How is Anne Sexton's poetry controversial?

Question

I'm writing my junior thesis on her and need a good controversial topic about her poetry. Sources and both sides of the controversy would be great please!

Answer 1

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Sorry but the question (as it stands) is a horrific one. There is only one way that a certain person's total poetic output can be controversial, and that's when it's uniformly bad!

On the other hand, some (a few) of her poems could be controversial but I suspect, that, given her fairly high standing, that she has written some pretty admirable ones as well.

Reading up on her life in wikipedia, it's easy to point out controversial elements in her life, but that's a different story ... Van Gogh's life was very controversial, and his paintings are only the most expensive in the world!

So the poet and her poems are different things.

Controversy in poetry is also quite different to other types of controversy. In many ways poems have to challenge conventions to some extent. The idea of a poet's mind going "soft", being uncontroverisal and suddenly accepting all society's norms is a hazard, not a accomplishment!