Unit 4, Part II

Selected Poems by Anne Sexton

Review MLA format for citing anthologies and for cross-referencing in a works cited page

Review the term “Confessional Poetry” from Abrams

Anne Sexton, The Complete Poems“In Celebration of My Uterus”“Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs”“Red Riding Hood”“Briar Rose (Sleeping Beauty)”

Web Authoring Projects Online revision of your 8-10 page papers Grade based on:

Quality of the student’s revision Overall creativity of design Oral presentation of projects in class, March 11th and 13th

Julia Panko, the Transcriptions Studio RA, will be available to help you with your web authoring projects. Her drop-in hours for the winter quarter are: Tuesday, 11:00-5:00 Wednesday, 9:30-12:00 Thursday, 2:00-5:00 Friday, 10:00-12:30

Name of editor or compiler, followed by a comma and the abbreviation ed. or comp.

If they performed more than one function, give both roles in the order that they appear on the title page

For example: Lopate, Phillip, ed. The Art of the Personal

Essay: An Anthology from the Classical Era to the Present. New York: Anchor-Doubleday, 1994.

Spafford, Peter, comp. and ed. Interference: The Story of Czechoslovakia in the Words of Its Writers. Cheltenham: New Clarion, 1992.

Helps avoid repetition in list of works cited

Used when citing two or more works from the same collection, such as three articles from the same anthology

Create a complete entry for the entire collection and then cross-reference individual pieces to the entry

For the cross-reference, state the author and the title of the piece, the last name of the editor of collection, and the inclusive page numbers

For example:Hamill, Pete. Introduction. Sexton and Powers

xi-xiv.Mayakovsky, Vladimir. “Brooklyn Bridge.”

Trans. Max Hayward and George Reavey. Sexton and Powers 136-41.

McCullers, Carson. “Brooklyn Is My Neighborhood.” Sexton and Powers 143-47.

Sexton, Andrea Wyatt, and Alice Leccese Powers, eds. The Brooklyn Reader: Thirty Writers Celebrate America’s Favorite Borough. New York: Harmony, 1994.

A type of narrative and lyric verseWritten by American poets such as Allen

Ginsberg, Sylvia Plath, and Anne Sexton Characterized by “facts and intimate

mental and physical experiences of the poet’s own life.”

Written “in rebellion against the demand for impersonality by T.S. Eliot and the New Critics.”

Secular focus rather than religious

Confessional poetry vs. poems of the Romantic Period Romantic Period characterized by the “poet’s own

circumstances, experiences, and feelings” (Think Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey”)

Confessional poetry, on the other hand, is characterized by candor and the “sometimes shocking detail with which the poet reveals private or clinical matters about himself or herself.” Sexual Experiences Mental Anguish or Illness Experiments with Drugs Suicidal Impulses

We’ve looked at the way that “love is a battlefield” in the medieval period and beyond

We’ve looked at the way that new media influences our access and perception of medieval literature and the texts of successive periods of English literature

We’ve also seen the way in which gender, both masculine and feminine, has been portrayed in texts by medieval female authors, such as Christine de Pizan and Marie de France

Born November 9, 1928, in Newton, Massachusetts

Married Alfred Muller Sexton 11 ("Kayo") in 1948

Battled depression through much of her life and attempted suicide several times

Took up writing on the advice of a therapist

 In 1957 she joined several writing groups in Boston and came to know other writers such as Maxine Kumin, Robert Lowell, George Starbuck, and Sylvia Plath

Her developing fame as a writer led to further turmoil in her relationship with her husband

1967 she received the Pulitzer Prize for poetry for Live or Die (1966)

After her divorce from her husband, she continued to battle depression and alcoholism

Died October 4, 1974, in Newton, Massachusetts

Though Sexton’s poetry is often considered “confessional poetry,” Linda Wagner-Martin notes that:

“Much of what Sexton wrote was in no way autobiographical, despite the sense of reality it had, and thus criticisms of her writing as "confessional" are misleading. She used her knowledge of the human condition--often painful, but sometimes joyous--to create poems readers could share.”

To Bedlam and Part Way Back, 1960 All My Pretty Ones, 1962 Live or Die, 1966 Transformations, 1971 The Book of Folly, 1972 The Death Notebooks, 1974 The Awful Rowing Toward God, 1975 The Complete Poems, 1981

Metaphors Unexpected Rhythm Unconventional Imagery Repetition of Themes Issues of Gender

As Lois Ames writes:Anne wrote about the complications of being female at a time when the rule was that "nice girls don't talk about sex," and the women of Massachusetts were still begging their doctors for sound advice on safe birth control. Yet, she switched a flashlight into dark corners and rattled the bones in every family's closet, to write about abortion, menstruation, masturbation, heterosexual and lesbian love affairs, adultery, incest, child abuse, and addiction, in spite of taboos. Today, as these topics are matter-of-factly discussed in the school, the media, the market, and the church, one must stop to remember that Anne's courage and fortitude and poetic sensibility were at the beginning of the tidal wave.

Welcome to the dark side. . .Before Disney, many of the fairytales that

we have come to know and love were originally much darker in subject matter and tone

Many of them had existed orally as far back as the medieval period and beyond, before being compiled by people like Charles Perrault (1628-1703) and the Brothers Grimm: Jakob Ludwig Grimm (1785-1863) and Wilhelm Karl Grimm (1786-1859)

According to Linda Wagner-Martin , Transformations is “[c]learly her most feminist work” in that Sexton’s voice “was now less confessional and more critical of cultural practices, more inclined to look outside the poet's persona for material.”

The title of this book speaks not only of the transformations of the characters within the poems, but also personal transformations as well Love to loss Life to death Sanity to madness

Marie de France? Christine de Pizan? Keats? The Gawain-Poet? Donne? Gardner?

Be sure to read poems and articles on E-RES

Moodle assignment, extended due date: Thursday, February 28th

Begin web authoring projects Post one of the following:

a few words or a title an image a link a sound or any other element of your choosing.

This assignment is to help you get familiar with the process of accessing your websites and with the Transcriptions Studio (SH2509) in general.