"Maxine Kumin, a Philadelphian poet and Anne's close friend, once said about her that "she
always carried death around the way a woman carries a handbag."3 Another American poet Denise
Levertov stated in her article "Anne Sexton: Light Up the Cave" that she was suffering from a selfdestructive
impulse and was too much pre-occupied with herself. She also mentions a close link
between self-destruction and creativity. As a matter of fact, Sexton started to write poetry as
therapy when she was diagnosed with puerperal depression after giving birth to her first daughter.
The poem "Wanting to Die", first published in 1966 as a part of the collection Live or Die, is an
early fruit of her literary career. It starts as a conversation with the reader ("Since you ask...") and
continues with a description of a lifelong battle with suicidal tendencies using various metaphors.
("Death's a sad bone..") and personifications. For instance, in the third stanza she personifies
suicide by trying to compare it to the work of a carpenter. What is questioned here is not the mere
fact of wanting to die but the means, i.e. how to die:
3 Lawson, Helen. The Woman behind Anne Sexton's Poetry, 2008.
4
"But suicides have a special language.
Like carpenters they want to know which tools.
They never ask why build."4
The tone of the poem is very dark, heavy, and depressing. While the Plath's "Lady Lazarus"
speaks of death almost in a glamorous way, presenting it as a performance that should be praised
("I do it exceptionally well..."), "Wanting to Die" is more about the feeling of resignation. It is
actually a melancholic cry of someone who is deeply unhappy, not satisfied with life no matter what
it offers and who hopes that suicide will help to ease the inner pain. Suicide is understood here as
an escape from life which seems painful and uneasy and the desire to kill herself becomes almost as
strong as drug addiction."

Práce obsahuje obrázky o rozsahu cca půl strany.