Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Anne Sexton’s "Love Letter Written in a Burning Building" is a visceral and haunting depiction of love’s destruction, rendered through vivid, surreal imagery and a tone that oscillates between desperation and resignation. The poem's title immediately sets the scene of chaos and impending doom, and the language that follows reinforces this sense of inevitable loss.

The poem opens with a direct address to "Dearest Foxxy," an intimate and personal salutation that establishes the addressee as a lover. The speaker describes being in "a crate," which symbolically represents the shared life and domestic space of the couple. This crate, once filled with the mundane yet cherished items of daily life—"white shirts and salad greens," an "icebox knocking at our delectable knocks"—is now a place of entrapment, a container of memories that are about to be consumed by fire.

The imagery of "movies in my eyes" and "eggs in your tunnel" evokes a playful and sensual intimacy between the lovers, a shared experience of life that was once vibrant and full of potential. The repetition of "sheets, sheets, sheets" suggests an obsession with this shared intimacy, a constant return to the space of the bed, even to the point of lunacy, where they are together "all day, even in the bathtub like lunatics." However, this playful and intimate past is contrasted sharply with the present reality, where the speaker has "set the bed afire," signaling the end of this shared space and the love it contained.

As the fire spreads, the speaker notes that "smoke is filling the room," and it becomes "hot enough for the walls to melt." The imagery here is of total destruction, where even the icebox—a symbol of preservation—is rendered useless, its once "gluey white tooth" now melting in the heat. The act of writing this love letter becomes a desperate attempt to preserve something, anything, of what was once shared, but the speaker acknowledges the futility of this effort, noting that "perhaps they will last" but recognizing that "The dog will not. Her spots will fall off."

The poem is filled with striking metaphors that convey the complete breakdown of their world. The "old letters" that "melt into a black bee" and the "nightgowns...shredding into paper" suggest that not only physical objects but also memories and emotions are being obliterated. The transformation of "sheets...to gold—hard, hard gold" and the "mattress...being kissed into a stone" evokes a sense of petrification, where the warmth and softness of their love have been replaced by something cold, hard, and lifeless.

Despite the speaker’s attempt to salvage their love through this final act of communication, there is an overwhelming sense of inevitability to the destruction. The image of the speaker wearing "asbestos gloves" while writing suggests a futile attempt to protect oneself from the encroaching fire, but it is clear that this protection is insufficient as the "cough is filling me with black" and "a red powder seeps through my veins." The reference to "our little crate" going down "so publicly" underscores the tragic spectacle of their love’s demise, a personal disaster witnessed by an indifferent world.

The final lines of the poem are particularly powerful in their imagery of violence and decay. The flames are described as "making the sound of / the horse being beaten and beaten," a metaphor for the relentless and brutal end of their relationship. The "whip is adoring its human triumph" suggests a perverse satisfaction in the destruction, while the "flies wait, blow by blow," evoke decay and the inevitability of death, tying the personal tragedy to broader, more universal themes of mortality and loss.

In "Love Letter Written in a Burning Building," Sexton masterfully intertwines the imagery of love and destruction, creating a powerful and haunting meditation on the end of a relationship. The poem’s vivid, surreal imagery and the speaker’s desperate yet resigned tone capture the overwhelming sense of loss and the futile attempt to preserve something of value in the face of inevitable destruction. This love letter, written in the midst of a burning building, becomes a testament to the fragility of love and the inescapable reality of its end.

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