ABSTRACT
It is no exaggeration to say that the American poet Anne Sexton (1928-1974; Figure 8.1) wrote her first published poems in Westwood Lodge, a psychiatric hospital, at the suggestion of her psychiatrist, Dr. Martin Orne (1927-2000; Figure 8.2). It was the summer of 1956, and, at the age of 28, Sexton was struggling with a postpartum depression that left her unable to care for herself or her two young children. With Orne’s encouragement, Sexton began to draw from personal experience to craft what became known as “Confessional” poems-about depression, suicide, hallucination, women’s bodies, family secrets, love affairs, war, God, and the complexities of human relationships. By the end of an eight-year treatment, after which Orne moved to Philadelphia, Sexton had received fellowships from Antioch, Bread Loaf, the Bunting Institute, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Ford Foundation (twice). She had published two volumes of poetry, both nominated for the National Book Award, and received the Levinson Award from Poetry magazine. She had also written much of Live or Die, her third book, which would win the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1967. It is an extraordinary fact that in the cultural climate of the 1950s, in a suburban psychiatric institution, a psy - chiatrist’s encouragement helped a young mother become an internationally renowned poet in scarcely two years.
