Anne Sexton(1928-1974) (Courage)
Like her contemporary Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton led a life marked by mental anguish and profound creativity. Born in Newton, Massachusetts, Sexton married at age nineteen, dabbled in modeling, then gave birth to two daughters. Suffering from severe postpartum depression, Sexton was admitted to a psychiatric hospital for the first of many times in her life. She was encouraged by a doctor to pursue an interest in poetry, and in 1957 enrolled in a local poetry workshop. The quality of her work earned Sexton a scholarship to study with Robert Lowell at Boston University, and by 1960 she had published her first collection, To Bedlam and Part Way Back. She won a Pulitzer Prize in 1967. Like other “confessional” poets the time, Sexton’s poems gave readers an intimate and sometimes uncomfortable look at the poet’s own troubled psyche.