THE DEATH NOTEBOOKS

by Anne Sexton ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 21, 1973

These poems come from notebooks intended for posthumous publication -- which is a very Sextonian intention. But it's puzzling, too, in that it implies a privacy to be guarded, and God knows we have been treated already to totemic views of her parts, inward and outer. Well, this is perhaps a more mature collection; the title even sounds like the dossier of a case being put to rest, and she tells us straightaway of a change of heart: ""Depression is boring, I think/ and I would do better to make some soup and light up the cave."" Death is told: ""Once you were sleek, a kind of Valentino/ Now. . . You are popping your buttons and expelling gas./ How can I lie down with you my comical beau/ when you are so middle aged and lower class?"" (God meanwhile is found and locked in a lavatory to secure that relationship.) But, unless these testimonies have been transposed up front for thematic reasons, there are problems in the resolution. The dimensions of Sexton's art have always been more or less identified with her body boundaries, which doesn't leave much room (although it's why she can direct her energy like such a hose nozzle), and death and depression (and God) have provided a main link with the outside world. They certainly have dominated and shaped the inner one. As yet there is nothing to replace them, and she is stuck in her night kitchen trying to make new sense of its impossibly ultimate, and limited, old inventories: baby, poo poo, jello, mama (mother truck and honeysuckle mama). The poems are neither bad nor unaffecting; but they are unusually turbulent, and Sexton is exposed as she and her poetry begin to separate and provoke conflicting reactions. The bugabooing, orificial style is unchanged.

Pub Date: Feb. 21, 1973

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1973

Categories: NONFICTION