Live or Die

Poems

Anne Sexton

• Publisher: Open Road Media
• Year: 2016
• Topic: Literature
• eBook ISBN:
  9781504034340
• Subtopic: American Poetry
• Index: Literature

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize: A gripping poetry collection mapping the thorny journey from madness to hope

With her emotionally raw and deeply resonant third collection, Live or Die, Anne Sexton confirmed her place among the most celebrated poets of the twentieth century. Sexton described the volume, which depicts a fictionalized version of her struggle with mental illness, as "a fever chart for a bad case of melancholy." From the halls of a psychiatric hospital—"the scene of the disordered scenes" in "Flee on Your Donkey"—to a child's playroom—"a graveyard full of dolls" in "Those Times . . ."—these gripping poems offer profound insight on the agony of depression and the staggering acts of courage and faith required to emerge from its depths.
 
Along with other confessional poets like Sylvia Plath and Robert Lowell, Sexton was known for grappling with intimate subjects traditionally considered taboo for poetry such as motherhood, menstruation, and drug dependence. Live or Die features these topics in candid and unflinching detail, as Sexton represents the full experience of being alive—and a woman—as few poets have before. Through bold images and startlingly precise language, Sexton explores the broad spectrum of human emotion ranging from desperate despair to unfettered hope.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Publisher’s Note
• Epigraph
• Author’s Note
• And One for My Dame
• The Sun
• Flee on Your Donkey
• Three Green Windows
• Somewhere in Africa
• Imitations of Drowning
• Mother and Jack and the Rain
• Consorting with Angels
• The Legend of the One-eyed Man
• Love Song
• Man and Wife
• Those Times …
• Two Sons
• To Lose the Earth
• Sylvia’s Death
• Protestant Easter
• For the Year of the Insane
• Crossing the Atlantic
• Walking in Paris
• Menstruation at Forty
• Christmas Eve
• KE 6–8018
• Wanting to Die
• The Wedding Night
• Little Girl, My Stringbean, My Lovely Woman
• A Little Uncomplicated Hymn
• Your Face on the Dog’s Neck
• Self in 1958
• Suicide Note
• In the Beach House
• Cripples and Other Stories
• Pain for a Daughter
• The Addict
• Live
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• Copyright Page