The Starry Night

The Starry Night
by Anne Sexton

That does not keep me from having a terrible need of—shall I say the word—religion. Then I go out at night to paint the stars.
~Vincent Van Gogh in a letter to his brother

The town does not exist
except where one black-haired tree slips
up like a drowned woman into the hot sky.
The town is silent. The night boils with eleven stars.
Oh starry starry night! This is how
I want to die.

It moves. They are all alive.
Even the moon bulges in its orange irons
to push children, like a god, from its eye.
The old unseen serpent swallows up the stars.
Oh starry starry night! This is how
I want to die:

into that rushing beast of the night,
sucked up by that great dragon, to split
from my life with no flag,
no belly,
no cry.
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So back in college I had to write a response to that poem... not my best work but I got an A+:

“Starry, starry night. Paint your palette blue and grey…” These are the opening words of Don McLean’s song “Vincent (Starry, Starry, Night)” but they are apt words for setting the scene of Anne Sexton’s poem “The Starry Night”. Blue and Grey – colors that remind us of cold, dark, loveless times. Sexton’s poem has a thick theme of being depressed, lonely, and wanting to die.

When reading “The Starry Night” without any contextual information, it maybe appear very random and without a direct meaning. Once you add the image of Van Gogh’s “The Starry Night” then some of the text starts to make sense. “The night boils with eleven stars” – there are eleven stars in the painting. “The town does not exist” - Van Gogh was in an asylum when he painted the scene – the town was a creation from his own mind. The “black-haired tree” is a fitting description of the lone, black object in the foreground that is reaching its dead “branches” towards the heavens. “The old unseen serpent swallows up the stars” is referring to the lighter-blue swirl that Van Gogh painted on top of the starscape. While the painting doesn’t depict a serpent swallowing stars, a depressed and confused soul might visualize a serpent flying through the universe, swallowing the stars.

“This is how I want to die” is bold statement made twice by Sexton. Again, without context it is a confusing statement. Sexton had bipolar disorder and frequent thoughts of suicide. In 1974 she locked herself in her garage and gassed herself with the exhaust from her car. Van Gogh was also a troubled soul. He finally committed suicide by shooting himself in the stomach only to not die until two-days later. Sexton is putting herself into Van Gogh’s imaginary town. She wants to die in the beast of the night, without crying, and without pain. When she writes the sentence “This is how I want to die”, “I want to die” is set apart on a new line. I believe that she was trying to call out for help. I want to die, I want to die – if one only looks at the hurt of Van Gogh it is easy to overlook the subliminal cry for help.

Sexton’s “The Starry Night” is a dark and disturbing poem, but one that has many meanings. I am sure that it is possible to dig deeper into the underlying meanings of her poem, but I feel that to truly understand how she felt when writing the poem, one has to be able to experience depression first hand. “Now I think I know what you tried to say to me, How you suffered for your sanity, How you tried to set them free. They would not listen; they're not listening still. Perhaps they never will...”
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I highly suggest hearing Josh Groban's version of the song "Starry, Starry Night"