Sexton's Kind

         Most of the older fantasy poems I share are primarily about telling a story.  The more modern poems on themes of mythology, fantasy, and fairy tale tend to be about using fantasy images and references to explore the self, society, and so on.  Today I want to share a famous poem by Anne Sexton (U.S.A., 1928-1974), who was known for her confessional poetry, which she used in part to explore her own mental illness and troubled personal relationships.  No one would call her a fantasy poet, but in this poem she calls on the mythology of witches.  Because the poem is relatively recent (1960) and not in the public domain, I’m excerpting only the first verse, but I strongly encourage you to read the entire poem (3 verses) at Poetry Foundation.

Her Kind

I have gone out, a possessed witch,   

haunting the black air, braver at night;   

dreaming evil, I have done my hitch   

over the plain houses, light by light:   

lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.   

A woman like that is not a woman, quite.   

I have been her kind.

        The imagery throughout the poem is powerful, precise, and both shocking and moving.  This makes an excellent illustration of how fantasy can be used for far more than simply telling a story with magic in it.  It can evoke both the darkest and brightest corners of our hearts, it can help us wrestle with the limits of logic and science, and it can open us to new ways of considering issues we had thought we knew.  You can read articles analyzing this poem, but I think it’s most powerful if you just let those fantasy images and emotions move you; if you spend too much time trying to assign specific meanings to specific words and phrases you may be missing the point, and you’re almost certainly missing the magic.

[Picture: Wood engraving from Compendium Maleficarum by Francesco Maria Guazza, 1608 (Image from Wikimedia Commons);

Excerpt from Her Kind by Anne Sexton, from To Bedlam and Part Way Back, 1960 (from Poetry Foundation).]