"Courage" appears in Sexton's collection, The Awful Rowing toward God, published in 1975. Many of the poems in this book deal with the poet's quest for meaning in the form of religious understanding.

The Bell Jar (1963), a novel by Sexton's friend and fellow tormented poet, Sylvia Plath, describes the fictional Esther Greenwood's descent into madness. Most critics see the novel as autobiographical.

Noonday Press published Robert Lowell's Life Studies and For the Union Dead in 1967 in one volume. Lowell was Sexton's teacher and is considered to be one of the leading confessional poets of the 1950s and 1960s. These two critically acclaimed volumes are his most popular.

Nicholas Mazza's 1999 text, Poetry Therapy: Interface of the Arts and Psychology, addresses the therapeutic use of creative writing including metaphor, narrative, journal writing, storytelling, bibliotherapy, and poetry. Sexton, who was in psychotherapy much of...