The Poetic Monster in Mary Oliver and Anne Sexton

Abstract

The poetic practices of Mary Oliver and Anne Sexton are subversive and profane because they give unexpected uses to bodies, objects, and the words that relate to them. Oliver gives a place to the minor and to women, because even though we feel alone, we are already under the shelter of the world, reconciling love with animality. Sexton positions our shame and discomfort, and in her lyrics, she asserts that it is necessary to talk about the obligatory goodbyes in women. In both, poetry liberates and resists the boxing in, the ossification of acting like a woman should; it also expresses what can be and create from a monstrous form. Art as a power to become something else, as a way to reveal the animal, the monster.