25 (non-Bravo) real life housewives who are pretty badass

Anne Sexton

Anne Sexton is one of the greatest poets you’ve probably never heard of. She had the unfortunate luck to come of age and into her talents in the American midcentury, and the 1950s were unkind to her tender heart. She married her husband at the young age of 19, and quickly settled into domestic life, which she found stifling and oppressive.

Suffering from postpartum depression, she was institutionalized several times, and her therapist encouraged her to write as a cathartic and healing process. And boy, did she. Sexton would often churn out two to three sonnets a day, meditating on themes such as domesticity, the female experience, and her place in the world. She also explored her own mental illness in her first book, To Bedlam and Part Way Back, and she became one of the foremost confessional poets of her day, along with Sylvia Plath.

She was extremely popular in her own time, writing openly about taboo topics such as menstruation, abortion, masturbation, incest, adultery and drug addiction. Because she was so bold in her truth-telling, she was considered controversial and dangerous, despite her past as a model and finishing school student.

Sexton never could get a handle on her own mental illness, and she took her own life at 49. Today, her legacy is that of a trailblazer and hallmark for women’s literature. Her poetry has found its way into the work of The Smiths, Morrissey and Peter Gabriel.