July 02 2008

Text By Greg Fallis

I’m an empress.
I wear an apron.
My typewriter writes.
It didn’t break the way it warned.
Even crazy, I’m as nice
as a chocolate bar.

Anne Sexton, often crazy and occasionally nice, wrote that in the mid-1960s. By then the apron had acquired a sort of flour-covered symbolism. It had become an icon of domesticity at a time when women were becoming iconoclasts. Some cut their own apron strings with ferocious glee, some with anger, some with a sense of regret. Forty years on and now the apron is again coming out of the drawer, even it is worn with a sense of irony.

Anne Sexton's typewriter did break; for her, the apron weighed as much as an anchor and it pulled her down. Now, happily, it's no longer necessary to always be nice as a chocolate bar. We no longer rely on typewriters and the apron has become lighter with time.

Today, aprons have pockets. Anne Sexton would appreciate that.