The Massachusetts Poetry Festival 2015

New work on the Sexton and Plath archives reveal how much heartbreak played a part in the work, as well as the lives, of these gifted poets. I’ll be sharing some of this new research. Then I’ll look closely at the poetry of Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath and talk about how these remarkable poets transformed heartbreak into art. Author of “With Robert Lowell and His Circle: Plath, Sexton, Bishop, Kunitz and Others,” I knew both Sexton and Plath personally, saw drafts of their poems as they were writing them, and was able to observe the process by which they shaped their pain into art. Using handouts, I will talk about some of the factors that might shape art, in this case poetry.