"Anne Sexton liked to arrive about ten minutes late for her own performance: let the crowd work up a little anticipation. She would saunter to the podium, light a cigarette, kick off her shoes, and in a throaty voice say, 'I'm gonna read a poem that tells you what kind of poet I am, what kind of woman I am, so if you don't like it you can leave.' Then she would launch into her signature poem:
I have gone out, a possessed witch,
haunting the black air, braver at night;
dreaming evil, I have done my hitch
over the plain houses, light by light:
lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.
A woman like that is not a woman, quite.
I have been her kind.
I have found the warm caves in the woods,
filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves,
closets, silks, innumerable goods;
fixed the suppers for the worms and the elves:
whining, rearranging the disaligned.
A woman that is misunderstood.
I have been her kind.
I have ridden in your cart, driver,
waved your nude arms at villagers going by,
learning the last bright routes, survivor
where your flames still bite my thigh
and my ribs crack where your wheels wind.
A woman like that is not ashamed to die.
I have been her kind."
(Germaine Greer's description)
And she did the reading to the accompaniment of a rock band.