.119 we read a poem or a book that claims to be a 00:25:42.119 --> 00:25:44.640 confession. A tough question, but a necessary 00:25:44.640 --> 00:25:48.039 one. If you're listening, go read Her Kind or 00:25:48.039 --> 00:25:50.119 listen to Peter Gabriel's Mercy Street after 00:25:50.119 --> 00:25:53.660 this. You might hear it with new ears. Thanks 00:25:53.660 --> 00:25:55.720 for joining us on this deep dive into Anne Sexton.