Petite La Fleur

Using poetry as a creative outlet is used in many therapeutic cases. Anne Sexton was an American poet that struggled with mental illness her entire life and was given the suggestion from a therapist to apply poetry to her life. “After Auschwitz” describes the narrator condemning mankind for having the potential to be wonderful, but chooses to be evil instead. Although Anne Sexton never experienced a concentration camp firsthand, she used the war- time analogy to depict her own opinion of the world. In contrast, “Wanting to Die” expresses Sexton’s personal experience with suicidal thoughts and depression. Both poems have a very similar tone, attitude, and word choice, but are intricately different in subject matter and characteristic. That being the case, most of Anne’s Sexton’s poems were criticized for being “too open” and very personal. Both “After Auschwitz” and “Wanting to Die” are emotional poems with a lot of personal attitude. For example, “Anger, as black as a hook, overtake...

Anger, as black as a hook, overtakes me. Each day, each Nazi took, at 8:00 A.M., a baby and sauteed him for breakfast in his frying pan. And death looks on with a casual eye and picks at the dirt under his fingernail. Man is evil, I say aloud. Man is a flower that should be burnt, I say aloud. Man is a bird full of mud, I say aloud. And death looks on with a casual eye and scratches his anus. Man with his small pink toes, with his miraculous fingers is not a temple but an outhouse, I say aloud. Let man never again raise his teacup. Let man never again write a book. Let man never again put on his shoe. Let man never again raise his eyes, on a soft July night. Never. Never. Never. Never. Never. I say those things aloud.

                    Doctors They work with herbs and penicillin They work with gentleness and the scalpel. They dig out the cancer, close an incision and say a prayer to the poverty of the skin. They are not Gods though they would like to be; they are only a human trying to fix up a human. Many humans die. They die like the tender, palpitating berries in November. But all along the doctors remember: First do no harm. They would kiss if it would heal. It would not heal. If the doctors cure then the sun sees it. If the doctors kill then the earth hides it. The doctors should fear arrogance more than cardiac arrest. If they are too proud, and some are, then they leave home on horseback but God returns them on foot. Clothes Put on a clean shirt before you die, some Russian said Nothing with drool, please, no egg spots, no blood, no sweat, no sperm. ...