The American poet Anne Sexton – celebrated, like the other American poet Sylvia Plath, for her suicide – once burned her finger a teensy little bit at a dinner party, while she was striking a match. The incident is recalled here by a fellow dinner guest:

For the next two hours her pain was a presence in the room larger than that of any of the guests: ice was brought... her ululations rose and fell, her husband comforted her... The guests tried to speak of other things, but it proved impossible: it was the pain that