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I want to die: into that rushing beast of the night, sucked up by that great dragon, to split. from my life with no flag, no belly, no cry. Anne Sexton, “The Starry Night” from The Complete Poems of Anne Sexton (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981).
- Summary
- Epigraph
- Detailed Analysis
- Structure and Form
- Literary Devices
- Similar Poetry
‘The Starry Night’ by Anne Sexton is a beautiful and emotional depiction of Van Gogh’s The Starry Night. In the first lines of ‘The Starry Night,’ the speaker begins by referring to the town at the base of the painting and to the hair-like tree that dominates the left-hand side. She uses a great deal of figurative language to describe these sights ...
Before reading ‘The Starry Night,’ readers will first encounter an epigraphthat Sexton included before the text of the poem. It reads: In these lines, the poet cites a letter Van Gogh wrote to his brother, Theo, about his painting practice and religious attitudes.
Stanza One
In the first lines of ‘The Starry Night,’ the speaker begins by stating that the “town does not exist.” This opening line is a striking one, meant to draw people in. This is known as a hook. It does its job, likely inspiring readers to continue on, hearing more about the details of Van Gogh’s The Starry Night. There’s a “black-haired tree” in the foreground, the speaker notes. It is “like a drowned woman” that slips up “into the hot sky.” This is a wonderful description of a very specific par...
Stanza Two
When speaking about the stars and the night sky more broadly, the poet describes them as “alive.” There is movement everywhere, including in the moon, where it “bulges in its orange irons.” The next line is a curious example of a simile. It’s “like a god,” and it pushes “children…from its eye.” The poet may have been considering the smaller stars children of the sun, pushed, through the movement of the paint, away from the upper right-hand corner and into the rest of the painting. The movemen...
Stanza Three
It’s in the shorter third stanza that the speaker’s chosen manner of death is revealed. She wants to die as part of the “rushing beast of the night.” She’ll be sucked up by the “great dragon,” or consumed by the rushing colors and madness of the night, and “split from my life with no flag,” or no signal that she ever existed. She will disappear into the perfect chaos of the night with “no cry.”
‘The Starry Night’ by Anne Sexton is a three-stanza poem that is divided into two sets of seven lines and one final quintain, or set of five lines. These lines do not follow a specific rhyme scheme or metrical pattern, but they do contain numerous examples of half-rhymes and full rhymes. For example, “sky” and “die” in the first stanza and “die” an...
Throughout ‘The Starry Night,’ Sexton makes use of several literary devices. These include but are not limited to: 1. Enjambment: This can be seen when the poet cuts off a line before its natural stopping point. For example, the transitionbetween lines one and two as well as lines six and seven of the first stanza. 2. Alliteration: the repetitionof...
Readers who enjoyed ‘The Starry Night’ should also consider reading other Anne Sexton poems. For example: 1. ‘Cinderella’ – tells the story of Cinderella while also engaging with the theme of feminism and focusing on a very different ending. 2. ‘Courage’ – conveys the different ways in which a person can show courage, ranging from the seemingly ins...
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- October 9, 1995
- Poetry Analyst And Editor
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"The Starry Night" is a 1962 ekphrastic poem by Anne Sexton, written in response to Vincent Van Gogh's famous painting of the same name. Gazing into a night sky, the poem's speaker (who might be Van Gogh himself, or another speaker admiring Van Gogh's painting) desperately wants to "die," to dissolve into the starry night for good.
Sexton's use of the speaker's desire to "die" into the night suggests a yearning for transcendence and a longing to escape the confines of the physical world. The poem explores themes of spirituality, mortality, and the human desire to connect with the sublime.
The Starry Night by Anne Sexton. “The Starry Night” is about how a depressed speaker interprets another kin’s artistic representation of the nocturnal sky. This poem is an ekphrasis of the Dutch Post-Impressionist painter Vincent van Gogh’s magnum opus by the same title, The Starry Night.
- 1 min
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.
“The Starry Night” by Anne Sexton is a profound exploration of personal suffering and cosmic beauty, inspired by Vincent van Gogh’s iconic painting of the same name. Anne Sexton, a pivotal figure in confessional poetry, often drew upon her own experiences and emotional struggles to craft deeply personal and revealing works.
