Her Kind

although your fear is anyone’s fear,
like an invisible veil between us all…
and sometimes in private…
my face, your face. - Anne Sexton’s confessional poetry

Anne would saunter to the podium, light a cigarette, kick off her shoes, and in a throaty voice say, “I’m going to read a poem that tells you what kind of poet I am, what kind of woman I am, so if you don’t like it, you can leave.”

Then she would launch into her signature poem, “Her Kind”:

“I have gone out, a possessed witch… A woman like that is misunderstood… I have been her kind.”

Selection: Anne Sexton: A Biography, by Diane Wood Middlebrook

Me: If you are a woman, you have been- at one time in your life or another- “her kind.”