Anne Sexton lived in Massachusetts and traced her ancestry to the Mayflower Pilgrims.  However her poetry was not concerned with heritage or religion, rather she dealt frankly with 'her first-hand experience'.  She won the Pulitzer Prize with Live or Die (1966), and despite a life-long battle with addictions and mental illness she produced eight collections featuring her work; three were published after her suicide.

'Sexton like to describe herself as a witch ("mouth wide, / ready to tell a story or two"), and she wanted "to scare people," certainly one of the things her forensically deadly art does'.

Conarroe, Joel. "Anne Sexton." Eight American Poets: an anthology, Vintage Books, 1997, p.163.

Hart, James D. "Anne Sexton." The Oxford Companion to American Literature, revisions and additions by Phillip W Leininger, sixth edition, Oxford University Press, p. 600.

I have gone out, a possessed witch,

haunting the black air, braver at night;

dreaming evil, I have done my hitch

over the plain houses, light by light:

lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.

A woman like that is not a woman, quite.

I have been her kind.

Her Kind, 1981