Anne Sexton’s “The Starry Night”

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 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.

Anne Sexton

It is impossible for me to write about how I feel. I realized this around the fourth grade when feelings I couldn't control keep rising in my head, reminding me that I am nothing but a shell of skin that cannot do anything. I cannot even control my own thoughts. Back then, I'd futilely try to write what I felt but only ended up with a blizzard of paper balls next to my desk and the husk of a spiral notebook. Nothing could articulate the storm going on inside of my head. Then, in the 10th grade, when a substitute told the class to find a poem and write about it, I stumbled upon this poem.

I learned about Vincent van Gogh in the fourth grade, amidst my hailstorm of feelings, and became enamored with his craziness. From his lilies to his nights to his severed ear and thirst for deadly yellow paint, I wanted to know everything about him. That was what intrigued me about this poem. But as I read more of Sexton's work, I realized she wasn't talking about the painting, she was talking about him and his feelings. Their feelings that they shared. So, for the next phase of the project, I researched her.

I share a lot in common with these two. For one, I too experience their crazy. Anne Sexton and Vincent van Gogh were both diagnosed with bipolar disorder, the main suspect in the case of what's making me feel so weird. As I delved deeper, they became more like me. They tapped into their art forms to escape the reality of what happened in their heads. They both attempted (and later succumbed to) suicide and they both felt alone for long periods of their life. Which is what led me to both. I got a B on my project, but I am a long way from finishing. I want to become an author like Anne Sexton. I want to have my pieces sell for millions like van Gogh. But most importantly, I want to live the happy life that neither of them seemed able to grasp.

This poem is more to me than just a poem. I am going to figure out how to articulate things that I feel, even if I have to use every notebook I can find to do so. This poem showed me that sometimes you have to use other people's feelings to articulate your own, something I am trying to master now.