After a year at Garland Junior College, an elite Boston finishing school, Sexton eloped to North Carolina at age 19 with Alfred Mueller "Kayo" Sexton II, whom she had dated for a month. He dropped out of premedical courses at Colgate to work in his father-in-law's business; Anne clerked in a bookshop. During their tumultuous marriage, the couple lived in Massachusetts, Baltimore, and San Francisco. They produced daughters Linda Gray and Joyce Ladd.
While Kayo fought in the Korean War, Linda's birth precipitated Sexton's depression, exacerbated by ambivalence toward motherhood and voices compelling her to die. Unsuited to domesticity and infant care, she required intermittent hospitalization at Westwood Lodge. At her doctor's direction, she relieved anguish through confessional writing. Her earliest efforts focus on conflict between housekeeping and creative expression.
Writing verse helped stabilize Sexton's mind after a 1956 suicide attempt and earned her a scholarship to the Radcliffe Institute for Independent Study. After forming a professional friendship with Maxine Kumin at a poetry workshop at Boston Center for Adult Education, Sexton developed into a major talent, characterizing psychiatric analysis and grief for her dead parents in verse. Her literary growth was swift and intense. In 1961, she became the first poetry scholar at the Radcliffe Institute for Independent Study.
