The Starry Night

That does not keep me from having a terrible need og- shall I say the word-religion. Then I go out at night to paint the stars. -Vincent Van Gogh in a letter to his brother

BY ANNE SEXTON

The town does not exist
except where one black-haired tree slips
up like a drowned woman into the hot sky.
The town is silent. The night boils with eleven stars.
Oh starry starry night! This is how
I want to die.

It moves. They are all alive.
Even the moon bulges in its orange irons
 to push children, like a God, from its eye.
The old unseen serpent swallows up the stars.
OH starry starry night! This is how
I want to die:

into that rushing beast of the night,
sucked upby the dragon, to split
from my life with no flag,
no belly,
no cry.

This is a beautifully written poem with similes and metaphors about Van Gogh's painting: The Starry Night. What I like about this poem are the small details that relate you to her life. It shows you about her writing, her feelings, and her opinions. This poem is such a great description of the painting, and you can tell that Anne has a passion for it. But when i started reading this poem, I thought about suicide. Ramon and I made inferences about how she could be really depressed, and it turns out, we were right! And I think that many things in this poem represent that big idea. I thought about this during the lines, "this is how I want to die", "sucked up by that great dragon", and "to split from my life with no flag". For the first qoute, I think she refers back to the first line of her poem, or open thoughts, which is "The town does not exist". To me, the first line means that the town is something impossible. I think she means being too perfect-non-existent. Too quiet- non-existent especially if you live in the city, well, Brooklyn.  And a simple, beatiful view of the stars, and the moon, and the mountains in the back- That, I can count as a fifty percent chance of being existent. For the second quote, I think of the dragon beaing LIFE, and being sucked in by life, meaning that she can't take it anymore. That leads me to another inference Ramon and I had about Anne being depressed, and how it seemed Van-Gogh was depressed-being in an asylum, and how she later on commited suicide made me think that she could really relate to him, and thinking about how she felt like she didn't belong- which is what I read in a book when you are depressed, and how their problems were just simply turned into 1 whole, by this piece of art. And for the third qoute, i think about no forgiveness in the world, and i visualize a flag being taken down after a war, with no victory. Then a picture the flag being all rugged on the ground, and muddy, and stepped on, during a heavy rain. But that's just me. But to leave your life in a way God doesn't want, well, That's just you. And well, this is just my interpretation. There are many other that we came up with in class.