Teacher of 'Weird Abundance': Portraits of the Pedagogical Tactics of Anne Sexton

Normalizing literary responses in the teacher education classroom

“…As Sumara (1996Sumara ( , 2002 has argued, literary engagement is always a creative process of inventing new subjects and new subjectivities. Other research in literary engagement has shown that readers are not able to separate neatly their identifications with literary characters from their other remembered and lived experiences (Salvio, 1999;Laidlaw, 2005).…”

“Kiss me with the hollow of your mouth” – imagining falling in love with Stense Andrea Lind-Valdan

“…When still alive, Sexton was attacked by mostly male critics who did not appreciate her transgressions of "the socially sanctioned limits prescribed for women in the postwar era," as Paula M. Salvio has formulated it. 10 In 1963 critic James Dickey, for instance, criticized Sexton for "dwelling […] insistently on the pathetic and disgusting aspects of bodily experience, as though this made the writing more real." 11 The wish for realism ascribed to Sexton, while it is at the same time being condemned, is here explicitly associated with the body.…”

Gender, Body, and Feminine Performance: Edna St. Vincent Millay's Impact on Anne Sexton

“…3 For an interesting view of Sextons's use of the body, as well as of her understanding of performativity / poetic personae in relation to her teaching career, see also Salvio (1999). negate Millay's influence on her own self-conception as both poet and performer, even when her more recent literary mentors were suggesting that this influence had to be sacrificed if Sexton wished to be considered 'major' rather than 'minor'.…”