Deeply personal and often rooted in the trauma of depression, Anne Sexton's poetry was the product of a therapeutic act recommended at first by her psychiatrist who encouraged her to express her anxieties in verse. These "confessional poems" address some of the most sensitive issues of women's lives, and her willingness to expose her own experiences to the scrutiny of the publisher and the reading public brought her wide acclaim, both for her courage and for the genius her literature so richly exhibits.