Poem o'the Day: Anne Sexton, 'The Operation'

Since I've been a bit bad this week, this'll be a bigger, better, faster, harder post. A long Sexton poem, and a link to an incredible mini-film of her at her home. Found it on youtube the other evening, and was struck--of course by her beauty, I guess everyone was, but also by the sheer radiance, the wonderful humor. It's difficult to imagine someone so full of life taking their own, but as you probably know, she also suffered from severe mental illness, and was in and out of institutions throughout her life. I'm re-reading Diane Middlebrook's biography on her, and it's tough not to be taken in. In any case, here we are.

Anne Sexton at home, Part I
AS at home, Part 2














---
The Operation
Anne Sexton

I.

After the sweet promise,
the summer's mild retreat
from mother's cancer, the winter months of her death,
I come to this white office, its sterile sheet,
its hard tablet, its stirrups, to hold my breath
while I, who must allow the glove its oily rape,
to hear the almost mighty doctor over me equate
my ills with hers
and decide to operate.

It grew in her
as simply as a child would grow,
as simply as she housed me once, fat and female.
Always my most gentle house before that embryo
of evil spread in her shelter and she grew frail.
Frail, we say, remembering fear, that face we wear
in the room of the special smells of dying, fear
where the snoring mouth gapes
and is not dear.