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| Anne Sexton Photo by Elsa Dorfman |
"I'm an artist at heart and I've found my own form, which I think is poetry."
American Poet
1928 - 1974
Human beings, by nature, have a need and desire to create. For some, this desire is crushed and destroyed in school. For others, they quit because they feel they don't have any talent. Anne Sexton once wrote: "I tried painting, but I wasn't good." But she continued to paint in private. She described her poems like paintings: "I like to capture an instant. A picture is a one-second thing — it's a fragile moment in time. I try to do it with words."
Have you discovered your medium of expression? What type of artist do you desire to be? Are you an artist at heart?
Here is a poem Anne Sexton wrote in response to Vincent Van Gogh's painting, Starry Night.
The Starry Night
By Anne Sexton
"That does not keep me from having a terrible need of—shall I say the word—religion. Then I go out at night to paint the stars." Vincent Van Gogh in a letter to his brother
The town does not exist
except where one black-haired tree slips
up like a drowned woman into the hot sky.
The town is silent. The night boils with eleven stars.
Oh starry starry night! This is how
I want to die.
It moves. They are all alive.
Even the moon bulges in its orange irons
to push children, like a god, from its eye.
The old unseen serpent swallows up the stars.
Oh starry starry night! This is how
I want to die:
into that rushing beast of the night,
sucked up by that great dragon, to split
from my life with no flag,
no belly,
no cry.
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| Starry Night by Vincent Van Gogh |
