Harriet

Posts Tagged ‘Material Girl’

Travis Nichols

Of Love and Chain Letters (Borderline Ballads)

anne-sexton

madonna_chains_narrowweb__300x4210

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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IN THIS ISSUE: March 2010

Poetry Magazine

A selection of new work from Dorothea Grossman; new poems by Lavinia Greenlaw, David Yezzi, A.E. Stallings, Gerald Stern, and Dan Gerber; translations of Carlo Betocchi, and Mahmoud Darwish; an Editorial on Ruth Lilly; an exchange between Ilya Kaminsky and Adam Kirsch; an essay by Chen Li; and a review by Daisy Fried.

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CHICAGO EVENTS

Poetry Off the Shelf: David Baker

Poetry Off the Shelf: David Baker Fri, March 26th, 6:00 PM
Open Books
213 West Institute Place
Free admission

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