Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath were husband and wife; they were also two of the most remarkable poets of the twentieth century. In this stunning new account of their marriage, Diane Middlebrook draws on a trove of newly available papers to craft a beautifully written portrait of Hughes as a man, as a p[...]
This selection, which is drawn from Anne Sexton's ten published volumes of poems as well as from representative early and last work, is an ideal introduction to a great American poet.[...]
Anne Sexton began writing poetry at the age of twenty-nine to keep from killing herself. She held on to language for dear life and somehow -- in spite of alcoholism and the mental illness that ultimately led her to suicide -- managed to create a body of work that won a Pulitzer Prize and that still [...]
Anne Sexton's Love Poems gave American literature its first fully sexual heroine. The speaker of Sexton's poems dwells with husband and children in affluent, white Protestant America just after the death of JFK. Her story begins after the fairy-tale ending of 'happily ever after,' in the 'post-pill [...]