Anne Sexton, a distinguished poet, killed herself in 1974. Sexton's poems, many of which deal with suicide, read together with a richly researched recent biography - enhanced by the biographer's access to tapes of Sexton's sessions with her psychiatrist and by a fore-word by that psychiatrist-permit an unusual opportunity to understand the interrelation-ship of her illness, her treatment, and the meaning of suicide in her life.