Anne Sexton
Poet
Name at birth: Anne Gray Harvey
Anne Sexton married at the age of 19, worked briefly as a model and then started a family. Sexton suffered from depression and had mental breakdowns and suicidal bouts after the births of her children and the deaths of her parents. In the late 1950s she began writing poetry as therapy and was soon "discovered" by the literary world for her unapologetically autobiographical poems. The recipient of many awards and grants, she won the Pulitzer Prize in 1966 for Live or Die. In 1974 she committed suicide.
Other poets include Rita Dove, Allen Ginsberg and Ezra Pound.
Four Good Links
Anne Sexton, A Biography
Author Diane Middlebrook excerpts her work on Sexton
Anne Sexton
Biographical details, poems and literary criticism
Anne Sexton
Profile from the American Academy of Poets
Anne Sexton Reads
Some audio files of Sexton reading her own poems
Vital Stats
Birth
Birthplace
Death
4 October 1974
(Suicide by asphyxiation, age 45)
Best Known As
Confessional American poet of the 1960s and '70s
