Sexton and Dickinson

I found both of these readings to be incredibly sad. Sexton more so than Dickinson but still both touched my heart and my soul. Sexton's personal life really is very tragic and had a profound effect on her writings. However, I am sure this is the case for most writers. Sexton's writings are very insightful and challenging to the treatment of women. Her writing seems to be timeless. Dickinson writes: You left me, sweet, two legacies, ---/A legacy of love/A Heavenly Father would content,/ Had he the offer of;//You left me boundaries of pain/Capacious as the sea,/Between eternity and time,/Your consciousness and me (161). I find this poem very intriguing. I think it really touches on the thought that there must be good and bad alike in the world. Love and pain are found in relationships. Dickinson expresses the pain of love that people do not want to talk about or acknowledge. This is similar to Poe. She is talking about the obsession and longing of a loved one. But where Poe only focused on the gloom and doom of love or relationships, Dickinson also speaks to the beauty and happiness of love. But as I type this I wonder which is worse. It is like the saying..."It is better to have loved and lost, than to not loved at all". Sometimes I am not so sure. For anyone who has lost a love it is devastating. It truly can leave you a mental and physical state that is not sane or healthy. Perhaps this is why Dickinson is so wonderful. She has the ability to move you through the entire process of love. She has the ability to take your desires, needs, pain, and joy and move you through all of those emotions in one simply poem. (quote another poem here). When I left class I thought about two aspects: Self-realization and falling in love. The facilitation group explained that Dickinson went into seclusion to discover herself, the true self. I have struggled with this idea. How do we find who we really are if we do not have contact with the world? What experiences would allow us to discover our inner self? I believe that stagnation equals death. This was the first thought I had about being in seclusion. But then we read the 'Master Letters'. And I thought about protection....was she in seclusion to protect herself from life? At the end of relationships, I think it is natural to fall into a self-seclusion...emotionally. At least I know I do. I have thought that I would never be able to love again and that I would never let anyone close again. As the class continued, Suzanne brought up the perverseness of falling in love. I found this comment and discussion to be so time appropriate for my life. I have recently ended a really bad relationship that I had the pleasure of 'falling in love' with the guy. However I have recently met someone who I really care about and think I could love but "falling" has never been the sensation with him. I had been searching and thinking about if I really like him that much if I am not falling. However...after Suzanne talked about it as perverseness I came to the conclusion that maybe not falling is better and that growing is a better way to be in love. Grow in love:) Which takes me to the Master Letters....and the flowers. Although I have not researched the significance of flowers as discussed in class I would like to find out more. I was intrigued with the idea of the Daisy being a powerful flower. Suzanne used the word invader....can we equate Dickinson's love in the letters as a conquest....Dickinson uses language of war such as Tomahawk and bullet. However I do not find the letters to be violent....more like she is trying to conquer him with love and obedience. Dickinson expresses her desire to be anything he wants in the second letter on the last page: take me in forever,/I will never be tired-/I will never be noisy,/ when you want to be/still-I will be/your best little/girl-nobody will/see me, but you-". I really enjoyed the Master Letters from class. The way she plays on the words and subtly is seducing her lover. The way that she is a little sarcastic at times, while always making sure he knows her true feelings and that she will wait for him no matter what. I think it is so romantic and beautiful. This makes me think of so many love stories, such as: The Way We Were, A Star is Born, heck...Priscilla Presley and her love for Elvis...:) How one love has waited and loved so much. In popular culture you could probably find this in the Twilight Saga. These letters also remind me of the song 'Beloved Wife' by Natalie Merchant. It is found on her Tiger Lilly CD. You can listen to the song on YouTube at www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PtB5_eEpLs . She sings about a elderly man who has lost his wife of 50 years. He is begging to go with her. He is asking if it is wrong to "lay down and turn his face away from the light." It is incredibly romantic and heart wrenching. You can also find the same sentiment in this poem: If you were coming in the fall,/ I'd brush the summer by/ With half a smile and half a spurn,/ As housewives do a fly.//If I could see you in a year,/ I'd wind the months in balls,/ And put them each in separate drawers,/Until their time befalls.//If only centuries delayed,/I'd count them on my hand,/ Subtracting till my fingers dropped/Into Van Diemen's land (163) Out of all of the class readings I was most moved by Anne Sexton's work. Simply I identify with her. I understand what it means to be the black sheep of the family and to not fit in. I understand what it is like to look for love outside of the nuclear family. I understand the manic episodes that come from the chaos that lived within her soul. That she needed to feel pain to survive and to know that she was alive... To find that love that will accept you unconditionally and to know that you do not deserve it will make you even more insane. How do reconcile within yourself that the one person you can trust and that loves you, you are hurting? This includes her children. Of all of her stories I enjoyed Rumpelstiltskin the most. I believe that each of us truly has two sides of ourselves, our "Doppelganger"(17). The good, the bad and the ugly. I am a Pisces and I refer to mine as the good fish and the not so good fish. The not so good fish is a little off her rocker. I digress...I believe that this story represents her struggle within herself to do what she wants and what she knows is right. In the story you see a transformation from her seeing the child as ugly and nourishing the child as stupid to the Queen being distraught over her child being taken from her; "She gave him her dumb lactation,...The queen cried two pails of see water"(20) I really believe that Anne was so unhappy with her childhood that she could not see value in childhood or children until she had her own. She knew she must save herself from her evil side in order to protect her children. And the King is her husband. We find her husband in many stories though. He is the prince who waited or the prince who kissed her. I also enjoyed Rapunzel. Sexton describes how Mother Gothel keeps her in "a stone-cold room, as cold as a museum"(40). Mother Gothel is keeping her there for her own selfish needs. This represents how we often hurt the ones we love by trying to keep them to ourselves or restrained in a relationship. If we do not let them grow or be free. Without change there is death and at the end of the story Sexton states, "They lived happily as you might expect proving that mother-me-do can be outgrown, just as fish on Friday, just as a tricycle" (42). This shows Sexton's growth from her turbulent childhood to her adult life.