Margaret Ray:
The Sharpener is a reader-supported newsletter. If you get value from these newsletters and want to support my work I encourage you to take out a paid subscription.
Anne Sexton:
Robert Lowell:
About Sean SingerÂ
Sean Singer Editorial Services
Subscribe to The Sharpener
The paid-subscriber version of The Sharpener includes weekly installments of craft pieces, approaches to writing problems, topics in contemporary publishing for writers, and biographical features on poets I consider important.
My reading sensibility stopped reading Sexton early on in the poem. Claiming experience of another identity is not OK. We do not say "The Native American in me" or "the Black in me" or the "Latina in me" unless we have that identify and experience.
I appreciate Ray's tone and Lowell's representation of a relationship transformed.