SOURCE: "Housewife into Poet: The Apprenticeship of Anne Sexton," in New England Quarterly, Vol. 56, No. 4, December, 1983, pp. 483-503.

In the following essay, Middlebrook examines Sexton's artistic development from suburban mother to celebrated poet, focusing on the significance of her literary mentors, particularly her relationship with John Holmes.

In April 1960, Anne Sexton for the first time wrote "poet" rather than "housewife" in the "occupation" block of her income tax return. Married since 1948, mother of two daughters, Sexton had been publishing poetry for three years. The change in her status as citizen was significant for Sexton and for American literature. No poet before her had written so frankly of the female realm of family life, nor of its pathologies. And few poets, women or men, achieved success so expeditiously: nine years from drafting her first poem to being awarded the Pulitzer Prize.

Sexton's unprecedented metamorphosis from suburban housewife into major...