Semansky has published widely in the field of twentieth-century poetry and culture. In the following essay, he considers the role "Courage" plays in the mythology of Anne Sexton's life.

Coming as it does in the middle of Sexton's collection The Awful Rowing Toward God, "Courage" is a fantasy of Sexton's own life and her future death. As such, it is part of the poet's personal mythology of self, the way in which she would have others think of her. For many confessional poets, such as Robert Lowell, John Berryman, and Sylvia Plath, the stories they tell about themselves become, in effect, the stories they come to believe. They construct personal mythologies of self, mining their own mental anguish for material. The psychoanalysis that these poets participated in helped them both to unearth and articulate many of their poetic themes. Hence, it is almost impossible to write about...