

The New York Post reported yesterday that the Madonna once called on Anne Sexton’s poem “Love Song” to justify her love of a former bodyguard, Jim Albright.
“In a fax dated Dec. 24, 1993, Madonna wrote to Albright: ‘I was the girl of the love letter/ the girl full of talk of dreams and destination . . . the one with her eyes half under the covers/ with her large gun-metal blue eyes/ with the thick vein in the crook of her neck.’ Sexton’s poem read: ‘I was the girl of the chain letter/ the girl full of talk of coffins and keyholes . . . the one with her eyes half under her coat/ with her large gun-metal blue eyes/ with the thin vein at the bend of her neck.’
The love fax (!!!) is one of many items up for auction at Gotta Have It Collectibles this week, though presumably the only one related to Anne Sexton (I do envision “Ballad of the Lonely Masturbator” scribbled on a Vogue-era cone bra uncovered one day). Sexton’s name has come up with unexpected frequency already this summer, most notably when Ange Mlinko compared her to Frederick Seidel in The Nation.
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