Anne Sexton
Modern confessional poetry counts many voices in its narrative - but none, perhaps, quite as powerful as that of Anne Sexton. Born in 1928 in Newton, Massachusetts, Anne Gray Harvey came to write poetry via an unusual route: in 1955, after a series of manic episodes resulting from bipolar disorder, her therapist, Dr. Martin Orne, encouraged her to write poetry as a way of providing an outlet for her creative side. His recommendation proved to be exactly on the mark: after some formal writing workshop instruction, her poems quickly found a home in magazines such as The New Yorker and Harper's. She also found a home in the community of poets, developing fruitful relationships and partnerships with writers such as W.D. Snodgrass, Maxine Kumin, and Sylvia Plath. Her powerfully autobiographical poems explored the full range of the female experience, voicing topics that had been unexamined before. Unfortunately, while, in her words "Poetry led me by the hand out of madness," it did not cure her, and manic episodes continued to affect her life and career. In 1974, she committed suicide. Her eighth book, The Awful Rowing Toward God, detailing her final battles with her personal demons, was published the following year.
