Sold – Poet Anne Sexton, Later a Suicide, Thinks of Her Own Death

"If I were only dead or a little more well known, you could perhaps sell this letter".

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Pulitzer Prize winning poet whose works sprang from her lifelong battle with mental illness and suicidal tendencies. She felt everything so intensely, had so little capacity to filter out pain, that everyday events often seemed unbearable to her. Paradoxically it is that quality which made her a successful poet.

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Sold – Poet Anne Sexton, Later a Suicide, Thinks of Her Own Death

"If I were only dead or a little more well known, you could perhaps sell this letter".

Pulitzer Prize winning poet whose works sprang from her lifelong battle with mental illness and suicidal tendencies. She felt everything so intensely, had so little capacity to filter out pain, that everyday events often seemed unbearable to her. Paradoxically it is that quality which made her a successful poet.

Typed Letter Signed, 1 page 4to, Weston, Sept. 2, 1970, to a woman at Publishers for Peace who had apparently written her asking for something the organization could sell or raffle off as a fundraiser. “I don’t have much to offer, but I thought it might help if I wrote out the poems by hand. They have not been published in book form but have been in very obscure magazines and are among my most political poems although the second one arouses controversy. If I were only dead or a little more well known, you could perhaps sell this letter. All best wishes to you Ômany good people.’”

Very rare, and extremely significant because of her rather offhand remark about being dead, showing the subject was on her mind. She had attempted suicide seriously before, and did finally succeed in taking her own life. Her poetry, begun as therapy at the suggestion of her psychiatrist, quickly caught on, and established her as one of the major poets of the 20th century. We have seen innumerable letters of notable people; some remark on their autographs being more or less desirable, and either valuable or worthless. Yet never before have we seen one where the writer’s own death is the crux of the matter.

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