Anne Sexton's 'The Starry Night'

Vincent van Gogh's 'Starry Night'


The Starry night - Anne Sexton

     'That does not keep me from having a terrible need of - shall I say the word - religion. Then I go out at night to paint the stars' - Vincent Van Gogh in a letter to his brother.


The town does not exist
except where one black-haired tree slips
up like a drowned woman into the hot sky.
The town is silent. The night boils with eleven stars.
Oh starry starry night! This is how
I want to die.

It moves. They are all alive.
Even the moon bulges in its orange irons
to push children, like a god, from its eye.
The old unseen serpent swallows up the stars.
Oh starry starry night! This is how
I want to die:

into that rushing beast of the night,
sucked up by that great dragon, to split
from my life with no flag,
no belly,
no cry.


On Anne Sexton, and the Confessional poetry movement

'I hold nothing back' - Anne Sexton

            Anne Sexton was a confessional poet, mainly active in the 1960s and 70s, who is often regarded as the model for the confessional poet. Typically, her poetry was candid, honest, and dealt with subjects considered taboo - for example, her poem, 'The Abortion' openly discusses the subject of abortion in a ruthless, direct manner ('Yes, woman, such logic will lead/ to loss without death. Or say what you meant,/ you coward... this baby that I bleed.'). She studied with other confessional poets, such as W.D. Snodgrass and Sylvia Plath, and had a very successful writing career over the relatively brief period of time she spent writing. She won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1967 for her book, 'Live or Die', which mostly concerned her mental illness and the difficult relationship she shared with her family.
Like many confessional poets of that time, Sexton battled for most of her life with mental illness. She suffered from two manic episodes from 1954-55, after which she was encouraged by her doctor to try her hand at poetry. Like other poets of the time, she ultimately was unable to overcome her illness; she committed suicide on October 4th, 1974. She had spent that day revising a manuscript of 'The Awful Rowing Toward God', which was to be published in 1975. She had previously stated that she would not allow the poems to be published before her death.
            Confessional poetry itself was a reaction to what Robert Lowell refers to as the 'tranquillised Fifties', a time when formal, elegant poetic style was dominant in literary circles. As I mentioned above, most members of the poetic movement were dealing in some way with depression and mental illness, and it is important to note that even as early as 1959, many members had attempted to commit suicide, or suffered nervous breakdowns. A. Alvarez, who wrote 'The Savage God' in 1971, has alluded to the inherent risk of the confessional style, stating that whilst the poet is addressing the balanced disharmonies of life anyway, '...because the artist is committed to truths of his inner life often to the point of acute discomfort, it becomes riskier still.' Many of the poets themselves, as well as critics and commentators of the confessional movement, had things to say about it's character and qualities: for example, Macha Rosenthal (who is credited as the critic who gave confessional poetry its name in his essay, 'Poetry as Confession') suggested it's distinctly modern quality as being, 'the centrifugal spin toward suicide'. Within the works of confessional poets, we can find many recurring themes such as depression, suicide, death, personal trauma and other socially taboo subjects of the time (such as sexuality).


Analysis

            Bearing in mind what has just been said about Sexton, and the confessional poets at large, the striking mortality of the poem is no longer surprising - the death motif dominates the piece thematically, and there are several examples of specific techniques that she uses in order to realise these topics. Firstly, the picture itself is personified in two specific examples; firstly, with the simile of the hair of 'a drowned woman', which Sexton uses to describe the tree in the foreground. This example cleverly manipulates the largest focal point of the original painting - the tree - to interpret the painting as morbid and fatalistic. Her comparison is effective; alluding to the floating quality of the tree which, 'slips up', she uses this effective imagery to give the poem a character of her own choosing. The second example of personification occurs when Sexton describes the moon, which 'bulges in its orange irons'. The purpose of this can be seen as several things; It imbues the sky itself with power, a concept initiated in the first stanza when, 'The night boils with eleven stars'. More specifically, it links life with causality, alluding to the moon, which pushes, 'children, like a god, from its eye'. Again, the implications of power are realised, and this sense of divine intent, of children passing underneath the attention of a god, reinforces the theme of mortality.
            However, whilst she does much to give life and energy to the night sky, she completes this description with allusions to death. Death is made present in the form of 'The old unseen serpent', which, 'swallows up the stars.' The image of a snake is reminiscent of the swirling, weaving characteristics of Van Gogh's artistic style. The image of death is completed as a 'great dragon', a 'beast of the night'; she creates an inevitable process that's synonymous with a predator. She closes the poem in the last stanza with a link to the previous two stanzas; her repetition of the death wish expressed at the end of the first and second stanzas is finally answered - 'I want to die/ into that rushing beast of the night/... to split/ from my life with no flag,/ no belly,/ no cry.' The poem comes full circle, and part of the desperation of Van Gogh and Sexton becomes apparent. This links intimately with her choice to include Van Gogh's own words at the beginning of the poem, through which he betrays some of his own discomfort with the world - hence, his 'terrible need' of religion. Many confessional poets found themselves drawn to Van Gogh, seeing a mirrored instability, some kind of artistic sadness. Of course, again we have to bear in mind the mental condition of many of these poets; Van Gogh also suffered from mental illness throughout his life, resulting in his self-mutilation and alleged suicide (apparently, he shot himself through the chest, though no gun was ever found)
            Considering the tone and pacing of the piece, Sexton purposefully imbues a sense of urgency within the poem. Consider the length of her lines; aside from Van Gogh's quotation, which acts as a kind of introduction and empathetic nod, the longest line is nine words long, with each stanza bulging at the middle - thus evoking interesting tides of pacing that start off short and blunt, and grow into more complex sentences, which then subside once more. For example, the first and second stanzas start with quick statements, 'The town does not exist...', 'It moves', thus involving the reader immediately with the motion and direction of her words. Furthermore, the piece becomes a series of layers as her descriptions evolve into new meanings: for example, the first three lines of the poem are broken up into three separate clauses at the words 'except' and 'like', and we become accustomed to a gradual sinking feeling, framed in short snapshots of thought. Even the last stanza follows this process of immersion; 'into that rushing beast of the night,/ sucked up by that great dragon, to split from my life with no flag...' The commas lead us into poetic steps, creating a pace that is not too impatient whilst still effectively conveying a sense of anxiety. This anxiety is reinforced by the heat of the poem, expressed several times via the 'boiling' stars, or the 'hot sky'. It becomes discomforting, humid - the 'pushing' of the moon feels oppressive, and the fact that it's described as 'orange' makes it synonymous with the sun, like rays of heat 'pushing' down upon the backs of children below. Sexton implies a sense of sheltering from it, of people escaping its 'eye'.
            Within her poem, Anne Sexton creates a moving example of life and death upon Van Gogh's canvas; the motion of 'a drowned woman''s hair, the bulging of the moon against its 'orange irons', the 'rushing beast of the night'; it's a panoramic display of fatalistic motion. She effectively captures the motion of the piece itself without resorting to comments on it's swirling, characteristic style that might have come across as lacklustre. More importantly, she finds common ground between herself and Van Gogh - her sympathy for the tortured artist, who's last words were 'The sadness will last forever', and her own depression and sadness come together in the last lines of the poem. She will be, 'split/ from my life with no flag,/ no belly,/ no cry' - that is to say, violently, with no allegiance, no substance - but with no complaint.



For extra reading on the subject, I would recommend Elizabeth Bergmann Loizeaux's 'Twentieth-Century Poetry and the Visual Arts', chapter four. Very interesting analysis, and more conversation on the poem's context, and the confessional writers in general.

What is Ekphrasis?

I've been thinking about poetry recently; about the way it holds a mirror up to our lives, and how we use it to express and expect something truthful - even if the poem itself is untruthful. Alan Moore once said that, 'Artists tell lies to tell the truth', and I think that there's something extremely comforting to know that truth can be extracted from art even if it doesn't specifically relate to you, or even the artist. Honestly, it's because all art relates to all things. It's difficult to isolate yourself from a piece of art because the very act of expression and comprehension - or even frustration at a lack of comprehension - is a reaction to it, a fusion between two minds: the reader and the writer, the performer and their audience, etc. But how does this relate to Ekphrasis? What even is Ekphrasis? Well, we all know what it is, even if we don't recognise the word - it's the act of responding to art with art.

Specifically, visual art - the word's origin takes us back to ancient Greece, where we can find one of the earliest examples of the concept in Homer's 'The Iliad'. Homer's description of the Shield of Achilles (which can be found here) is just one of many examples of ekphrasis in this period, with many others following in Homer's example (such as Hesoid's description of the Shield of Heracles - which can be found here). The Greek origin of the word 'Ekphrasis' literally means 'description' - roughly, it translates as ek - 'Out of', and phrasis - 'speech', or 'expression'. In it's oldest form, therefore, Ekphrasis is something very static; it's the motionless description of an object, almost devoid of personal emotional response. It's a very literal act - a transcription of art from one form to another. I had a problem with this style. A little part of me rebelled at the nature of Ekphrasis, at the simple relaying of information from the visual creation to the written word. Alain de Botton has suggested that, 

‘The artist is willing to sacrifice a naïve realism in order to achieve realism of a deeper sort; like a poet who, though less factual than a journalist in describing an event, may nevertheless reveal truths about it that find no place in the other’s literal grid’. 

I wanted to create something of my own in my piece that was more than a reference. Imagine my delight, therefore, when I began to consider some of my favourite examples of Ekphrasis in their true form: Robert Browning's 'My Last Duchess', Oscar Wilde's 'Picture of Dorian Gray', etc. These are obviously responses to paintings; and yet, tracing them from the inception of the concept of Ekphrasis, I couldn't help but appreciate these fantastic works even more. The beauty of our literary history is that over time, simple ideas such as Ekphrasis have evolved and morphed into something new, refreshing and challenging. By studying art's past, we can become more excited about art's future.

So where am I going with this?

We've all experienced art at some point in our lives: it's all around us - on the internet, in our living rooms, on our streets and in our schools. Whether you're an aficionado, an amateur, a student or a passer-by, most of us can at least identify a handful of artists, writers or performers when asked; a small collection of pictures and words, of melodies and films, of faces, landscapes, performances and everything in between, like a mantra, a passing fancy or even a life story. One of the most instinctive, intuitive experiences of our lives is the act of responding to that artwork; whether it's a simple thought, or a profound reaction to something we hadn't seen before, we are compelled to feel - even if all we feel is the need to stop, or even to look away. This is something that's always fascinated me; that moment when you stop, when something halts you, compels you, fascinates you, and enthrals you. Now, sadly, much of what we experience often becomes part of the white noise of our past - moments are forgotten when we chose to stop and stare, because life has a ruthless tendency to lose. For me, Ekphrasis is an opportunity to transcribe that moment, to articulate that flash of emotion, that inspiration that hops between creations like the lightning from van de graff generators. It is a picture of a thunderstorm.

Let's spend some time reading some Ekphrastic poetry - it's really quite phenomenal.

Four Poems by Frank O'Hara

Critical Essay – Compare and contrast four examples of Frank O’Hara’s poetry, reflecting on his work in terms of form, content and context.

 ‘It may be that poetry makes life’s nebulous events tangible to me and restores their detail; or, conversely, that poetry brings forth the intangible quality of incidents which are all too concrete and circumstantial’[i] – Frank O’Hara, on the aesthetics of poetry.

The most defining aspect of Frank O’Hara’s work is its immediacy – everything included in his poems was a feature of the everyday, part of the pedestrian culture of the places he lived in, from conversations and music, to cityscapes and the people that walked them. In his work, he was averse to writing in abstract, something which he discussed in tangential terms in his essay, ‘Personism: A Manifesto’; using the analogy of a knife wielding assailant, he identified the importance of instinct and material realism in order to make the poem real. In his life, he was more than a poet – he was a curator at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and a critic of art and film – and he found interesting ways to supplement his poetry with knowledge from these interests. It was his vivid spontaneity, however, that gave his pieces such identifiable tone and voice, using an autobiographical style to imbue everyday life into his work.  These four things; capturing pedestrian culture, avoiding abstraction, the inclusion of art and film, and his characteristic spontaneity, frequently allowed him to create a poem ‘between two people’. However, most remarkable was his preoccupation with the self, how he wanted his poems to be, ‘… between an “I” and a “you”…’ [ii], as he understood that, ‘… the only mind he can wholly penetrate is his own…’ [iii]

Critics of O’Hara’s poem ‘Music’ argued that it was menial, self-indulgent and, worst of all, jovial; as they tended to suggest about most of his poetry[iv]. However, O’Hara uses several techniques to create a living moment in his poem, many of which appear to be random or sporadic. By shifting through many different images and places (resting near ‘The Equestrian’, appearing ‘naked as a table cloth’, amongst others) O’Hara stylistically mimics techniques used in art and film to evoke a vivid, almost surreal quality in the poem. He creates a moving thought process, an inner monologue of thoughts and pictures that’s directionless. This has the effect of imitating a wondering mind, effectively turning his voice and tone aloof. Throughout the piece, there’s a desire to translate his perceptions across to you, with nothing in between. The ‘you’ in this piece is a shifting one; what starts of as a specific ‘you’ (‘If I seem to you to have lavender lips…’) becomes a very general one (Clasp me in your handkerchief like a tear, trumpet of early afternoon!’). This changes who is being addressed, from a single person to a collective, similar to the changing crowds of a New York street, or the Mayflower Shoppe itself. It specifies that the subject matter is anything relevant to these places, and anyone who experiences them. Due to the spontaneity of the images and settings, the poem becomes very present, further reinforced by O’Hara’s unwavering use of the present tense throughout the piece despite its shifting location. However, he keeps his settings grounded, and characteristically uses specific place names (‘the Mayflower Shoppe’, ‘the Christmas trees on Park Avenue’) to bring this surreal trail of imagery down to earth. He keeps his piece local (to New York), placing himself in specific settings to focus his experiences. The effect of the surreal wondering quality of the piece, accompanied by its familiarised setting, is to de-familiarise it. Much like in the opening statement, O’Hara realises the ‘intangible quality’ of a New York afternoon, with the intent of using his perspective to expose it.

In ‘Ave Maria’, there’s a much more obvious sense of theme than O’Hara’s poetry typically exhibits – he deals with coming of age, specifically first-time sexual experiences. His light-hearted, humorous method of addressing a serious topic breaks the ice, deformalizing a serious theme so that he can move it away from social commentary, choosing to instead to identify an ‘I’ and a ‘you’: Himself, and the ‘Mothers of America’ to whom the poem is addressed. This is exacerbated by the juxtaposition of the tone and subject matter of the piece with the title, ‘Ave Maria’ – a reference to Catholic prayer of the Virgin Mary. His lexical choice gives the relationship between the ‘I’ and the ‘you’ character - rather than using powerful, emotive descriptions which would feel contrived, he uses casual phrases and words (‘it’ll be sheer gravy’, ‘little tykes’) to turn the piece into a conversation, and humanise his work. The form of the poem lends itself to this intention – by spacing the lines out, moving some across the page, separating small phrases (‘hating you’, ‘and the family breaks up’) the poem feels spoken, each line being separated into an utterance, further reinforcing the feeling that this is a discussion. It also adds to the comic timing of the piece, giving it pacing and delivery, so that it ultimately can be enjoyed as light-hearted, as opposed to serious.

In an autobiographical style, he identifies with the children of these mothers by capturing images of specific places (‘Heaven and Earth bldg’, ‘Williamsburg Bridge’) to focus a narrative, again in the present tense, and turn it into an experience from the everyday. This allows him to find something ‘tangiable’ and express it to someone other than himself. Throughout the piece, we can find evidence of his aversion to the abstract. There are many examples of specific objects or actions (‘a quarter’, ‘bags of popcorn’, ‘hanging around the yard’) that the reader can clearly imagine. This creates realism in the poem, by depicting palpable situations that apply to a general proportion of the children of the mothers. The piece ends with a sense of loss; the children ‘grow old and blind’, but still watch the movies they should have seen when they were young. Here, O’Hara implies that they would miss the true wonder of living, becoming blinded to the ‘darker joys’ of sexuality because their mothers refused to allow them to experience them – the act of which O’Hara describes as ‘unforgivable’.

‘A Step Away from Them’ appears at first glance to wander, similarly to ‘Music’, with O’Hara documenting a casual experience with New York in his lunch hour. However, unlike in ‘Music’, he chooses to identify with a sense of time – with the centre of the piece revolving around a specific moment (‘it is 12:40 of a Thursday.’). By using this line as a fulcrum, he creates pace and continuity, balancing the poem so that it extends like an actual lunch break. The reason this poem differs from other examples of his work is that it is an elegy; something we only become aware of in the fourth stanza (‘First Bunny died, then John Latouche, then Jackson Pollock’). O’Hara’s intention throughout this piece is to imbue us with a sense of mortality, whilst defying the standard tropes of an elegy – He doesn’t talk much about the people involved, he doesn’t begin with memories of their life, etc. This is both disarming and thought-provoking, causing us to consider the lives that we can enjoy, whilst they cannot. In this poem, we can see O’Hara’s distaste for the abstract. His ruminations regarding his dead friends are brief, and surrounded by objective and material thoughts and experiences (‘BULLFIGHT’, ‘There are several Puerto Ricans…’). The purpose of this is to maintain the focus of the poem on the mortality of New York around him, such as the Manhattan Storage Warehouse, ‘which they’ll soon tear down’. There are references to fatality (‘They protect them from falling bricks, I guess’) and the entire narrative is drawn out into one continuous line, with little breakage, again to emphasise the progression of time and of life. This synergises with O’Hara’s penchant for creating spontaneity, which he does in this piece in the form of collections of images (‘cats playing in sawdust’, ‘labourers feed their dirty glistening torsos’) to create his lunch hour break. The subtlety of O’Hara’s consideration for his friends, and the mortality that he enjoys and they cannot, does however slip once in the form of a question (‘But is the earth as full as life was full, of them?’) Most of his Lunch Poems are devoid of such other-worldly considerations, but on this particular lunch break, he finds himself drawn to their memories. The ‘you’ in this piece is his friends, but he doesn’t talk directly to them because he can’t; he speaks of them. This drastic shift from his usual principle of a poem between two people includes people, while he considers his own mortality – as embodied in his title, ‘A Step Away from Them’.

In his piece ‘Why I Am Not a Painter’, O’Hara draws a parallel between two art forms: painting and poetry. However, it is also a commentary on his own artistic writing style; Personism. This is exemplary in the way that he addresses his love of art (‘I would rather be a painter’), showing that art itself holds a universal beauty. His many active interests in artists and different forms of art are suggested by his allusion to Mike Goldberg within the poem, which has the effect of bringing the two forms closer together. He solidifies this relationship between the two by sharing them in the same experience; both writer and painter find themselves devolving from their original subject matter, until it can no longer be seen in their respective pieces. O’Hara is commentating on the nature of art, specifically of representation, the result of which is that we as readers empathise with O’Hara as he fails to discuss ‘orange’, as he comments ironically, ‘There should be so much more, not of orange, of words…’ this irony verging on sarcasm is supported a few words later, when he writes, ‘It is even in prose, I am a real poet’. Personism also manifests itself in O’Hara’s use of an ‘I’, himself, and a ‘you’, which in this case is extremely general – the person who asks him why he is a poet as opposed to a painter. By retaining a very general ‘you’, O’Hara effects a casual style to a wide audience, without pandering to a demographic. Anyone who’s ever wondered why this Art Museum Curator is also a poet is privy to the poem. He chooses to address the question by retaining the casual tone (‘I drop in’, ‘But me?’), similar to the one he employs in ‘Ave Maria’. By doing this, O’Hara creates a discursive, conversational piece that feels like it is spoken. The piece also feels spontaneous for the same reason – the ink feels wet on the page, the ideas he writes on feel fresh and ready to be pondered. It doesn’t feel contrived, which has the effect of making the reader feel the poem is honest. This piece also employs specific and palpable things, like the other three poems discussed above, to maintain a tangible focus to the poem-narrative: these include the two pieces of work, Sardines and Oranges, and Mike Golding as a real friend he associated with.

In this style, O’Hara frequently captured the aesthetic he was talking about in this essay’s opening quote: He realised the emotions of the day to day proceedings and used them, both to create order and connection between them and to fragment them into shards of meaning in their own right. Often, his pieces led to specific places or locations, with the aim of capturing the flavour of it, its pedestrian culture, experienced in a scrap of time – His Lunch Poems were written in those exact circumstances; in stolen lunch hours, or moments when he was making his way in no particular rush. He wrote in a colloquial, sometimes autobiographical voice, he rarely stuck to a rhythm or rhyme scheme, and he often tried to include his other creative interests in art and media; all of this gave his poetry a personal connection with the subject matter, and a musing tone that became Frank’s staple.

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[i] Marjorie Perloff, ‘Frank O’Hara and the Aesthetics of Attention’, boundary 2, 4.3, (Spring, 1976) pp. 779-806 (782)

[ii] Marjorie Perloff, p. 799

[iii] Marjorie Perloff, p. 799

[iv] Marjorie Perloff, p. 781-2