This Business of Words
Long overshadowed by fellow confessional poets Sylvia Plath and Robert Lowell, Anne Sexton seldom features in literary criticism, despite being one of America’s most influential women writers. Now in this much-needed volume Sexton and her poetry are reassessed for the first time in two decades.
With new access to her archives, the scholars and poets featured here consider Sexton’s wide range of literary production: how it shaped her creative process, informs readings of her work, and reveals her efforts to build a successful career without a university education. Notable in presenting Sexton the educator and public figure, This Business of Words also considers her relationships with peers and various media and interprets her strategies for teaching, critiquing poems, and delivering readings.
As they revisit their initial encounters with Sexton as readers, writers, and teachers, the contributors to this volume map the influence of her craft on twenty-first-century culture.
Contributors: Jeanne Marie Beaumont | Jeffery Conway | Jo Gill | Amanda Golden | Christopher Grobe | Anita Helle | Kamran Javadizadeh | Dorothea Lasky | Kathleen Ossip | David Trinidad | Victoria Van Hyning
Rejecting inherited knockoff versions of Anne, the contributors . . . remap the extraordinary constellation of her career. . . . Added bonus: poets join their academic colleagues in reassessing an important poet and performance artist.'—American Literary History 'The reader sees the evolving artist and her efforts to promote her work and come to terms with her life. . . . This collection reveals Sexton as a unique artist and human being.'—Choice ‘Successfully throwing much-needed fresh light from new perspectives, This Business of Words opens a path for fuller appreciation as well as greater critical discernment of the poet’s work.’—Colorado Review ‘Advance[s] Sexton scholarship through engagement with the materials in her archive and her significant influence on contemporary poets.’—American Literature: The Twentieth Century
Readers of Sexton’s poetry have been waiting more than twenty years for a collection of essays like this.'—Dawn M. Skorczewski, author of An Accident of Hope: The Therapy Tapes of Anne Sexton 'An important collection of new critical views. Draws from a range of critics, as well as poets, to assess why Sexton’s work remains viable, forceful, and beloved.'—Linda Wagner-Martin, author of A History of American Literature: 1950 to the Present
