Written in 1960 the poem illustrates the author's immersion on a New England

tradition, the roundup of hapless persecutions. In one of the poet's characteristic

split personalities, though a double first-person presentation, she merges
consciousness with a subversive, energized woman shunnted as the pious as she
is hunted by witchcraft. images of darkness dominate the first stanza which
explains her compulsion to roam outside the confines of civility. the dual natured
character is both witch and violator of the domestic womanhood that inhabits the
plain houses below
the poem returns to well-lighted places as an unidentified carter drives the
speaker towards her execution. Wracked by flames and the wheel, an illusion to a
medieval torture device on which victims were simultaneously rotated, pierced
and stretched,
the speaker appears to greet villagers, who reside in the bright houses she
soared above in her flight from conventionality. Although her arms are nude and
vulnerable, in her last moments, she is boldly unashamed of previous deeds and
attitudes. Eagerly, proudly, the witch-poety embraces the identity of other brave,
possessed women. Like them, she yields to the torment for violating polite
womanhood
double subjectivity
"I"inthepoemisadisturbing,marginalfemalewhosepowerisassociatedwithdisfigurement,
sexuality,andmagic.Butattheendofeachstanza,"I"isdisplacedfromsuffererontostoryteller.With
thelines"Awomanlikethat...Ihavebeenherkind"Sextonconveysthetermsonwhichshewishesto
beunderstood:notvictim,butwitnessandwitch.

GregJohnsongleefultone

Andthatkindis"awomanwhowrites."JaneMcCabe