Anne Sexton

The ground-breaking work of the poet who paved the way for generations of women writers, in a new selection by her daugher and literary executor, Linda Gray SextonWhen Anne Sexton took her own life in October 1974, she left behind a body of work which had already, in less than two decades of writing, won her the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, established her as one of the foremost voices of her generation, and shocked America by breaking multiple taboos of subject matter, from insanity, depression and addiction to menstruation, adultery and the figure of the witch.Sexton's name is legendary. Her poetry is read around the world, translated into over thirty languages, and in her own country remains a touchstone for poets and readers looking for rawness of perception, vitality of expression, confessional frankness and fiery passion. Yet, incredibly, there has been no new UK edition of her work for decades. In Mercies, readers are provided with a resonant new selection from the writings of this natural phenomenon of a poet.

»En feberkurva över ett svårt fall av melankoli.« Så beskrev Anne Sexton sin tredje diktsamling, Leva eller dö (1966). Boken, som 1967 belönades med Pulitzerpriset och kom att bli hennes genombrott som poet, består av dikter skrivna mellan januari 1962 och februari 1966 och innehåller ett flertal av Sextons mest kända dikter. Här tematiseras, som titeln antyder, en vacklan mellan dödsdrift och livslängtan i en utlämnande och kompromisslös, men också lekfull och humoristisk diktning som slår en båge mellan det personliga och det universella.Leva eller dö är den första hela diktsamling av Anne Sexton som utkommer på svenska.Anne Sexton (1928–1974) debuterade 1960 med diktsamlingen To Bedlam and Part Way Back och gav under sin livstid ut ytterligare sex diktsamlingar.

MERCY STREET is Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Anne Sexton's only play and incorporates many of the themes that infuse her poetry, the deeply personal, the nature of madness, and the subjectivity of truth. "Anne Sexton, a fine poet with an astounding knack for incorporating the ugly and immediate vocabulary of the pressing workaday world into lyrics that nevertheless remain lyrics, is the author of MERCY STREET ... The play is constructed quite literally to resemble the Offertory in Anglican or Roman Catholic mass ... Miss Sexton's initial use of ritual is striking ... The exploration, in rotating flashbacks, produces some riveting line-images ..." -Walter Kerr, The New York Times "... This is Miss Sexton's first play. She is a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, and the tone of her poems has always been laceratingly personal. In some she seemed like a latter-day, neurotic Emily Dickinson. The poems have a voice of their own, and a way with imagery. MERCY STREET is the story of a woman searching her way home from the valley of madness ... Miss Sexton has written a play to be considered rather than dismissed ..." -Clive Barnes, The New York Times

An expression of an extraordinary poet's life story in her own words, this book shows Anne Sexton as she really was in private, as she wrote about herself to family, friends, fellow poets, and students. Anne's daughter Linda Gray Sexton and her close confidant Lois Ames have judiciously chosen from among thousands of letters and provided commentary where necessary. Illustrated throughout with candid photographs and memorabilia, the letters -- brilliant, lyrical, caustic, passionate, angry -- are a consistently revealing index to Anne Sexton's quixotic and exuberant personality.

These poem-stories are a strange retelling of seventeen Grimms fairy tales, including "Snow White," "Rumpelstiltskin," "Rapunzel," "The Twelve Dancing Princesses," "The Frog Prince," and "Red Riding Hood." Astonishingly, they are as wholly personal as Anne Sexton's most intimate poems. "Her metaphoric strength has never been greater — really funny, among other things, a dark, dark laughter" (C.K. Williams). Author Biography: Anne Sexton (1928-1974), the author of ten collections of poems, received the Pulitzer Prize in 1967.

This selection, which is drawn from Anne Sexton's ten published volumes of poems as well as from representative early and last work, is an ideal introduction to a great American poet.

Anne Sexton's Love Poems gave American literature its first fully sexual heroine. The speaker of Sexton's poems dwells with husband and children in affluent, white Protestant America just after the death of JFK. Her story begins after the fairy-tale ending of 'happily ever after,' in the 'post-pill paradise' of sexual revolution." -- From the Foreword by Diane Wood Middlebroo

Collects the best of Anne Sexton's memoirs and prose reflections on her development as a poet