“The Truth the Dead Know”
In her introduction to The Complete Poems of Anne Sexton, Maxine Kumin writes that “[B]ecause Anne wanted to open All My Pretty Ones with a terse elegy for her parents, one shorn of all autobiographical detail, ‘The Truth the Dead Know’ went through innumerable revisions before arriving at its final form… .”
You can hear a recording of one of these “innumerable” drafts here. The text of the final version can be found here. I recommend listening and reading simultaneously.
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