Artists have a way of pouring creativity on paper. Color changes the mood of a piece, while pencil refines the artist’s vision. Poets, much like artists, can use words to generate new ideas or make concepts tangible. In the poem “Starry Night,” Anne Sexton uses Vincent Van Gogh’s painting to reflect on her own life regarding depression, mental illnesses, and the inevitable death.

The American poet, Anne Gray Harvey Sexton, was born in Newton, Massachusetts, on November 9, 1928. Both sides of her family were politically successful, allowing Sexton to be raised in the upper middle class as a New Englander. Her grandfather was president of the National Bank in Wellesley, Massachusetts, while her father, Ralph Churchill Harvey, was a well-known