Anne Sexton

[The poetry collection was on my old site – it’s not hosted here any more, but I’ve tried to replace the old links with links to the same content elsewhere on the web.]

I don’t usually write commentaries for the section of this site where I collect poetry I love (never having studied literature beyond the O’levels, I don’t feel qualified), but after coding my favourite Anne Sexton poems, which are the latest addition, I feel compelled to write something.

To me Anne Sexton’s poetry is inescapably tied up with the course of her life, and much of it maps that tragic life out to its end: suicide, age 45, after losing a long battle with mental illness; read the poems knowing this, and sometimes you cry.

Yet all isn’t doom and gloom. Poems like The Fortress, Little Girl, My Stringbean, My Lovely Woman and Live pulse with love and life, and I chose to end the collection with Live, even though its joy soon faded with her later poems, and its wonderful ending is now more elegiac than inspirational, knowing that.

Then there are the lovely ways she uses words:

You lie, a small knuckle on my white bed;
lie, fisted like a snail, so small and strong
at my breast.
(Unknown Girl in the Maternity Ward)

Your feet thump-thump against my back
and you whisper to yourself. Child,
what are you wishing? What pact
are you making?
What mouse runs between your eyes? What ark
can I fill for you when the world goes wild?
(The Fortress)

The Abortion: subtle imagery which I missed the very first time I read it, hard-hitting and painful ever since.

Read Anne Sexton. Please.

Fwah!

I am now the proud owner of a digital webcammy thingamebob.

I installed it last night. My sister (who is 32) and I were like children with a new toy.

We took pictures of Fwah!, my stuffed duck. We took pictures of the ziraffe (her strange bendy giraffe with zebra stripes capable of manifold contortions). We took pictures of Wellington, the wombat. We took pictures of Pooh. We took pictures of our parents asleep. We took pictures of my brother asleep. We did the whole holding the camera out pointing at ourselves at arm’s length and adopting expressions that will be hideously embarassing if anyone else ever sees those pictures.

Most of those pictures aren’t ever going to be made public, but here are two of Fwah!, the most photogenic member of the family.

The Unbearable Fwah!ness of Being
Reclining Nude

X-Files: Roadrunners

Right, so tonight’s episode of the X-Files was about a huge-ass garden-variety manifestation of the Second Coming, which was worshipped by a bunch of hicks who drove around the desert in a big bus looking for random stranded backpackers and the occasional red-headed FBI agent so they could shove the Slug Christ up their spines.

Methinks the scriptwriters and storyeditors who came up with this opus need a couple of Slime Messiahs shoved up where the desert sun don’t shine.

Missing Neil

Rarely does it occur that I run through my house attempting the triple jump. Especially since I’ve only ever seen it done on TV. But then again, rarely does it occur that one of my favourite authors in the world, Neil Gaiman, finally launches his own site.

Rarely (okay, actually pretty often, but I wanted that element of repetition) does it occur that I reel off absurdly long streams of obscenities as I run through my house attempting the triple jump. But then again, rarely does it occur that I remember that Neil Gaiman is making an appearance TEN MINUTES away from where I live in London on Saturday July 7, 1 PM at Forbidden Planet (New Oxford Street), but I’m NOT IN FRIGGIN’ LONDON.

This is one of those times when I have to remind myself about starving children, the AIDS plague, and looming environmental crises in order to put things in perspective.

Who needs drugs?

Wow, I did it. I’m listening to Coldcut’s Solid Steel radio show on BBC London Live at the painful hour of 7 am on a mercifully overcast Singapore Tuesday morning.

I’m exhausted, my eyes are bloodshot and Samsonite-bagged, I’m incapable of carrying out a coherent conversation or walking in a straight line, but they just played a smashingly good mix of Get Ur Freak On, and goddamit I’m dancin’!

Sonic Nursing

My sister deals with personnel in the Ministry of Health, and part of her job includes promoting the nursing profession – overseeing scholarship schemes, running advertising campaigns, stuff like that.

Today she had a sudden flash of inspiration, while we were listening to the Kings’ Singers do Wind Beneath My Wings (it wasn’t great, but their rendition of Live And Let Die was very much worse) – perhaps the nursing profession could do with a theme song!

I made several suggestions.

  • Bad Medicine
  • Sexual Healing
  • Knocking On Heaven’s Door
  • Breathe Again
  • Died In Your Arms Tonight

I don’t know why she wasn’t more receptive.

In Bygone Days

Addendum to previous post:
I’d also be listening to Solid Steel and the Breezeblock on Monday night radio, and then John Peel from Tuesday to Thursday.

Living in London has spoiled me rotten. I remember days when the Internet was the only way I could ever hear any music that wasn’t in the top 40. Perfect 10, the Singapore radio station which played the most current music, was ruled by Michael Learns To Rock and Timmy Thomas (pop quiz for non-SE Asian readers: ever heard of either of them? No? I have a feeling they only ever became famous in South East Asia, which is unsurprising because they were monumentally crap).

[Michael Learns To Rock is, frighteningly, still extremely popular. If you’ve got a fast Internet connection or are a complete moron, go download something by them. I recommend Paint My Love or The Actor for maximum flaccidity but any song will do, really, since they all sound the same.]

The first Pavement songs I ever heard were very poorly recorded wavs I found in a newsgroup. Each one took an eternity to download over a 14.4K modem and sounded, well, even more staticky and noisy than Slanted And Enchanted already was.

My first experience of Loveless was 30-second song clips over streamed RealAudio which stopped and rebuffered every 20 seconds, back when one of RealAudio’s favourite boasts was that it could deliver FM-quality sound over a 28.8K connection. The cost of a CD was a big dip in available pocket money, so I’d agonize for ages over anything I bought. I must have listened to those bloody (no pun or subtle-indie-reference-for-those-who-know intended) crackling, breaking song clips at least 20 times per song before I finally ventured to a local CD shop, where of course I was told they didn’t stock it and had never heard of it.

I suppose waking up at 7 am to listen to radio shows over the Internet isn’t that much of a stretch from those days as it feels.

Wishful Wishlist

Music thingies I’d really want to be doing if I were spending the summer in the UK, and am masochistically listing:

To top it all off, Philip Glass is doing three different concerts for the Singapore Arts Festival. But! Given that I’ve cleverly devoted that entire week to being a responsible adult presence (stop laughing) at a student camp for creative writing, and I don’t think it would be particularly in keeping with that to creep off to watch the concerts, I guess I won’t be going to those either.

Oh the aaaarghness of it all…

Scotland: Highlands and Edinburgh

This is how I’ll do it:

  • Us in Scotland, plus random trip fragments
  • How good it is, nonetheless, to be home

Scotland:

Was fabulous.

Jed was designated driver (well, more like only licensed driver), and went through periodic hell for our sakes on narrow single-laned roads (and one single-laned tunnel) with only the occasional lay-by and Jed on the edge of his seat muttering “The Scots are crazy” through gritted teeth to save us from collisions with oncoming traffic.

Luke was surprisingly successful navigator, champion of cheesy music (we burned some CDs to play. Some of Luke’s choices: Another Night, Eternal Love, When You Say Nothing At All. The pain, the pain.) on the car stereo, and incorrigible explorer of all things forested or clamberable.

I, er, researched stuff and snoozed in the back seat when I felt like it. And will fully acknowledge here and now that the collective efforts of Jed and Luke played a far more significant role in the success of our trip than my guidebook-thumbings did. Thanks, guys. :)

Day One: Started out from Durham, elevenish. Drove through Newcastle, shivered in fog at the border, couldn’t resist stopping for lunch and inane kicks in Jedburgh, which included places called Jedwater, Jedforest and Bonjedward, drove through Edinburgh and Stirling and spent the night on the…<resist…using…”bonnie bonnie banks”…Resist…Resist… >…shores of Loch Lomond. Had a humble and bloody awful dinner of miscellaneous Heinz canned concoctions, although Luke’s surreptitious inclusion of grapes in the chicken soup arguably provided a gourmet touch.

Day Two: Loved Glencoe. Hated Fort William. Got very stressed driving through Kyle of Lochalsh and Stomeferry, due to the earlier described road conditions; creep up to Jed and whisper “Passing Places” in his ear, and you might well meet a violent death. Photographed Eileen Donan Castle. Between here and Inverness I was asleep, but, er, I’m sure it was great.

Day Three: Lots of little stops to see Cullendon (I liked it. Newcastle John’s opinion, bestowed yesterday over the phone: “Michelle. It’s a field.”), Clava Cairns, the Bridge of Doulsie (where I fondled my first nettle while trying not to fall down a slope), Carrbridge, Glen More, Loch an Eileen and Dunkeld before reaching Edinburgh, where we said goodbye to Jed, who had to head back to Durham.

Day Four: I’m tired just thinking about it. Climbed Calton Hill. Little shopping stops along Princes Street on the way to lunch, which was Thai and excellent on Dalry Road. Walked the Royal Mile, popping in to St Giles’ Cathedral. And finally, the unleashing of Luke on the Salisbury Crags. I was perfectly happy with the idea of climbing, oh, a couple million metres, to Arthur’s Seat. I was less happy with struggling along the bloody Attempt Only With Sherpa route behind a gambolling Luke, along which my apparent fetish for thorny hillside plants was confirmed by my second nettle grope. Despite this, the view from the top definitely was worth the climb, and my fears about ending up as a pile of human haggis at the foot of the hills proved unfounded.

Random trip fragments:

Along the way, Luke managed to:

  • topple a stack of Kaifeng’s video tapes (Cambridge)
  • break the glass in Terence’s beloved sheep photo frame (Nottingham)
  • break Jed’s cassette tape cover (somewhere in Scotland)
  • get chocolate ice cream on the sheets and in the bedside table drawer in our B & B (Inverness)
  • break an L-torch while demonstrating how (not) to use it (a shop in Edinburgh)

Memorable exclamations:

  • Wunderbar! (Luke, uttered frequently)
  • LUKE TAY!!! (An exasperated Jed, also uttered frequently)
  • You are obviously drawn to mediocrity. (Me, on Luke’s taste in music. Also uttered frequently, usually in abject aural misery.)
  • Oooooookaaaae (Luke, attempting to sound Scottish)
  • This would all look so much better if not for the CHEE-BAI sky! (Jed, when the weather wasn’t great. I should explain for those unfamiliar with the Chinese dialect of Hokkien, that the above adjective refers to female genitalia, and is generally used as a swear word rather than an attempt at description or simile.)
  • Do you really have to wear that garish jacket? (Me, on Luke’s jacket, which is white with bits of red and black, and I think it’s awful)

Home at last:

We got back to London early Sunday morning, after a rather unpleasant 9 hour coach trip. I’d intended to have a relaxing and solitary Sunday: unpack, have breakfast, get some of the sleep that eluded me on the bus, and then go for evening mass, which always tends to be more peaceful than morning mass. Food would hopefully be avoided, after far too many Scottish meals involving chips with everything.

I certainly hadn’t planned on going a bit mad with the rest of the hall choir singing I Will Follow Him (complete with “I love him! I love him! I love him! And where he goes I’ll follow! I’ll follow! I’ll follow!”) after morning mass, playing football in Regent’s Park (I now sport a massive bruise on my shin, thanks to Father John’s knee), cooking dinner for some hallmates (tricolore fusilli with chicken, bacon, capsicum, onions, and sweetcorn, in sun dried tomato and herb sauce. Canned peaches and pears for dessert. Father John drank all the syrup.), joining the usual TV room rabble for Have I Got News For You and People Like Us, having a characteristically whimsical phone conversation with Newcastle John, finally deciding to go to bed, wandering downstairs to have some peppermint tea, finding Interview With The Vampire on in the TV room, and enthusing about Sympathy For The Devil and then the beauty of Axl Rose with Noelia and Emma.

I got to bed some time around two. I had other plans for the day, but my hall got in the way.

Scotland: Final Update

The end is near, and more’s the pity, because it’s been a good trip. We’re in an easyEverything in Edinburgh, just in from our Highlands fling. We dumped our bags in the hostel, which is a charming backpacker place where every bed has a name (mine’s Trigger, Luke’s is Trainspotter), and headed out to see Edinburgh at night, eventually ending up here.

I’m not going to go into the details right now – my hand is a little the worse for wear after accidentally fondling a nettle earlier today, and it’s been a long day. We get back to London early Sunday morning, and I’ll probably manage something then, although I then have to start preparing for the finals of my senior mooting competition, which have conveniently been arranged for the day I was meant to be flying back to Singapore, at the time I was meant to be checking in, and I was only informed of this the day before I set out on this trip. This is obviously tremendously annoying in a multitude of ways, but I’ll worry about all that when I get back to London.