“I WILL DO IT”: Kumin to Sexton, 9 Sept. 1963, Sexton Papers.
“gemlike”: Ibid.
“Our good critical instincts”: Sexton to Kumin, 29 Sept. 1963, Kumin Papers.
“It was with the words”: Sexton to Kumin, 4 Oct. 1963, Kumin Papers.
“of self hate”: Sexton to Kumin, 6 Oct. 1963, Kumin Papers.
It received mixed reviews: Millicent Bell, “Newton Poet’s Novel Offers Moving Story,” Boston Globe, 12 April 1965, 12; Irvin Gold, “First Novel Falls Short,” Los Angeles Times, 4 April 1965, N15.
“I think about you fondly”: Cowley to Olsen, 22 Jan. 1963, Olsen Papers.
“I have to ask”: Cowley to Olsen, 15 April 1963, Olsen Papers.
“You should do”: Cowley to Olsen, 4 Sept. 1963, Olsen Papers.
her own rejuvenation: Cowley to Olsen, 21 May 1963, Olsen Papers.
$2,500 to fund a summer: Reid, Tillie Olsen, 231.
“no worry about paying back”: Ibid., 233.
Sam Lawrence: Ibid., 234–35.
“This most harmful”: Tillie Olsen, “Silences: When Writers Don’t Write,” Harper’s, Oct. 1965, 161.
Sexton, who had loved: Sexton to Olsen, 2 Oct. 1963, Sexton Papers.
“My show has already earned”: Swan to Smith, 4 Nov. 1963, Institute Archives.
“I can barely cross”: Sexton to Miller, 5 Aug. 1963, in Self-Portrait in Letters, 172.
“I’m terrified”: Herbert A. Kenny, “Commitment Necessary to Be a Poet,” 19 May 1963, Boston Globe, B16.
“I wish I were back”: Sexton to Snodgrass, May 1963, in Self-Portrait in Letters, 164.
“I shall never forget”: Sexton to Lowell, 6 June 1963, in Self-Portrait in Letters, 170.
CHAPTER 14: We Are All Going to Make It
“execution date”: Sexton to Brother Dennis Farrell, in Self-Portrait in Letters, 170.
“All I have to say”: Sexton to Kumin, 21 Aug. 1963, Kumin Papers.
“touched all the way”: Kumin to Sexton, 23 Aug. 1963, Sexton Papers.
Sexton left for her year: Sexton to Kumin, “Sunday, 3:00 PM,” Kumin Papers.
“I’m lonely as hell”: Sexton to Kumin, 6 Oct. 1963, Kumin Papers.
“You know whats wrong”: Anne Sexton to Maxine Kumin, 9 October 1963, Sexton Papers.
“the world’s loveliest city”: Quoted in Charles Poore, “Books of the Times,” New York Times, 27 Nov. 1956.
She even started to style: Sexton to Kumin, 9 Oct. 1963, Kumin Papers.
“can you imagine me”: Sexton to Kumin, 30 Aug. 1963, Kumin Papers.
“God, how awful it is”: Sexton to Kumin, 3 Oct. 1963, Kumin Papers.
“true nature of the poet”: Sexton to Kumin, 13 Sept. 1963, Kumin Papers.
“Oh Max, how I miss”: Sexton to Kumin, 30 Aug. 1963, Kumin Papers.
“beg me…to be his”: Sexton to Kumin, Oct 17 1963, Kumin Papers.
“Oh Maxine, all this chat”: Sexton to Kumin, 9 Oct. 1963, Kumin Papers.
“nothing changes”: Kumin to Sexton, 23 Aug. and 4 Sept. 1963, Sexton Papers.
“If John could not separate us”: Sexton to Kumin, 29 Sept. 1963, Kumin Papers.
“I had not realized”: Kumin to Sexton, 23 Aug. 1963, Sexton Papers.
“Some people have adventures”: Kumin to Sexton, 4 Sept. 1963, Sexton Papers.
“downing crème de cacao”: Kumin to Sexton, 3 Oct. 1963, Sexton Papers.
“periodically drop everything”: Katie Roiphe, Uncommon Arrangements: Seven Marriages in Literary London, 1910–1939 (London: Virago, 2009), 75.
“friendship is every bit”: Ibid.
“touching deep friendship”: Kumin to Sexton, 9 Sept. 1963, Sexton Papers.
Sexton was the stormy: My analysis of their relationship is in part informed by an interview conducted with Linda Gray Sexton, 12 February 2019.
“There is a world of water”: Maxine Kumin, “September 1,” Kumin Papers.
“Max, the thread is bare”: Sexton to Kumin, “October something” 1963, Kumin Papers.
“Oh Maxine”: Sexton to Kumin, 12 Oct. 1963, Kumin Papers.
“the first time in my life”: Quoted in Reid, Tillie Olsen, 232.
“We thought anyhow”: Sexton to Olsen, 2 Oct. 1965, Sexton Papers.
“I sometimes get so longing”: Olsen to Kumin, birthday note, n.d., Kumin Papers.
“Sometimes perhaps you”: Olsen to Kumin, 15 May [n.d.], Kumin Papers.
“bemused”: Sexton to Olsen, 2 Oct. 1965, Sexton Papers.
“done for”: Quoted in Reid, Tillie Olsen, 233.
“What I need is a mother”: Sexton to Annie Wilder, in Self-Portrait in Letters, 255.
The house was too big: Sexton to Olsen, n.d. [around Valentine’s Day], Sexton Papers.
Her mental health deteriorated: Sexton to Olsen, 2 Oct. 1965, Sexton Papers.
“The g.d. tranquilizers”: Sexton to Olsen, 1965, Sexton Papers.
“as fragile as a”: Sexton to Olsen, presumably early Jan. 1966, Sexton Papers.
as relevant to her life: Sexton to Olsen, 2 Oct. 1965, Sexton Papers.
“It would be hard”: James Dickey, review of All My Pretty Ones, by Anne Sexton, New York Times Book Review, 28 April 1963.
she carried a copy: Linda Gray Sexton, Searching for Mercy Street, 102.
These were the times: Linda Gray Sexton, interview by author, 12 Feb. 2019.
“it’s the same old crowd”: Sexton, “Flee on Your Donkey,” in Collected Poems, 97–105.
“For the very first time”: Sexton to Olsen, 17 or 18 May 1965, Olsen Papers.
“short and funny”: Kathie Olsen, email to author, 20 Jan. 2018.
“I’m in love with you already”: See Middlebrook, Anne Sexton, 213.
“the baby on the platter”: Sexton, “Live,” in Complete Poems, 167.
“Even so”: Ibid.
“I say Live”: Ibid., 170.
“I have a feeling”: Sexton to Degener, in Self-Portrait in Letters, 287.
“with all due apologies”: Sexton, “Author’s Note,” in Complete Poems, 94.
“They’ve sent me”: Sexton, “Author’s Note,” in Complete Poems.
“I’ve outgrown that”: Oral history interview with Swan.
By March 1965: Swan to Connie Smith, 11 March 1965, Institute Archives.
The collection had actually been inspired: Linda Gray Sexton, interview by author.
“most realized tone”: Helen Vendler, “Malevolent Flippancy,” New Republic, 11 Nov. 1981.
“No matter what life”: Anne Sexton, Transformations (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1971), 3.
“You always read about it”: Ibid., 53–54.
A poem based on the fairy tale: Joanna Fink, interview by author, 9 Feb. 2019.
“more than I trust myself”: Swan, “Reminiscence,” 85.
“I did it because of friendship”: Oral history interview with Swan.
“Generous greeting”: Quoted in Middlebrook, Anne Sexton, 272.
For the rest of her life: Ibid.
“Your poems are sensitive”: Sexton to Dorianne Goetz, in Self-Portrait in Letters, 263.
“Mother was generous”: Linda Gray Sexton, Searching for Mercy Street, 96-97.
“make not so alone”: Sexton to Olsen, 2 Oct. 1965, Sexton Papers.
CHAPTER 15: Hurt Wild Baffled Angry
“more like a chic-career woman”: Dolores Alexander, “NOW May Use Sit-Ins, Pickets to Get Equality,” Newsday, 25 Nov. 1966, 2B.
“We will take strong steps”: Lisa Hammel, “They Meet in Victorian Parlor to Demand ‘True Equality’ NOW,” New York Times, 22 Nov. 1966, 44.
“had fac
ed both kinds”: Alexander, “NOW May Use Sit-Ins, Pickets to Get Equality,” 2B.
“ingenious new methods”: Ibid.
“put your bodies”: Mario Savio, “Sit-in Address on the Steps of Sproul Hall” (speech, Free Speech Rally, University of California, Berkeley, 2 Dec. 1964).
Kumin didn’t start: Daniel Kumin, interview by author, 15 Jan. 2019.
“self-liberated and pre-liberated”: Joanna Fink, interview by author, 9 Feb. 2019.
“never applied the word”: Linda Gray Sexton, Searching for Mercy Street, 98.
“I hate the way”: Showalter and Smith, “Nurturing Relationship,” 129.
“into your redeeming”: Sexton, Complete Poems, 70–71.
“intensely involved”: Olsen to Sexton, [n.d., presumably 1965], Sexton Papers.
“guess about the man”: Sexton, “Unknown Girl in the Maternity Ward,” in Complete Poems, 24.
“You need what you merit”: Olsen to Kumin, n.d., Kumin Papers.
“last minute, of course”: Olsen to Sexton, [n.d., presumably 1965], Sexton Papers.
“The suburb of Uxport”: Maxine Kumin, The Passions of Uxport: A Novel (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1975), 19.
“Boston version”: Fortunata Caliri, “Boston Version of Peyton Place,” Boston Globe, 23 April 1968, 3.3.
“make its way”: Olsen to M. S. Wyeth, 25 Feb. 1968, Kumin Papers.
“I guess I feel pretty sad”: Kumin to Olsen, 12 March 1968, Kumin Papers.
“JUST HOME YOUR LETTER”: Olsen to Kumin, telegram, n.d., Kumin Papers.
“when I think of how mysterious”: Olsen to Kumin, n.d., Kumin Papers.
“Third hand I hear”: Olsen to Kumin, second n.d. letter, Kumin Papers.
“I think I know what happened”: Ibid.
“I have never before”: Kumin to Olsen, 30 April 1968, Kumin Papers.
“Meanwhile, Black Power”: Kumin, Passions of Uxport, 175.
“was a nail biter”: Ibid., 8.
“Nervous breakdown”: Ibid., 9.
“Hallie, rise, wash out”: Ibid., 60.
“snugger than sisters”: Ibid., 45.
“They reinforced each other”: Ibid., 70–71.
“I love you”: Olsen to Kumin, n.d., Kumin Papers.
A visiting nurse: Middlebrook, Anne Sexton, 269.
“get into that Hallie-Sukey talk”: Olsen to Kumin, n.d., Kumin Papers.
“I was so shocked”: Sexton to Olsen, 21 July 1970, Sexton Papers.
“the weakest”: “Review of The Abduction,” Kirkus Reviews, 22 Sept. 1971.
“devoted reader”: Sexton to Olsen, 21 July 1970, Sexton Papers.
“a genius”: Sexton to Olsen, Nov. 1961, Sexton Papers.
“Anne—cherished and estranged”: Olsen to Sexton, 7 Oct. [n.d.], Sexton Papers.
“This has been a ghastly year”: Kumin to Olsen, 30 April 1968, Kumin Papers.
“My pants are pulled down”: Olsen to Sexton, Feb. 1968, Sexton Papers.
“I take them”: Olsen to Kumin, n.d., Kumin Papers.
CHAPTER 16: There’s Nothing Wrong with Privilege, Except That Everybody Doesn’t Have It
“The center was not holding”: Joan Didion, “Slouching Towards Bethlehem,” Saturday Evening Post, 23 Sept. 1967.
“DESIST IMMEDIATELY”: Andrea Long Chu, “On Liking Women,” n+1, no. 30: Motherland (Winter 2018), nplusonemag.com.
“the process by which”: Rosen, World Split Open, 197.
“the movement was ravaged”: Alice Echols, Daring to Be Bad: Radical Feminism in America, 1967–1975 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2019), 202.
“struggling towards a common goal”: Quoted in ibid., 217.
“The Eruption of Difference”: Ibid., 203.
A 1971 report: Florence Howe, “A Report on Women and the Profession,” College English 32, no. 8 (May 1971): 848.
“politically volatile”: “CSWP Is Born,” cdn.knightlab.com.
“Elizabeth Cady Stanton”: Florence Howe Biography, www.florencehowe.com.
“finally freed herself”: Howe, “Report on Women and the Profession,” 849.
women made up 80 percent: “VFA Honors the Founder of the Feminist Press, Florence Howe,” Veteran Feminists of America, archive.constantcontact.com.
only a one-in-nine: Howe, “Report on Women and the Profession,” 848.
In the academic year: National Center for Education Statistics, https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d10/tables/dt10_267.asp.
She received an invitation: The description of the Amherst appointment is from Reid, Tillie Olsen, 241–42.
Instead of gabbing with the sex workers: Sex worker anecdote from Kathie Olsen, interview by author; jogging from Reid, Tillie Olsen, 245.
At Amherst College, Olsen taught: Reid, Tillie Olsen, 246.
“really heightened her understanding”: “The Tillie Olsen Project,” Amherst College, www.amherst.edu.
“There’s nothing wrong”: Ibid.
“Literature of Poverty”: Tillie Olsen, Syllabus for “Literature of Poverty, Oppression, Revolution, and the Struggle for Freedom,” 1969, Olsen Papers.
“influential”: “Tillie Olsen Project.”
twenty-one English courses: Elaine Showalter, “Women and the Literary Curriculum,” College English 32, no. 8 (May 1971): 856.
“Can we wonder”: Ibid., 857.
“consciousness”: “VFA Honors the Founder of the Feminist Press, Florence Howe.”
“Isolated. Cabin’d, cribb’d, confin’d”: Ibid., 7–8.
“You who teach”: Ibid., 16.
Olsen loved love: Reid, Tillie Olsen, 221, 250.
“The greatness of literature”: Olsen, “Women Who Are Writers,” 17.
“Tillie Appleseed”: Quoted in Reid, Tillie Olsen, 263.
“It may be comforting”: Margaret Atwood, “Obstacle Course,” New York Times, 30 July 1978, 27.
“Silences changed what we read”: Shelley Fisher Fishkin, “Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic: The Lessons Silences Has Taught Us,” introduction to Olsen, Silences, xii.
“She was gone a lot”: Julie Olsen Edwards, interview by author.
“damn proud”: Ibid.
CHAPTER 17: Springs of Creativity
Pineda especially: Nina Tovish, interview by author, 23 June 2016.
“all-white community”: Tillie Olsen, “Two Years,” Institute seminar, 8 May 1964, Radcliffe College Archives Sound Recordings.
the percentage of black students: Marcia G. Synnott, “The Changing ‘Harvard Student’: Ethnicity, Race, and Gender,” in Yards and Gates: Gender in Harvard and Radcliffe History, ed. Laurel Thatcher Ulrich (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 203.
Alice Walker: In its early years, the Institute did not record the race of its fellows, though it did record their marital status, number of children, and degrees.
“It’s very intimidating”: Evelyn C. White, Alice Walker: A Life (New York: Norton, 2006), 284.
“a love story”: Quoted in ibid., 208.
The following March: Ibid., 217–18.
“renewed fellowship”: Quoted in ibid., 286.
“Though it’s often lonely”: Sara Sanborn, “A Woman’s Place,” Harvard Bulletin, June 1972, 29, Institute Archives.
“As far as many Blacks”: Giddings, When and Where I Enter, 299.
“What do black women feel”: Toni Morrison, “What the Black Woman Thinks About Women’s Lib,” New York Times, 22 Aug. 1971.
“a family quarrel”: Ibid.
“Angela Davis has nothing”: This exchange is quoted in Peniel E. Joseph, The Black Power Movement: Rethinking the Civil Rights–Black Power Era (New York: Routledge, 2006), 141.
“politically barefoot”: Giddings, When and Where I Enter, 318.
“sexual differentiation”: Toni Cade, “On the Issue of Roles,” in The Black Woman, ed. Toni Cade (New York: New American Library, 1970), 101.
“double jeopardy”: Frances Beale, “Double Jeopardy: To Be Black and Female,” in Cade, Black Woman.
“If you really examine”: Quoted in White, Alice Walker, 217.
“black woman who cannot lie”: Marge Piercy, review of Meridian, by Alice Walker, New York Times, 23 May 1976.
Walker developed assignments: White, Alice Walker, 224.
“unearthed a part of our history”: Ibid., 222.
In the process of researching: Alice Walker, “Saving the Life That Is Your Own,” in In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist Prose (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983), 10.
“Zora, who had collected”: Ibid., 12.
Walker later claimed: White, Alice Walker, 249.
Throughout the trip: Alice Walker, “Looking for Zora,” in In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens, 94–95.
In one retelling: Ibid., 105.
“all purpose”: Aida Kabatznick Press, “The Black Experience at Harvard,” Radcliffe Quarterly, June 1973, 7.
“Judging by white”: Ibid., 8.
“unreal”: Ibid., 10.
“For these grandmothers”: Walker, In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens, 233.
“It is not so much”: Ibid., 237.
“womanist is to feminist”: Ibid., xii.
“sort of breakdown”: Walker to Olsen, 3 May 1978, Olsen Papers.
“I cherish the ins and outs”: Walker to Olsen, 23 Jan. 1979, Olsen Papers.
“read this book”: Norma Rosen, “The Ordeal of Rebecca Harding,” New York Times, 15 April 1973, www.nytimes.com.
CHAPTER 18: The New Exotics
“Women have become”: Pat Murphy, “Poems Bring Instant Fame,” St. Louis Tribune, Kumin Papers.
“I’m just absolutely knocked out”: “Newton Poet’s Book: A ‘Bony Stare,’ Lyrical Look,” Boston Globe, 8 May 1973, 22.