Anne Sexton met Philip Legler, an English professor, after she gave a reading at Sweet Briar College. Legler ended up carrying Sexton to her motel because she had become disoriented after taking “pills.” Head over heels, he wrote her a love letter that evening, and checked himself into a psychiatric hospital in Richmond the following morning. Three years later, having heard of her impending divorce from Alfred “Kayo” Sexton, Legler invited her to give a reading at Northern Michigan University, where Sexton was teaching at the time. That July they spent a week together in Michigan where Sexton, too, fell deeply in love. Their affair continued until Legler broke it off in September 1973. About a year later, Sexton committed suicide.
[14 Black Oak Road]
May 19th, 1970
Dear Phil Baby,
I will have to burn your letter as incriminating evidence… but that’s not the point. Your letter is full of love and I wish I could keep it. I do know you love me more than most people do. Perhaps my husband more because he had to live with me. Sometimes I think he deserves an award for putting up with me. Other times I think he’s pretty lucky. Lucky because I’m quite naturally a loving, affectionate person. But then, even that can get to be a bore.
I’m sorry I put your hand in a tin box. God, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to really. You know I’ve never slept with anyone on a reading…never a one-night stand…never something so casual or lighthearted. I’m just not the type. I’m a pretty faithful type when you come right down to it. Sleeping with someone is almost like marrying them. It takes time and thought. If you lived in Boston or I lived where the lovely fog horns are…but even then I’m not sure. Just that it wasn’t possible that time. I’ve got to be true to myself as well as to you. Further, I think I’m so busy fighting the suicide demons that I have little time for love. You saw how I go to sleep—not sleep at all. You said it[:] “death touched me.” I hope to hell my present shrink can help me work this out before it’s too late.
I zapped into your life and I’m so glad I did. I’ll never really zap out. Put me there, friend, friend, forever.
…next day…
I’ve been out killing dandelions. It’s a lovely spring day. I think I’ll go out into [it] again. The manager (Bob) of “Her Kind” (my rock group) is coming over for lunch, or rather bringing the lunch. I will sit in the shade (thorazine makes me allergic to the sun) and he will sit in the sun. How I miss that!
I finished that fairy tale (“The Maiden Without Hands”) last week and am thinking about doing Hansel and Gretel. My transformations of the Brothers Grimm are full of food images but what could be more directly food than cooking the kids and finally the wicked lady. Smack in the oven like a roast lamb.
Readings are accumulating for next year. I’ll do a few of them I hope. Enough to pull in some dough to help out but not enough to drain me too much. I find them very hard to do… particularly those informal classes whereas they say I can do anything I want…Mostly I don’t want. That’s the trouble. But you, Phil, make it easy on me and helped in every way. I thank you. That’s still the nicest Holiday Inn I ever stayed in. And I can remember those ghost-like fog horns. I remember too you tucking me in bed and patting my head so gently. I don’t forget! Love to you, my dear,
Annie Babe
From Hell Hath No Fury: Women’s Letters From the End of the Affair. Edited by Anna Holmes. Carroll & Graf Publishers: New York (2002) pp. 198-201.
FURTHER READING
Read a letter penned by Sexton to her daughter, anticipating her death and absence from Linda’s life.
Read Sexton’s For My Lover, Returning to His Wife.