October 4, 1974: The Suicide of Anne Sexton

October 4, 1974: Anne Sexton, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, succeeds in what is not her first suicide attempt, by carbon monoxide poisoning, at her home in the Boston suburbs. She was 45.

Anne Gray Sexton was born on November 9, 1928, outside Boston in Newton, Massachusetts. Her parents were often abusive. For a time, she modeled for Boston's Hart Agency. On August 16, 1948, she married Alfred Muller Sexton II, and they remained together until 1973. She had 2 daughters, Linda in 1953, and Joyce in 1955.

After each birth, she suffered from postpartum depression, in addition to the bipolar disorder that she probably already had. Shortly after Joyce's birth, she had her first mental breakdown  and was admitted to a neuropsychiatric hospital. She continued to suffer with her mental health for the remainder of her life.

She attended her 1st poetry seminar in 1957, and in 1958, she met Sylvia Plath at a seminar run by Robert Lowell. By 1959, magazines were publishing her poems. Lowell observed that Sexton and Plath were good for each other, but Plath was also mentally ill, and her suicide in 1963 deeply affected her. She wrote, "Sylvia's death disturbs me. Makes me want it too. She took something that was mine, that death was mine! Of course it was hers too. But we both swore off it, the way you swear off smoking."

Unlike Plath, Sexton was widely acclaimed in her own lifetime. She won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1967, for her book Live or Die. Her poetry often drew on her experiences with mental illness, as well as aspects of her personal life. She was known for blending fairy tales, mythology, and religious imagery with autobiographical themes. It was not enough, as, with her 8th poetry collection, The Awful Rowing Toward God, being prepared for publication, she took her own life on October 4, 1974.

Her daughter, Linda Gray Sexton, also became a writer. Of her 2011 book Half in Love: Surviving the Legacy of Suicide, Erica Jong wrote, "Linda Sexton's beautiful book is a cry for health and sanity. It will bring hope and understanding because it explains the way suicide blights families from generation to generation."

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October 7, 1974 was a Friday. Major League Baseball was between its regular season and its Playoffs. Football was in midweek. The NHL and WHA seasons started a week later. And the NBA and ABA seasons started 2 weeks later. So there were no scores on this historic day.