Wednesday 20 May 2020

Alexa Doran : part three

When you require renewal is there a particular poem you return to?

I turn to Anne Sexton’s “Self in 1958’ for renewal. Life is so damn harrowing it seems impossible to approach without humor, and this poem is a perfect pairing of existential dread and inward chuckle. Sexton’s coy “They think I am me!” always makes me smile as it touches on the impossible distance that we are all faced with while also making you feel like you are in on a big secret. She talks about the pressure to “swing the doors open in wholesome disorder” and then responds with a literary fuck you. The poem always lets me feel again when everything else in me has turned off.

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