There are three distinct ideas in the three stanzas of Anne Sextons "Her Kind. " By analyzing the first stanza as a period of darkness, the second as a stage of searching for a sense of composure, and the third and final being a very personal realization, it becomes evident who our speaker really is. Sexton expresses her poem through an ABABCBC pattern, which is different then your normal six or eight line stanzas and is instead seven. At the end of the three stanzas, she uses repetition to get her point across and to give a more personal feeling to what she is saying. She says, "I have been her kind "(7,14,21) and this is her relating herself back to everything she is talking about in the poem. She changes the second to last line in every stanza but only a little to summarize what she was saying in that specific stanza. That makes those three lines .
The first stanza straight from the start gives off a dark feeling as you read it. Our speaker calls herself a "possessed witch/haunting the black air " (1-2) and by this she means she thinks she's kind of crazy or going crazy and the witch is more a symbol of darkness because when people think of witches they think of dark and lonely creatures. The second line just adds to the creepiness and darkness the witch brings. Black air just sounds dark and cold. Also she seems lonely as she's losing her mind because in line 5 she says, "lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of my mind "(5), which could definitely make someone go crazy if they are alone a lot. Then we come to the final two lines in the first stanza, which conclude and confirm that our speaker doesn't think she is right in her mind. They read, "A women like that is not a women, quite./ I have been her kind " (6-7). Here Sexton summarizes what the main point of the stanza is by saying that this isn't how a women should be or how she should act, which in it's own way is her own darkness inside, her craziness.
