Robin Becker Reads Her Poem "The Roast Chicken."

Since today is traditionally the busiest shopping day of the year, we asked Robin Becker to read her poem Shopping. It’s about some of the darker reasons we head to the stores. She teaches poetry writing at Pennsylvania State University.

Sexton has just written "Searching for Mercy Street: My Journey Back to My Mother, Anne Sexton," her seventh book. She spent a long time coming to terms with her relationship with her mother, who committed suicide in 1974.

Biographer Diane Wood Middlebrook. She's written a controversial new book about the troubled writer Anne Sexton. The controversy surrounds Middlebrook's source material: she had access to transcripts of Sexton's psychiatric sessions with the approval of Sexton's daughter and psychiatrist. Sexton killed herself in 1974. She began writing poetry in 1956 following a suicidal breakdown and after her therapist suggested she try writing poetry. ("Anne Sexton: A Biography," published by Houghton Mifflin).