[lit-ideas] Re: Sextoniana
- From: "" <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> (Redacted sender "Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx" for DMARC)
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2014 20:16:25 -0500
In a message dated 11/25/2014 7:40:37 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,
lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx writes:
The following is from the foreword to The Complete Poems of Anne Sexton,
written by Maxine Kumin who collaborated Sexton on a number of things:
"Though the reviewers [and not just them] were not always kind to Anne's
work, honors and awards mounted piggyback on one another almost from the
moment of publication in 1960 of her first book To Bedlam and Part Way Back.
[I remember buying that book] The American Academy of Letters Traveling
Fellowship in 1963, which she was awarded shortly after All My Pretty Ones
was published and nominated for the National Book Award, was followed by a
Ford Foundation grant as resident playwright at the Charles Playhouse in
Boston. In 1965, Anne Sexton was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of
Literature in Great Britain. Live or Die won the Pulitzer Prize in poetry in
1967. She was named Phi Beta Kappa poet at Harvard in 1968 and accorded a
number of honorary doctoral degrees ... But between the publication of new
books and the bestowal of honors fell all too frequently the shadow of
mental illness. One psychiatrist left. His successor at first succumbed to
Sexton's charm, then terminated his treatment of her."
Shouldn't he be named? Was this medically ethical?
"She promptly fell downstairs and broke her hip -- on her birthday. With
the next doctor her hostility grew. Intermediary psychiatrists and
psychologists came and went. There seemed to be no standard for dealing with
this
gifted, ghosted woman. On Thorazine, she gained weight became intensely
sun-sensitive, and complained that she was so overwhelmed with lassitude
that she could not write."
Lassitude, granted is a good-nice sounding word, even if the meaning
isn't: early 15c., from Middle French lassitude (14c.), from Latin
lassitudinem
(nominative lassitudo) "faintness, weariness," from lassus "faint, tired,
weary," from PIE *led- "slow, weary" (source also of Old English læt
"sluggish, slow;" see late (adj.)), from root *le- "to let go, slacken" (see
lenient).
Kumin goes on: "Without medication, the voices returned. As she grew
increasingly dependent on alcohol, sedatives, and sleeping pills, her
depressive
bouts grew more frequent. Convinced that her marriage was beyond salvage,
she demanded and won a divorce, only to learn that living alone created an
unbearable level of anxiety. She returned to Westwood Lodge, later spent
time at McLean's Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts, and finally went to
Human Resources Institute in Brookline, Massachusetts. But none of these
interludes stemmed her downward course. In the spring of 1974, she took an
overdose of sleeping pills and later remonstrated bitterly with me for
aborting this suicide attempt. On that occasion she vowed that when she next
undertook to die, she would telegraph her intent to no one."
Usually, there is a Griceian explanation to that, they say.
If she telegraphs, she MEANS.
The utterance read, "I'm committing suicide".
Perhaps not 'implicature', but something like that may be, "Come and save
me!".
---
Kumin goes on: "A little more than six months later, this indeed proved to
be the case ... Women poets in particular owe a debt to Anne Sexton"
Is this supposed to be good? I rather she wrote: "Humanity owe a debt to
Anne Sexton" _simpliciter_.
"... who broke new ground, shattered taboos, and endured a barrage of
attacks along the way because of the flamboyance of her subject matter, which,
twenty years later, seems far less daring. She wrote openly about
menstruation, abortion, masturbation, incest, adultery, and drug addiction at a
time when the proprieties embraced none of these as proper topics for poetry."
Poetry ain't philosophy. If you do a search in the Philosopher's Index, you
certainly have a category: "KEYWORD", and you can type: menstruation,
abortion, masturbation, incest, adultery, and drug addiction, and come up with
someone quoting H. P. Grice's "Meaning" on them!
But since when poetry needed a KEYWORD?
Kumin concludes: "Today, the remonstrances seem almost quaint. Anne de
lineated the problematic position of women -- the neurotic reality of the time
-- though she was not able to cope in her own life with the personal
trouble it created". Kumin states that as paradoxical and perhaps it is. Alla:
Those who can, do; those who can't, teach - Idioms and phrases
idioms.thefreedictionary.com/Those+who+can,+do%3B+those+who+can'... -
Similar to Those who can, do; those who can't, teach - Idioms and phrases
Definition of Those who can, do; those who can't, teach in the Idioms
Dictionary. Those who ... Jane: Don't listen to her, Bob. Remember: ... Those
Who Know
Cheers,
Speranza
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