Anne Sexton's legacy as a feminist poet and a beacon for the mentally ill must include the annihilation of her own daughter. This autumn, when push alert after push alert detailed another powerful man's history of sexual assault, I looked to the women. Among them were celebrities like Tarana Burke and journalists like Jill Filipovic. But most significantly, there was one voice that sounded exactly like Sexton's: Lorena Bobbit. 's. Sexton died in October 2007 from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. She was 59 years old. After graduating from college, Sexton worked for a time as a nurse before moving into public relations. In 1965, she published her first collection of poems, Come Out, Come Out Wherever You Are! The book became a success and launched her career as a poet. Over the next few decades, she wrote more than twenty books of poetry and prose, including some very controversial works about female sexuality and mental illness. Her work attracted many high-profile fans including Robert Lowell who called her poems "shrill, smart, and savage" and Elizabeth Bishop who said Sexton was "one of the really great poets now working in our language." However, it was Sexton's relationship with her own daughter that would become her greatest source of inspiration and grief.