Anne Sexton reading her poem "All My Pretty Ones"

[@CharlieW1183]

So beautifully disturbed and raw.

[@cheri238]

Exhilarating Anne Sexton was. Each word perfectly executed and an arrow thrust in meaning.

[@mansourhashemi314]

A true reflection of her society and a critique of meaninglessness of that type of life. She is an independent poet, and it is not just that she is merely compared to her peer.

[@anylkms170]

Father, this year's jinx rides us apart where you followed our mother to her cold slumber; a second shock boiling its stone to your heart, leaving me here to shuffle and disencumber you from the residence you could not afford: a gold key, your half of a woolen mill, twenty suits from Dunne's, an English Ford, the love and legal verbiage of another will, boxes of pictures of people I do not know. I touch their cardboard faces. They must go. But the eyes, as thick as wood in this album, hold me. I stop here, where a small boy waits in a ruffled dress for someone to come… for this soldier who holds his bugle like a toy or for this velvet lady who cannot smile. Is this your father's father, this Commodore in a mailman suit? My father, time meanwhile has made it unimportant who you are looking for. I'll never know what these faces are all about. I lock them into their book and throw them out. This is the yellow scrapbook that you began the year I was born; as crackling now and wrinkly as tobacco leaves: clippings where Hoover outran the Democrats, wiggling his dry finger at me and Prohibition; news where the Hindenburg went down and recent years where you went flush on war. This year, solvent but sick, you meant to marry that pretty widow in a one-month rush. But before you had that second chance, I cried on your fat shoulder. Three days later you died. These are the snapshots of marriage, stopped in places. Side by side at the rail toward Nassau now; here, with the winner's cup at the speedboat races, here, in tails at the Cotillion, you take a bow, here, by our kennel of dogs with their pink eyes, running like show-bred pigs in their chain-link pen; here, at the horseshow where my sister wins a prize; Now I fold you down, my drunkard, my navigator, my first lost keeper, to love or look at later. I hold a five-year diary that my mother kept for three years, telling all she does not say of your alcoholic tendency. You overslept, she writes. My God, father, each Christmas Day with your blood, will I drink down your glass of wine? The diary of your hurly-burly years goes to my shelf to wait for my age to pass. Only in this hoarded span will love persevere. Whether you are pretty or not, I outlive you, bend down my strange face to yours and forgive you. by Anne Sexton

[@shakesrear7850]

So much raw experience detailed in this poem. Just the first five lines alone are a doozy and those that follow no less so. abab cdcd ee rhyme scheme soft, understated, delicious words like disencumber, legal verbiage, commodore in a mail man's suit, Nassau, Cotillion, hurly burly, forgive. I imagine she wrote this in one sitting. I imagine she went to a lot, of trouble to get to record it just how she wanted it. I can't imagine how many takes it took to get the breathing, intonation, pauses just right just how she wanted it. What a beautiful poem. What a mammoth effort. All this to say, I think the music is superfluous to requirements and perhaps a little distracting.

[@JeffRebornNow]

It took her weeks to write and in a national radio broadcast aired in the early 1960s (when Americans still cared to hear culture and not a fat fascistic Rush Limpballs bellowing at them) she read for the radio audience several early versions of the poem and explained how she found its final form.

[@shakesrear7850]

@@JeffRebornNow Thank you!

[@hectorlopez8095]

I am drawn to her poetry. Love this reading.

[@franzhaas3712]

HER VOICE BLANKETS MY EARS WITH PEACE. PEACE THAT END 'S WHEN THE VIBRATIONS GROW SILENT.I BOW INTERNLY FOR MY REVERENCE FOR HER.I LEAVE KNOW WITH AMPLE ,THOUGHTS WHILE SILENCE FALLS BEHIND ME.

[@saphyickles]

I quite like the music

[@sofalvarez]

why the music :(

[@leemitchellmusic]

Sheer genius X 🙂

[@elianaleshaj3973]

Grande poetessa e grande interprete di se stessa.

[@molloyxx1]

Not a single faulty line. Perfect compression. Brilliant, musical violence. 'A sparrow cuts the tyrants throat...…...'

[@JuicyLuXy]

the music is kind of annoying…

[@yusraashraf1489]

Father, this year’s jinx rides us apart where you followed our mother to her cold slumber; a second shock boiling its stone to your heart, leaving me here to shuffle and disencumber you from the residence you could not afford: a gold key, your half of a woolen mill, twenty suits from Dunne’s, an English Ford, the love and legal verbiage of another will, boxes of pictures of people I do not know. I touch their cardboard faces. They must go. But the eyes, as thick as wood in this album, hold me. I stop here, where a small boy waits in a ruffled dress for someone to come ... for this soldier who holds his bugle like a toy or for this velvet lady who cannot smile. Is this your father’s father, this commodore in a mailman suit? My father, time meanwhile has made it unimportant who you are looking for. I’ll never know what these faces are all about. I lock them into their book and throw them out. This is the yellow scrapbook that you began the year I was born; as crackling now and wrinkly as tobacco leaves: clippings where Hoover outran the Democrats, wiggling his dry finger at me and Prohibition; news where the Hindenburg went down and recent years where you went flush on war. This year, solvent but sick, you meant to marry that pretty widow in a one-month rush. But before you had that second chance, I cried on your fat shoulder. Three days later you died. These are the snapshots of marriage, stopped in places. Side by side at the rail toward Nassau now; here, with the winner’s cup at the speedboat races, here, in tails at the Cotillion, you take a bow, here, by our kennel of dogs with their pink eyes, running like show-bred pigs in their chain-link pen; here, at the horseshow where my sister wins a prize; and here, standing like a duke among groups of men. Now I fold you down, my drunkard, my navigator, my first lost keeper, to love or look at later. I hold a five-year diary that my mother kept for three years, telling all she does not say of your alcoholic tendency. You overslept, she writes. My God, father, each Christmas Day with your blood, will I drink down your glass of wine? The diary of your hurly-burly years goes to my shelf to wait for my age to pass. Only in this hoarded span will love persevere. Whether you are pretty or not, I outlive you, bend down my strange face to yours and forgive you.

[@franzhaas3712]

I DRINK HER BOOK AND GET LOST IN HER SADNESS. WHAT WAS WHAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN , MY HART SKIPS A BEAT TO HER GREATNESS.

[@helenarodriguesdeandrade9356]

Maravilhosa

[@DavidRandallCurtis]

Thanks for this upload!

[@Ernstwyle]

Is the musical accompaniment Anne's Her Kind band?

[@danb7601]

A second shock boiling it's stone to your heart? Any idea what this reference is?

[@LuukVIII]

Love the combination of this music and her poem. It almost sounds like she purposely wrote this poem to go with it!

[@jurasicfred]

The piano accompaniment is very Beat. Certainly in tune with the times.

[@mgenthbjpafa6413]

All my ones were once pretty and then all scattered and gone,, only ugliness and despair remains like modern Stonehenge

[@allanr.sierra3985]

😭😭😭😢

[@MrFalconford]

inexplicable

[@monzermasri8141]

أتمنى مع هذه الفيديوات الصوتية أن تنزل كلمات القصيدة على الشريط ؟؟ أو على الأقل توضع كملحقة ..

[@JeffRebornNow]

The music is distracting. .

[@NYCMCK]

Anne’s poetry is devastatingly poignant, as is her reading of it, but the background piano that was added is awful, trite, unnecessary, and distracting - and I’m a professional pianist.

[@sergeilitvinovskii9554]

old and dried/fresh and unpleasant