Anne Sexton and etc.
From this website, which has much, much more to say on the subject:
September 15th, 1958
Dear Mr. Lowell:
What a fine letter you wrote me. I am considering framing it to prove to all comers that poets are people. I am so pleased that you think my work shows promise, that I shall need no new proof for possibly a month.
Since receiving your letter I have been busy begging money from old fat relatives. Today, with 90 dollars in my fist, I called the registrar’s office. However, it seems they are not bouncing with joy at the thought of “special students” with no particular degree. A Mr. Wilder said I would have to wait until after registration and see if there were too many students in the class. I forward this information to you because I gather he will present you with the problem.
I hasten to add, since he may forget my name, that I am one of the vagrant applications that awaits your decision. He asked me if I were connected with any publication. I am not. In fact, I am totally disconnected from everything. I did not mention my slim list of credits, thinking he might wonder WHAT I was talking about. I am supposed to call him on Friday morning at eleven.
If this doesn’t pan out I can always try for the second semester. I am even tempted to sit watching your lovely letters of praise and forget all about the work and criticism and growth that I would enjoy working with you.
I am more than a little shy of the great factories of humanity, like B.U., and it will take considerable moral courage to get on with this complicated application, registration, and these new hurdles. Somewhere, I hope I will get to a classroom where Robert Lowell is talking about poetry. I don’t want the three credits, I am not sweetened with a background of knowledge, am even defensive saying (“I don’t know anything.”) — but if you can squeeze me in, I will be there.
You do not need to answer this letter. I just wanted to let you know the meanwhiles and if so’s. If I do not make it I will surely meet you sometime.
Yours sincerely,Anne Sexton
Where the Rainbow Ends
Where The Rainbow Ends
I saw the sky descending, black and white,
Not blue, on Boston where the winters wore
The skulls to jack-o’-lanterns on the slates,
And Hunger’s skin-and-bone retrievers tore
The chickadee and shrike. The thorn tree waits
Its victim and tonight
The worms will eat the deadwood to the foot
Of Ararat: the scythers, Time and Death,
Helmed locusts, move upon the tree of breath;
The wild ingrated olive and the root
Are withered, and a winter drifts to where
The Pepperpot, ironic rainbow, spans
Charles River and its scales of scorched-earth miles
I saw my city in the Scales, the pans
Of judgment rising and descending. Piles
Of dead leaves char the air –
And I am a red arrow on this graph
Of Revelations. Every dove is sold.
The Chapel’s sharp-shinned eagle shifts its hold
On serpent-Time, the rainbow’s epitaph.
In Boston serpents whistle at the cold.
The victim climbs the altar steps and sings:
“Hosannah to the lion, lamb, and beast
Who fans the furnace-face of IS with wings:
I breathe the ether of my marriage feast.”
At the high altar, gold
And a fair cloth. I kneel and the wings beat
My cheek. What can the dove of Jesus give
You now but wisdom, exile? Stand and live,
The dove has brought an olive branch to eat.
