San Antonio College Library

This volume consists of reviews and essays that trace the critical reputation of Anne Sexton, and reveal the range of attitudes and judgements expressed by critics. The new studies represent an attempt to assess the importance of women's poetry and of confessional poetry. British critic Laurence Lerner examines what American confessional poetry is and what its influence on the world of contemporary poetry has been; Paul Lacey claims that Sexton's...

Merging feminist and Freudian psychoanalytic approaches, this volume creates an illuminating portrait of Anne Sexton--a female hero in the tradition of Oedipus and his tragic quest for truth. George shows how Sexton's quest for knowledge transformed her into an embattled prophet as well as a tragic victim of her culture's malaise; and how she explored the cultural myths and archetypal relationships between parent and child, man and woman, divine and...

When Anne Sexton, Adrienne Rich, Sylvia Plath, and Gwendolyn Brooks began to write poetry during the 1940s and 1950s, each had to wonder whether she could be taken seriously as a poet while speaking in a woman's voice. This book title, the last line of one of Sexton's early poems, calls attention to how resourcefully the "I-You" relation had to be staged in order for this question to have an affirmative answer. Whereas Rich tried at first to speak...