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Anne Sexton (1928–1974) is celebrated alongside confessional poets Sylvia Plath, Robert Lowell, and W. D. Snodgrass, who gave her “permission” to express highly personal themes of depression, suicidal impulses, and the intimate details of her life. In 1967 she received the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for her book Live or Die. Other works include To Bedlam and Part Way Back, Love Poems, and Transformations—retellings of Grimm’s fairy tales—her most feminist work. Sexton suffered from severe mental illness and died by her own hand of carbon monoxide poisoning.

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The Truth the Dead Know

by Anne Sexton
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    For my Mother, born March 1902, died March 1959
    and my Father, born February 1900, died June 1959

Gone, I say and walk from church,
refusing the stiff procession to the grave,
letting the dead ride alone in the hearse.
It is June. I am tired of being brave.

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