Anne Sexton’s The Room of my Life
Anne Sexton (1928-1974) was a profoundly accomplished poet who was categorized as a part of the Confessional Poets, who wrote raw revelations about topics thought to be private or unspeakable. Her poetry reflects perhaps, her tumultuous mental health, but certainly her perception of the human experience which was at times joltingly honest with words and imagery that catches in your throat.
In “The Room of my Life” Sexton uses objects and images and descriptions, often tying things together that do not seem to go together to describe her reality/room/life/human experience. Her language is neither formal nor informal, as she uses punctuation and but not complete sentences, but she writes clear and straight-forward as far as her words go. But making meaning and connection and swallowing those dirty images she writes for us on the page takes a minute. Her connections are simply amazing and it isn’t in a direct way.
She gives bursts of images through short fragments that are rich with connection and meaning, expanding the reader’s experience with objects that are otherwise usual and mundane. For example, Sexton writes “the forty-eight keys of the typewriter / each an eyeball that is never shut” (332). What an amazing way to strike the reader with such an image of typewriter keys. In comparing them to eyeballs, it personifies the little machine and gives this image that it’s always waiting on its person to come tap it’s eyeballs so it can create a story. Always-ready, never-sleeping eyeballs that watch the room/world in order to help create a story of the human experience. To personify a typewriter is to give it life, magic—which is the same as what words do to a story once they’re typed. Another interesting description is when she writes, “the books, each a contestant in a beauty contest” (332). We all look at books admiringly—most readers do at least—but this description brings a new twist to a reader pursuing bookshelves by highlighting the fact that books could be judged and loved by the prettiest, or even the best one that glides across our stage (the mind) like any other beauty contestant. The way the poem flows mirrors a day that goes on and on and on, with simple variations of occurrences in the day. There are no breaks in the stanzas which also suggests the poet feels as if things go on and on and on, almost in a mundane way as she is stuck in her room/this world, but also not at all mundanely since she finds such interesting ways to bring to life the objects and imagery she writes about.
The mood of the poem is depressed and hopeless in a blunt and mocking way. Words such as “cry”, “suffering”, “coffin”, “exhausted”, “starving”, and “explode” all lean to a more desperate and suffered state. It would be difficult to find positivity in this poem. Phrases such as “exhausted with the exertion of a whore”, “flowers taking root in its crotch”, “drive the trees like nails into my heart”, “although birds explode”, and “the sea that bangs at my throat” do not offer any pleasantries of life and really screams pain, suffering, violence, stagnancy, and desperation. The textures while reading aloud are often soft with a jolt of hardening which is how her words hit the reader as well. You aren’t sure what’s coming when you read the first piece of the line and then by the end, you’re deeply affected by the punch of imagery or comparison she’s given. It reads deeply personal, reflective of the Confessional Poetry. She uses an almost grotesque feel to get her point across. It feels that this room is normal until you factor in all its ugliness—which is similar to the rawness of real life. Sexton is very clear with the way she washes these images over her readers. We aren’t meant to feel clean and lighthearted after reading this. She wants the ugly part of life stuck to our skin, she wants us to feel that sea banging in her throat—and we do.
Sexton suffered from mental health issues, dying by suicide. One cannot read this poem without feeling her despair. Mental health is so deeply affective to one’s life and even normal, usual life can seem skewed and sticky with despair, as though you just can’t get outside of this suffering. This poem created that sensation for me. I’d love he hear how this poem made you feel? Did you also feel despair?
No comments yet.