"The Abortion" Poem by Anne Sexton

In this poem, Anne Sexton uses strong imagery, such as, "puckered," "puffing," "Blue Mountains," "sunken," "ground cracks evilly" and "dark socket." In the line, "each bud puffing..," she portrays a "bud puffing" as opposed to the conventional image that we have of a "bud" as being gentle and beautiful. She has good details, "wearing, like a crayoned cat, its green hair" and "the grass as bristly and stout as chives." Moreover, Sexton's rhyme is consistent. She uses the rhyme scheme ABA in every stanza, "...and stout as chives (A)/the ground would break (B)/anything fragile survives (A)."

Sexton gets very personal in her poem. She lets us (the reader) know how she's feeling through landscape. For example, in the line, "Just as the earth puckered its mouth," she feels as if the "earth" is crashing down--her life came crashing down once she realized she was pregnant, "each bud puffing out from its knot." She felt as if something had exploded inside. We (the readers) can see her pain, and almost feel her pain as well. She makes her pain very vivid in her poem--having to make, probably the most difficult decision in her life. Maybe she was experiencing a difficult moment in her life, such as illness, financial hardship, separation from her husband or boyfriend, or even a death in the family that forced her into getting an abortion.

Sexton reveals sadness through her poem. For example, in the second stanza, the color "Blue" represents the way Sexton feels at this moment, sad--depressed. Also, in the third stanza, Sexton feels "sunken in" by the situation that she finds herself in wishing maybe that she will not have to do this (the abortion). In the sixth stanza, she feels as if she's having a surreal moment after the abortion, "...even the sky grew thin/like a high window looking nowhere." I suspect Sexton is having mixed emotions here and can't believe what she just did. She may be regretting it.

There's a twist at the end of this poem. Sexton "snaps out" of her surreal moment and makes herself aware of her action and says it to herself, "Or say what you mean/you coward...this baby that I bleed," wow what a strong image to end with. Sexton leads us step by step through every emotion she experiences before and after the abortion, and at the end, she's aware of what she did and says it.