Drive

“ Silently / pulling for itself, / the will wants the body to // give it what it wants,” Sexton writes in “Between the Car and the Sea,” at once a description of a car’s body propelling her onward, and of the poet herself, the one behind the wheel of this masterful fourth collection. In an extraordinary act of volition, the author does not stop at the trope of ambition, but powers instead toward the urgent concerns of the will, and intention.

In Drive, Sexton explores our most fragile poin...