The Starry Night, a analysis of Anne Sexton's poem

“The Starry Night”, a painting by Vincent Van Gogh, inspired author, Anne Sexton, to write a peculiar poem. Within this poem there are many underlying stories and messages. She writes a very powerful poem in the way that it opens your mind to take into account new perceptions of the artwork. In the first verse she states that the town doesn’t exist. Perhaps she is saying this as a metaphor. Obviously everyone can see a town in this painting but in her eyes perhaps she is so mesmerized by the gorgeous heavens that the town does not matter to her. She also makes a reference to the large leafless tree in the art, personifying it as a drowned woman in a hot sky. I really can’t find anyway to explain this part of her poem, but possibly that is why she wrote it that way. To get you, the reader and on-looker of the painting, to capture the meaning of the art in a different way. Also she says the “the night boils with eleven stars.” I imagine that this part of the poem is giving no...