05-23-2022, 04:11 PM
Walking The Merciless Street
Sans Peur Et Sans Reproche
or, The Awful Rowing Toward God
A story, a story!
(Let it go. Let it come.)
I was stamped out like a Plymouth fender
into this world.
. . . .
Then there was life
with its cruel houses
and people who seldom touched –
though touch is all –
but I grew,
like a pig in a trenchcoat I grew,
and then there were many strange apparitions,
the nagging rain, the sun turning into poison
and all of that, saws working through my heart,
but I grew, I grew,
and God was there like an island I had not rowed to,
still ignorant of Him, my arms and my legs worked,
and I grew, I grew,
I wore rubies and bought tomatoes
and now, in my middle age,
about nineteen in the head I’d say,
I am rowing, I am rowing
though the oarlocks stick and are rusty
and the sea blinks and rolls
like a worried eyeball,
but I am rowing, I am rowing,
though the wind pushes me back
and I know that that island will not be perfect.
--- Anne Sexton, from "Rowing", in The Awful Rowing Toward God (posthumous, 1975)
....and I am walking and looking
and this is no dream
just my oily life
where the people are alibis
and the street is unfindable for an
entire lifetime....
--- Anne Sexton, from "45 Mercy Street", in 45 Mercy Street (posthumous, 1976)
On October 4, 1974, Sexton had lunch with fellow poet Maxine Kumin to revise galleys for Sexton's manuscript of The Awful Rowing Toward God, scheduled for publication in March 1975. On returning home she put on her mother's old fur coat, removed all her rings, poured herself a glass of vodka, locked herself in her garage, and started the engine of her car, ending her life by carbon monoxide poisoning.
In an interview over a year before her death, she explained she had written the first drafts of The Awful Rowing Toward God in twenty days with "two days out for despair and three days out in a mental hospital." She went on to say that she would not allow the poems to be published before her death.
She had once remarked that she hadn't gotten better after psychiatrically addressing her crippling life-long manic depression -- she had simply become a poet.
Sans Peur Et Sans Reproche
or, The Awful Rowing Toward God
A story, a story!
(Let it go. Let it come.)
I was stamped out like a Plymouth fender
into this world.
. . . .
Then there was life
with its cruel houses
and people who seldom touched –
though touch is all –
but I grew,
like a pig in a trenchcoat I grew,
and then there were many strange apparitions,
the nagging rain, the sun turning into poison
and all of that, saws working through my heart,
but I grew, I grew,
and God was there like an island I had not rowed to,
still ignorant of Him, my arms and my legs worked,
and I grew, I grew,
I wore rubies and bought tomatoes
and now, in my middle age,
about nineteen in the head I’d say,
I am rowing, I am rowing
though the oarlocks stick and are rusty
and the sea blinks and rolls
like a worried eyeball,
but I am rowing, I am rowing,
though the wind pushes me back
and I know that that island will not be perfect.
--- Anne Sexton, from "Rowing", in The Awful Rowing Toward God (posthumous, 1975)
....and I am walking and looking
and this is no dream
just my oily life
where the people are alibis
and the street is unfindable for an
entire lifetime....
--- Anne Sexton, from "45 Mercy Street", in 45 Mercy Street (posthumous, 1976)
On October 4, 1974, Sexton had lunch with fellow poet Maxine Kumin to revise galleys for Sexton's manuscript of The Awful Rowing Toward God, scheduled for publication in March 1975. On returning home she put on her mother's old fur coat, removed all her rings, poured herself a glass of vodka, locked herself in her garage, and started the engine of her car, ending her life by carbon monoxide poisoning.
In an interview over a year before her death, she explained she had written the first drafts of The Awful Rowing Toward God in twenty days with "two days out for despair and three days out in a mental hospital." She went on to say that she would not allow the poems to be published before her death.
She had once remarked that she hadn't gotten better after psychiatrically addressing her crippling life-long manic depression -- she had simply become a poet.