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Rating: 
Summary: Looove Anne!
Review: I love reading other people's letters. It's a little like catching them undressing! ... Making one feel a little naughty for watching.
Ann's letters are quite revealing, refreshing, honest, as if she is talking to you directly. The misspelled words and puntuation errors just add to the honesty of the words...especially in the beginning of the book. The way Anne jumps from here to there... the same way a person's thoughts or ideas would. Anne writes her letters like this!Can you believe Anne Sexton got a C in Engish class w/ little effort? Just goes to show you, the genius many of us may hold inside. But throughout the letters, Anne continually second guesses herself, continually craves validity about her writing..."Is this any good?" She and Sylvia Plath have much in common and discuss their suicide attempts as if it is a common thing to discuss. "How many times have you tried to kill yourself?" Sounds like a poet to me! I so wanted Anne to be happy, to feel satisfyed, to be content with her MANY accomplishments, but the mental illness would not allow her this luxury. Anne wrote letters to many people and made them fall in love with her..."I love you." she told many of them. "I don't know what I would do without you." She even wrote beautiful letters to a monk who was, after a while, willing to leave his Monk-hood. "Oh no!" Anne wrote back. "This love affair can only be in letters!" Yes, what a perfect distance, Anne. One fan wrote about his love for Anne and her poetry. "I am only a housewife!" She wrote back. Did she really see herself this way? Oh, Anne! Anne said..."Poetry is the opposite of Suicide."
WOW!
And when she finally stopped writing it, she killed herself once again. This time for real. I give Anne's letters five stars, but the book as a whole four stars because of the lack of Anne's poetry, which should have been available for the reader throughout the book. I loooove Anne Sexton!!!!!! put this review under Siammuse!!!!!
Rating:
Summary: Looove Anne!
Review: I love reading other people's letters. It's a little like catching them undressing! ... Making one feel a little naughty for watching.
Ann's letters are quite revealing, refreshing, honest, as if she is talking to you directly. The misspelled words and puntuation errors just add to the honesty of the words...especially in the beginning of the book. The way Anne jumps from here to there... the same way a person's thoughts or ideas would. Anne writes her letters like this! Can you believe Anne Sexton got a C in Engish class w/ little effort? Just goes to show you, the genius many of us may hold inside. But throughout the letters, Anne continually second guesses herself, continually craves validity about her writing..."Is this any good?" She and Sylvia Plath have much in common and discuss their suicide attempts as if it is a common thing to discuss. "How many times have you tried to kill yourself?" Sounds like a poet to me! I so wanted Anne to be happy, to feel satisfyed, to be content with her MANY accomplishments, but the mental illness would not allow her this luxury. Anne wrote letters to many people and made them fall in love with her..."I love you." she told many of them. "I don't know what I would do without you." She even wrote beautiful letters to a monk who was, after a while, willing to leave his Monk-hood. "Oh no!" Anne wrote back. "This love affair can only be in letters!" Yes, what a perfect distance, Anne. One fan wrote about his love for Anne and her poetry. "I am only a housewife!" She wrote back. Did she really see herself this way? Oh, Anne! Anne said..."Poetry is the opposite of Suicide."
WOW!
And when she finally stopped writing it, she killed herself once again. This time for real. I give Anne's letters five stars, but the book as a whole four stars because of the lack of Anne's poetry, which should have been available for the reader throughout the book. I loooove Anne Sexton!!!!!! put this review under Siammuse!!!!!
Rating: 
Summary: The Art of Self-Exposure
Review: The Art of Self-Exposure Anne Sexton (1928-1974) showed the best of herself in letters. To quote Donald Hall she was a `soul-flasher.' She was passionately engaged in living and tormented into dying. Her flight through life was one of breathtaking bravery in the face of crippling odds. The letters date from 1944 when she was sixteen, through 1974 a few days before her death. Full credit should go to the editors, Linda Gray Sexton, daughter of Ann, and Lois Ames, Ann's closest friend. The commentary is sensitive, knowledgeable and readable. The necessary biographical linkage is there. There have always been unfortunate attempts to link Ann Sexton and Sylvia Plath. Their similarities are their age, their sex, their birthplace in the Northeastern United States, and their self-inflicted deaths. And there the similarity ends. Ann was a fragile child who emerged a tormented woman. She was creatively brilliant in a very natural sense; yet she worked feverishly all her life to improve every word she wrote. She once said, "I am tearing at the stars." Ann enjoyed a large circle of devoted friends and repaid their devotion in kind. She was supportive and free with advice to younger struggling poets when she could barely survive her own despair. Ann was a naturally beautiful woman who seemed completely unaware or disinterested in her own breathtaking countenance. I am astounded at how helpless she became at the end of her life. I truly do not comprehend how her friends and family could bear her onslaughts of misery and self-paralysis. They must have loved her very much. These letters are appealing and a pleasure to read. She was a wordsmith as well as an incredible poet. Following is a stanza from "All My Pretty Ones" Never loving ourselves, hating even our shoes and our hats, we love each other, precious, precious. Our hands are light blue and gentle. Our eyes are full of terrible confessions. But when we marry, the children leave in disgust. There is too much food, and no one left over to eat up all the weird abundance.
Rating:
Summary: The Art of Self-Exposure
Review: The Art of Self-Exposure Anne Sexton (1928-1974) showed the best of herself in letters. To quote Donald Hall she was a 'soul-flasher.' She was passionately engaged in living and tormented into dying. Her flight through life was one of breathtaking bravery in the face of crippling odds. The letters date from 1944 when she was sixteen, through 1974 a few days before her death. Full credit should go to the editors, Linda Gray Sexton, daughter of Ann, and Lois Ames, Ann's closest friend. The commentary is sensitive, knowledgeable and readable. The necessary biographical linkage is there. There have always been unfortunate attempts to link Ann Sexton and Sylvia Plath. Their similarities are their age, their sex, their birthplace in the Northeastern United States, and their self-inflicted deaths. And there the similarity ends. Ann was a fragile child who emerged a tormented woman. She was creatively brilliant in a very natural sense; yet she worked feverishly all her life to improve every word she wrote. She once said, "I am tearing at the stars." Ann enjoyed a large circle of devoted friends and repaid their devotion in kind. She was supportive and free with advice to younger struggling poets when she could barely survive her own despair. Ann was a naturally beautiful woman who seemed completely unaware or disinterested in her own breathtaking countenance. I am astounded at how helpless she became at the end of her life. I truly do not comprehend how her friends and family could bear her onslaughts of misery and self-paralysis. They must have loved her very much. These letters are appealing and a pleasure to read. She was a wordsmith as well as an incredible poet. Following is a stanza from "All My Pretty Ones" Never loving ourselves, hating even our shoes and our hats, we love each other, precious, precious. Our hands are light blue and gentle. Our eyes are full of terrible confessions. But when we marry, the children leave in disgust. There is too much food, and no one left over to eat up all the weird abundance.
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