The Starry Night by Anne Sexton and Vincent Van Gogh Essay

The Starry Night by Anne sexton and Vincent Van van Gogh - Essay ExampleSextons intense step mirrors the passion of van Goghs Starry Night. The picture depicts the produce that smoldered within van Gogh (Dietrich). The canvas is in turmoil. Sextons verse also throbs with inscrutable agitation The sky is hot, The night boils, (4) the stars are alive and move the moon bulges (8) and craps birth to life. The poem echoes the paintings hallucinatory tone with its hot, dramatic, unstable voice. Sextons liberal white plague of verbs like boil, bulges, push, swallows, better and sucked demonstrate her inner turmoil. Except for the silence of the town, the poem depicts a world of turbulence. Sextons tone conveys the message that her starry night, like her inner life, is in a state of ferment. Sextons poem is a feast of imagery. She matches the rich graphics of van Goghs poem with the skilful use of figurative language. Sexton makes van Goghs vibrant night a ravenous fauna that great dragon (14) which is to devour her. The thick, serpentine swirl of his brush becomes the old unseen serpent (10) which swallows the stars. Her words, in its orange irons (8), conjure an image of the moon as a captive who is forced to give birth to the stars. The most striking image is that of the lone, black tree silhouetted in the foreground of van Goghs painting, which Sexton metaphorically compares to a drowned woman (3). Just as van Goghs tree reaches out to the Heavens for help, Sexton depicts herself as a lost woman seeking consolation in the skies.