Poems Inspired by Anne Sexton
#AnneSexton
Poems inspired by the American poet Anne Sexton, who was known for her confessional writing style. Here you'll find poetry using the style, themes or characters found in poems by Anne Sexton. Along with poems about Sexton herself, including praise, criticism and memorials.
buddhakitty
Poem Published
9th Mar 2024 5:34pm
9th Mar 2024 5:34pm
unsane
searching for what
was never lost
but can not
be found
was never lost
but can not
be found
#AnneSexton
163 reads
11 Comments
Casted_Runes
Mr Karswell
Mr Karswell
Poem Published
10th Jan 2023 3:14pm
10th Jan 2023 3:14pm
Sexton
Always in black-and-white, she sits,
smoking a cigarette, one leg protruding
as if a sculptor caught motion, and fits
a chisel to a thigh. Both grave-digging
and bell-ringing make up the sexton’s life.
But wrongly called both succubus and wife.
She would have lit up Salem like a knife
revealed by moonlight in the house.
Misogynistic fantasies crowd on
the Massachusetts tomb; a mouse
dries out upon its palindrome, the sun
revolving ‘round the name RAT’S STAR.
Where need is never quite belief, come far
but...
smoking a cigarette, one leg protruding
as if a sculptor caught motion, and fits
a chisel to a thigh. Both grave-digging
and bell-ringing make up the sexton’s life.
But wrongly called both succubus and wife.
She would have lit up Salem like a knife
revealed by moonlight in the house.
Misogynistic fantasies crowd on
the Massachusetts tomb; a mouse
dries out upon its palindrome, the sun
revolving ‘round the name RAT’S STAR.
Where need is never quite belief, come far
but...
#depression
#MentalHealth
#WritingPoetry #AnneSexton
#WritingPoetry #AnneSexton
275 reads
2 Comments
PoetsRevenge
Poem Published
1st Nov 2019 1:28am
1st Nov 2019 1:28am
The Double Image (Portraits)
I made you to find me'
'It doesn't matter if there are wars,
the business of life continues
unless you're the one that gets it'
-Anne Sexton
I went around in circles writing the empty vernacular,
writing it out in reams until it stood for something.
The dead heart followed along, musing me.
Why are the words so empty?
They echo, those words, rat-tat-tat and ka-ching
as the hills of my mother's bounty became flattened.
Each faint pulse of her heart, a wind of the ribbon ink,
and sentences...
'It doesn't matter if there are wars,
the business of life continues
unless you're the one that gets it'
-Anne Sexton
I went around in circles writing the empty vernacular,
writing it out in reams until it stood for something.
The dead heart followed along, musing me.
Why are the words so empty?
They echo, those words, rat-tat-tat and ka-ching
as the hills of my mother's bounty became flattened.
Each faint pulse of her heart, a wind of the ribbon ink,
and sentences...
#mother
#death
#suicide
#cancer
#AnneSexton
670 reads
8 Comments
PoetsRevenge
Poem Published
20th Oct 2019 3:58am
20th Oct 2019 3:58am
Just Once (Living River Of Hell)
The trouble with being a woman, Skeezix,
is being a little girl in the first place'
'If this is Hell, then Hell could not be much,
neither as special or as ugly as I was told.'
-Anne Sexton
I am diagnosed dragging on a Camel,
staring at the river, full of all the selves
of detachmemt from my actual one.
They used to be me as one self when I was
fused into the wall of my mother,
before I came here to this bridge.
I am deranging like the splitting haloes
of car headlights...
is being a little girl in the first place'
'If this is Hell, then Hell could not be much,
neither as special or as ugly as I was told.'
-Anne Sexton
I am diagnosed dragging on a Camel,
staring at the river, full of all the selves
of detachmemt from my actual one.
They used to be me as one self when I was
fused into the wall of my mother,
before I came here to this bridge.
I am deranging like the splitting haloes
of car headlights...
#dark
#death
#river
#memories
#AnneSexton
857 reads
19 Comments
goldenmyst
Bumped 4th Sep 2019 6:20pm
4th Oct 2015 6:37pm
4th Oct 2015 6:37pm
Strangers in the Night
Strangers in the Night
I love the smell of books. I think that, even more than my love of literature, may be the reason I work in a used book store. That and because it is so quiet. I love quiet places where I find I can think more clearly. I know people who crave noise and feel lonely in places like this book store.
However, I feel right at home among the books of Pablo Neruda and Anne Sexton two of my favorite authors among the many represented in the stacks of this antiquarian book store. The books are like companions to me. I feel as though I am in the company of the...
I love the smell of books. I think that, even more than my love of literature, may be the reason I work in a used book store. That and because it is so quiet. I love quiet places where I find I can think more clearly. I know people who crave noise and feel lonely in places like this book store.
However, I feel right at home among the books of Pablo Neruda and Anne Sexton two of my favorite authors among the many represented in the stacks of this antiquarian book store. The books are like companions to me. I feel as though I am in the company of the...
#AnneSexton
1212 reads
4 Comments
PoetsRevenge
Poem Published
29th Aug 2019 2:39am
29th Aug 2019 2:39am
The Awful Rowing (Toward God)
Perhaps God is only a deep voice
heard by the deaf,
I do not know'
-Anne Sexton
Where is God, what sun, what moon
towed the misogyny
to leave me here in his blood?
The far off island of blinking starlight
winks and carries me off:
I am floating, I am rowing.
Seeking, I am always seeking;
such tedious labor to play this game.
He is receding as I push on to his
island in the sun
inhaling its fishy, sour sobriety.
My skin is removed of its endurance,
I am raw, blistered in the...
heard by the deaf,
I do not know'
-Anne Sexton
Where is God, what sun, what moon
towed the misogyny
to leave me here in his blood?
The far off island of blinking starlight
winks and carries me off:
I am floating, I am rowing.
Seeking, I am always seeking;
such tedious labor to play this game.
He is receding as I push on to his
island in the sun
inhaling its fishy, sour sobriety.
My skin is removed of its endurance,
I am raw, blistered in the...
#death
#God
#confessional #AnneSexton
#confessional #AnneSexton
1628 reads
10 Comments
PoetsRevenge
Poem Published
13th Aug 2019 4:40am
13th Aug 2019 4:40am
Menstruation At Forty (Spider's Curse)
Stung to death,
an ill begotten fate,
sisters in tangled limb,
sisters in wombs' blood
rendered of yesterdays
remains still hunted.
Weaving angels
hover over the early death
trapped, entangled,
consumed in poison,
wrists bound together
praying for new life.
Son, beseeching
all I have acquired of you,
You, whom the dusky late hours have made,
You, whom I lusted for and listened for
rattling as bells toll,
clocks revealing our closeness in hour,
our embrace before ...
an ill begotten fate,
sisters in tangled limb,
sisters in wombs' blood
rendered of yesterdays
remains still hunted.
Weaving angels
hover over the early death
trapped, entangled,
consumed in poison,
wrists bound together
praying for new life.
Son, beseeching
all I have acquired of you,
You, whom the dusky late hours have made,
You, whom I lusted for and listened for
rattling as bells toll,
clocks revealing our closeness in hour,
our embrace before ...
#women
#death
#AnneSexton
940 reads
6 Comments
Jade-Pandora
jade tiger
jade tiger
Poem Published
3rd Aug 2019 5:47pm
3rd Aug 2019 5:47pm
Witch
In the deep black unfathomable
where nothing burns of where there is no air,
in the white ashes unreadable
as others cannot see yet still they stare,
in evening’s wicked, winding stir.
A female muse like that without a care.
I have been like her.
I possess, endowed, an evil spree,
insanity, my bent of village spells
on every inhabitant and flea;
my brewing for the vermin with me dwells,
from cavern home the smell’s allure.
A female like that is a mystery.
I have been like her. ...
where nothing burns of where there is no air,
in the white ashes unreadable
as others cannot see yet still they stare,
in evening’s wicked, winding stir.
A female muse like that without a care.
I have been like her.
I possess, endowed, an evil spree,
insanity, my bent of village spells
on every inhabitant and flea;
my brewing for the vermin with me dwells,
from cavern home the smell’s allure.
A female like that is a mystery.
I have been like her. ...
#women
#death
#LifeStruggles
#witches
#AnneSexton
1014 reads
17 Comments
Heaven_sent_Kathy
Poem Published
2nd Aug 2019 00:54am
2nd Aug 2019 00:54am
Girlfriends
( after Anne Sexton )
‘Death’, sounds almost tender
and childlike when I say the name,
rhyming as it does with ‘breath’,
A life force unlike, lesser the end,
when a door is pried open
with a common kitchen utensil.
I didn’t pay attention and failed,
leaving me to salvage
Plath’s words before her last,
When we’d speak of it many times,
as fireflies, like girlfriends,
sending up smoke rings to be the first.
Now I jealously guard the rite
while I still have life and a history,
and can...
‘Death’, sounds almost tender
and childlike when I say the name,
rhyming as it does with ‘breath’,
A life force unlike, lesser the end,
when a door is pried open
with a common kitchen utensil.
I didn’t pay attention and failed,
leaving me to salvage
Plath’s words before her last,
When we’d speak of it many times,
as fireflies, like girlfriends,
sending up smoke rings to be the first.
Now I jealously guard the rite
while I still have life and a history,
and can...
#suicide
#fate
#SylviaPlath #AnneSexton
#SylviaPlath #AnneSexton
950 reads
5 Comments
thepositivelydark
Poem Published
8th Dec 2016 10:29am
8th Dec 2016 10:29am
For Them, Who Cannot Keep Me Any Longer
She is all there.
...
She is, in fact, exquisite.
...
Let's face it, I have been momentary,
A luxury.
...
She is solid.
As for me, I am watercolor.
I wash off.
- "For My Lover, Returning to His Wife," Anne Sexton
You have such a way with words, honey.
Such a way with words.
They billow out of your mouth,
Stained with the color of her lips.
I see it.
I hear her say your prayers every night.
And how they all fall into
Pages of binding
Signed with your names.
...
...
She is, in fact, exquisite.
...
Let's face it, I have been momentary,
A luxury.
...
She is solid.
As for me, I am watercolor.
I wash off.
- "For My Lover, Returning to His Wife," Anne Sexton
You have such a way with words, honey.
Such a way with words.
They billow out of your mouth,
Stained with the color of her lips.
I see it.
I hear her say your prayers every night.
And how they all fall into
Pages of binding
Signed with your names.
...
#AnneSexton
941 reads
7 Comments
kourtnissixxx
Poem Published
30th Nov 2016 2:00pm
30th Nov 2016 2:00pm
looking for my reason to speak (incomplete and unedited)
"All my poems are telling that the bleedings fun
until this carcass reaches heartless,
telling me the bleedings done"
They were all right about it
this
me
Him and him
and her
she who I didn't want to know
It's not enough for me
if you can't chisel a gaping need from my chest
and shred apart
all the catacombs that use my ribcage as sloppy architecture
Gluttony or irony I wonder?
Tear it all out
leave the post infection exposed for the next lonely love
that wants grip my desperate heart ...
until this carcass reaches heartless,
telling me the bleedings done"
They were all right about it
this
me
Him and him
and her
she who I didn't want to know
It's not enough for me
if you can't chisel a gaping need from my chest
and shred apart
all the catacombs that use my ribcage as sloppy architecture
Gluttony or irony I wonder?
Tear it all out
leave the post infection exposed for the next lonely love
that wants grip my desperate heart ...
#AnneSexton
1174 reads
7 Comments
JohnFeddeler
Poem Published
17th Apr 2016 2:26am
17th Apr 2016 2:26am
Mercy Street Contessa (co-write w. bootselectric)
As Jonathan laid on the comfortable opium bed in the dark Den
He gazed into the smoke rising from
the lungs of the fellow smokers
Tilting the bowl above the lamp
he inhaled the vapors
and as his exhaled smoke drifted into the air
w/ the aura of the painted chinese dragons
on the walls so barely visible above him
Jon was reminded of sweet Anita Lee
and the last time he saw her...
she never overloads the eyeshadow
or circles her lips more than once with a blushing gloss
she wouldn’t choose a dress that’s too short, too low-cut...
He gazed into the smoke rising from
the lungs of the fellow smokers
Tilting the bowl above the lamp
he inhaled the vapors
and as his exhaled smoke drifted into the air
w/ the aura of the painted chinese dragons
on the walls so barely visible above him
Jon was reminded of sweet Anita Lee
and the last time he saw her...
she never overloads the eyeshadow
or circles her lips more than once with a blushing gloss
she wouldn’t choose a dress that’s too short, too low-cut...
#AnneSexton
1282 reads
10 Comments
DU Poetry : Poems Inspired by Anne Sexton
#AnneSexton is curated by Ahavati (Tams).
