Anne Sexton Sexually Abused Her Daughters?

No one?

Do people even remember her?

I don’t have any idea, but I hope someone does. Great topic!

They wouldn't hold their water.

Caneface.

I don’t even want to think about it, but I’d bet it was more humiliation than sex acts.

At least Sylvia Plath didn’t hurt her kids.

No R6, she didn’t. I heard that she was a real gas! 🥴

OP, who is this person? I'm too lazy to Google. On second thought, don't bother answering. I won't be back to this thread.

I remember hating her poetry when we had to read it in college. I got the impression of her as being sort of bitter and self-righteous.

[quote]This period of their relationship lapsed into an even more destructive one in which "Mother", as Gray Sexton refers to her, insisted on becoming intimate and close with her daughter. Their relationship wore many masks during this period. At times there was complete role-reversal in which Anne looked to Linda for mothering and nurturing. At age 10, Linda was ordered to come home from summer camp prematurely in order to take care of mommy. At other instances, Anne acted as if the two were both adult girlfriends as she would discuss her adulterous affairs with her daughter even encouraging her daughter to become sexually active. At its most obscene state, their relationship found Anne treating Linda as a lover when, at times, she would masturbate in front of or in bed with her daughter.

omg.

The Ballad of the Lonely Masturbator

BY ANNE SEXTON

The end of the affair is always death. She’s my workshop. Slippery eye, out of the tribe of myself my breath finds you gone. I horrify those who stand by. I am fed. At night, alone, I marry the bed.

Finger to finger, now she’s mine. She’s not too far. She’s my encounter. I beat her like a bell. I recline in the bower where you used to mount her. You borrowed me on the flowered spread. At night, alone, I marry the bed.

Take for instance this night, my love, that every single couple puts together with a joint overturning, beneath, above, the abundant two on sponge and feather, kneeling and pushing, head to head. At night alone, I marry the bed.

I break out of my body this way, an annoying miracle. Could I put the dream market on display? I am spread out. I crucify. My little plum is what you said. At night, alone, I marry the bed.

Then my black-eyed rival came. The lady of water, rising on the beach, a piano at her fingertips, shame on her lips and a flute’s speech. And I was the knock-kneed broom instead. At night, alone, I marry the bed.

She took you the way a woman takes a bargain dress off the rack and I broke the way a stone breaks. I give back your books and fishing tack. Today’s paper says that you are wed. At night, alone, I marry the bed.

The boys and girls are one tonight. They unbutton blouses. They unzip flies. They take off shoes. They turn off the light. The glimmering creatures are full of lies. They are eating each other. They are overfed. At night, alone, I marry the bed.

In Lena Dunham’s Pebbles In Vagina essay, she mentions lying in bed with her sister and masturbating to Anne Sexton.

She was an amazing poet, a natural. She is also the best reader of her own poetry that I’ve ever heard. She was beautiful and modeled in young adulthood. She was also very mentally ill, a frightening borderline type or regressed victim of abuse.

She was institutionalized at least once.

My stepsister and I both read an autobiography of her and were equally fascinated. Superb poetry, nutty, ill woman.

With a name like Sexton, it has to be vile.

Why are the most creative and talented people always twisted?

Where's the biopic? You'd have to find an actress with a smoky voice and cray-cray eyes.

She was a Boston aristocrat, a lunatic, a masturbating boozehound, a faded black haired beauty, a husky voiced chain smoker, a spectacle maker, a suburban pariah, and someone with a vivid imagination and a talent for florid sensational poetry. I’m surprised she’s not more popular on DL. Yes, some Hollywood starlet could really cut their teeth on this role.

With some prosthetic help and makeup, I nominate Cate Blanchett for the role of Anne Sexton.

No more biopics, please! You can count the good ones on the fingers of one hand.

I actually just read the autobiography about her last summer- and it wasn't that memorable.

All I recall was a pleasant of distant marriage with her husband, who was very handsome.

She had numerous affairs..

She was pretty morose.

And I think it was hinted that she was molested by her grandmother?? (I don't think it was her mother)

Overall, it was a pretty boring book and I read it until the end.

"You'd have to find an actress with a smoky voice and cray-cray eyes."

I'm available! So, so available. (Seriously, I am.)

r21 that's an appalling idea