My Thoughts
Looking at Van Gogh’s “Starry Night,” Anne Sexton wrote ‘The town does not exit…” Van Gogh painted a town on a starry night. The town does exist but the poet, who later killed herself suffered from maniac depressive syndrome. It seems to me that seeing the bushes as a drowned woman was really about how sad and depressed the poet felt about herself.
On the one hand she is feeling good about the starry night because the painting is so alive to her, but on the other she thinks the stars “boil.” Although she feels that the town does not exist, she obviously feels it’s calm. The calmness of this town which couldn’t possibly exist for the author; which is perhaps what she longed to be; calm and non-existent
If I wanted to describe Van Gogh’s starry night, I would see the quite homes under a starlit sky. In this painting I also see a big golden moon in this eternal night. When I look at the painting I also see a church steeple, full of swirling clouds. It seems to represent hope and spirituality. When I read this poem, I believe that the poet felt despair from looking at the starry night. Perhaps she felt despair because she could not feel the stillness of the starry night.
