Anne Sexton and The Furry Overshoes

First of all I suggest listening to Anne Sexton read The Fury of Overshoes herself in the video directly below. Her voice and attitude go along perfectly with the poem's tone.

            The Fury of Overshoes describes the lack of control children feel growing up.  Sexton uses these childhood images as an analogy to the disarrayed emotions Sexton felt herself. Sexton’s writing often deals with death, suicide, and depression. Having some knowledge of Sexton really helps understand the mood she is trying to convey.  These two candid videos to your right really shed light onto essence of Anne Sexton.

There is a lack of traditional order in  the language and rhythm used in this poem. Most lines are very short and abrupt yet have no punctuation. Much like Paston’s Love Poem,  there is a feeling that the author has no control over the overall movement of the poem. But unlike Love Poem, this is not an enjoyable loss of control. She uses words that are  non-traditionally poetic, or even sinister, to end many of these lines. For Example:

Meat, tears, mud, big fish, wolf, shadow, night, give up, thumb, overshoes, drink...

Most of these words sounded even more usual because the lines ended before a phrase was completed. “Under your bed sat the wolf” sounds more natural than “Under your bed” pause “sat the wolf”.  It gives the poem a eerie and unnatural feeling. Also in lines 28-30 and 38 Sexton slipped in reference to nightlife and drinking. This shows that Sexton wanted us to connect this childlike lack of control with a loss of sanity in adulthood.

Works Cited:

     Booth, Alison, and Kelly J. Mays. The Norton Introduction to Literature. 10thth ed. New York, London:  W. W. Norton and Company, 2011. 448-449. Print.