The year she eloped from her Boston home, Anne Sexton started a scrapbook. In it she placed a faded color photograph of herself and Kayo, her betrothed, lounging on beach chairs with the caption "us," along with the taped-in key to their Virginia Beach hotel room. (This is the same key featured on the cover of Scrapbooks: An American History.) She saved, too, the forgiving telegram from her loving parents: "Two such sweet young people should make a fine combination." Notes the Washington Post in a recent review, "the young bride pastes in laundry lists, gin rummy tallies, her husband's apology note after their first fight. She also starts to write poetry: romantic rhyming couplets and letters, ripped from a magazine, that spell "Bleat, Bleat." Some years later, Sexton "found fame as a poet, her marriage imploded in abuse and infidelity, and she committed suicide."

02.12.09     Comments (0)     digg | del.ic.io.us | reddit